Last month Rwanda Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Louise Mushikiwabo spoke at the Wilson Center on a wide-ranging set of issues, from the country’s development successes to the prominent role women have played in post-genocide society.

A four-part video series produced by the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism gives an update on the beleaguered communities of Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake that supplies vital ecosystem services and livelihoods to 300,000 people in northwestern Kenya. The lake is fed entirely by the Omo River, flowing south from Ethiopia, but a newly completed upstream dam has raised questions about the future.

Migration is an important strategy for coping with environmental variability and change, but it can also place additional stress on ecosystems. Policymakers and practitioners are not always fully aware of these threats, nor fully prepared to manage them through appropriate interventions. Conservation professionals in the field therefore have a key role to play in reducing the harmful impacts that migration can have on the environment, and in mitigating any tensions that may emerge between migrant and host communities.

More than 225 million women in developing countries want to avoid or delay pregnancy but are not using safe, modern, and effective contraceptive methods. Such a gap between women’s contraceptive behavior and reproductive goals is called an unmet need for family planning, and no region has more unmet need than sub-Saharan Africa. [Video Below]

The Global Maternal Newborn Health Conference, held in Mexico City from October 18-21, will provide a forum to identify, understand, and respond to the most urgent health needs of mothers and newborns. The hope is that it will accelerate momentum for maternal and newborn health in the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals and put us on a track to end all preventable maternal and newborn deaths.

Scenario planning has a long history. The RAND Corporation employed it heavily in planning for potential U.S. responses to nuclear war and 16^th century Spanish Jesuit theologians pointed to the idea as proof of free will. But in many respects this powerful set of methodological tools for managing complexity and uncertainty remains underused, especially beyond the defense, intelligence, and business communities.

If you’re a government pondering the development of newly discovered natural resources, how do you avoid the so-called “resource curse” – the tendency of high value extractive resources, like oil, gas, or minerals, to, instead of prosperity, bring corruption, entrenched poverty, and even violence?