To date, despite their demonstrated importance in both conflict recovery and the risk of conflict recurrence, natural resources have been largely ignored or downplayed in post-conflict settings around the world.

“Gorillas are very good at family planning; if we were like them, we’d be much better off,” said wildlife veterinarian Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka at the Wilson Center on September 26. The Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) CEO and founder is celebrating 10 years of population, health, and environment (PHE) work in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing health and livelihood interventions to people while protecting mountain gorillas around Virunga and Bwindi Impenetrable National Parks. [Video Below]

In 2009, economist Jeffrey Sachs, alongside more than 20 eminent scholars from different fields, highlighted the importance of biodiversity for human well-being in a policy commentary published in Science. They noted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) included a target to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of species loss, and they also noted that it was one of the MDG targets that was most off-track. “Our lack of progress toward the 2010 target,” they said, “could undermine achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction in the long term.” The 2010 target was missed, and today species are moving toward extinction at an ever faster pace. Last week’s announcement confirming the extinction of Africa’s western black rhino is the latest sad example of this trend.

The effects of climate change are often conveyed through the lens of changing physical landscapes. Shifting weather patterns, the intensification of drought, flooding, and coastal erosion are all primary areas of climate research. But do researchers know enough about changes in the size, distribution, and composition of human populations as they relate to climate vulnerability? [Video Below]

The first time Almaz, a teenager living in rural southern Ethiopia, went to the crowded health care clinic in her village to get contraception, she was told they only helped older women with children. The second time, she waited hours only to find out that her preferred method of contraception was out of stock and she would have to return another day. [Video Below]

Since 2009, the “Advancing Dialogue on Maternal Health” series, co-produced by the Wilson Center, Harvard’s Maternal Health Task Force, and the United Nations Population Fund, has been one of the few public policy forums dedicated to maternal health. [Video Below]

It’s not often that we are presented with the perfect opportunity to affect a broad set of development policies as we are currently with the UN’s post-2015 agenda.