Climate change is a very real threat. It will have major implications for every country and region in the world, but South Asia is particularly vulnerable. To appropriately address the challenges there, the world will have to confront four misconceptions about climate change in South Asia. With world leaders convening in Paris to hash out a new agreement on climate change, now is the right time to do it.

“Clean energy has gone from being the ‘right thing to do’ in combating climate change, to being the most cost-effective option for many energy-insecure countries,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Regional Development Mission for Asia, during a day-long conference on renewable energy at the Wilson Center on October 27 (read part one of our coverage here).

The world has entered a new energy era. Last year, for the first time in four decades, the global economy grew without an increase in CO2 emissions, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21^st Century.

Just a few years ago, progress on global family planning and reproductive health policy seemed to be stuck in a rut. “For 20 years, development money for health had been directed to fight HIV and poverty, and as a result, momentum, interest, and funding for family planning had dwindled,” said Susan Rich, vice president of global partnerships for the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), at the Wilson Center on July 15. “Unmet need for family planning was high all over the world, but especially in Africa.” [Video Below]

Pope Francis sparked worldwide discussion and jubilation among many green advocates after releasing Laudato Si, the first Papal encyclical to focus directly on the environment. The pontiff touched on everything from pollution and sustainable development, to anthropogenic climate change and water security in his 180-page missive.

The world is more connected than ever before, but also more complex. Big, transnational trends like climate change, urbanization, and migration are changing the calculus of geopolitics, while local-level inequalities persist. “[Change] seems to be spinning around us so fast,” said John Hempelmann, president of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which honors the legacy of the late senator from Washington State. How can today’s and tomorrow’s leaders adjust to global trends? [Video Below]

In 2003, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2005 to 2015 to be the decade of “water for life” as a way to encourage countries to reach their water-related targets under the Millennium Development Goals. In summing up the last 10 years, it was noted that water cooperation had been promoted widely, featuring at international fora and in government initiatives and development agendas. Water cooperation is described as having the potential to enable peace and sustainable development. However, just as focusing on “water wars”  might undermine the everyday challenges of securing safe and adequate supplies of water, focusing only on “more cooperation” may well simplify the problem at hand.

Nepal’s devastating earthquake last Saturday was both tragic and expected. On September 18, 2011, as colleagues and I were driving through Kathmandu, our car started to shake, buildings began to sway, store fronts cracked, hundreds of people jumped out of windows and streamed into already crowded streets. It was the so-called Sikkim earthquake. There were only a few fatalities and injuries – it was a very minor event compared to last weekend’s disaster. But it validated the rationale for our visit: to help launch a disaster relief dialogue involving U.S. government experts, Nepalese security forces, and their country’s emergency responders.