Forecasts of future climate conditions are fairly good, but forecasts of future socioeconomic conditions are another story. To get a sense of how climate change will impact society, many resort to simply layering future climate conditions on top of current socioeconomic conditions. That’s a mistake, write Wolfgang Lutz and Raya Muttarak in Nature Climate Change. “We see little value in the purely hypothetical exercise of assessing potential impacts of the future climate on a society that will not exist in the future.”

The waters of Lake Chad sustain 70 million people in four countries. Beginning in the 1970s, the 25,000-square-kilometer lake began shrinking due to excessive drawdown for agriculture and mining. Now only 10 percent remains. The dwindling water supply devastated food production and fostered massive economic and political tensions. Many experts credit the worsening conditions for contributing to the rise of Boko Haram, an extremist group that has killed 20,000 people and forced 2.3 million more to flee.

It’s often assumed that in the modern era, food security is an achievable goal. But between 2007 and 2008, a confluence of conditions shook the international food system to its core, fueling unrest and riots in more than 40 nations around the world. What’s more, this “perfect storm” may have been only a harbinger of challenges to come, according to a new report by Emmy Simmons of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Urbanization is changing the face of poverty and marginalization, and the maternal and newborn health field needs to change too, said a panel of experts at the Wilson Center on January 24.

The United Nations Population Fund’s 2016 State of the World Population report calls for investment in a very specific demographic: 10-year-old girls. At age 10, young girls are at a “pivotal” stage in their lives, the report says. They face a world of limitless possibilities, yet far too many end up thwarted in their ambitions by sexual violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, child labor, and other “systematic disadvantages.”

As Syria has collapsed, spasming into civil war over the last five years, the effects have rippled far beyond its borders. Most notably, a surge of refugees added to already swelling ranks of people fleeing instability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the highest number of displaced people since the Second World War. At the same time, scientists have noted record-breaking temperatures, a melting Arctic, extreme droughts, and other signs of climate change. For some, an obvious question is: what does one have to do with the other?