Factories in China’s Pearl River Delta tick-tock around the clock, rapidly churning out gadgets from iPhones and Barbie dolls to forks and light bulbs, shipped off to village shops in Uganda and super Walmarts in America’s sprawling suburbs. But far from the global consumer’s view, manufacturing and rapid development are placing unrelenting pressure on China’s environment.

Communicating complex scientific concepts to general audiences is difficult given today’s information overload. Capturing the attention of time-pressed policymakers long enough to explain multifaceted issues like climate change and global health is an even greater challenge. The Environmental Communications Division of the National Communication Association co-sponsored two panels at the Wilson Center on November 22 featuring communication directors and professors of communications to explore this issue. [Video Below]

The original version of this article appeared on the Aspen Institute blog.

When journalist Alan Weisman proposed a new book on the challenges posed by human population growth, his editor said, “That one’s a live wire; don’t touch it.”

2014 promises to be a superlative year – and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Complex, “super” disasters like Super Typhoon Haiyan are becoming more frequent, more systemic, and more destructive. Global trends, from population dynamics to food, water, and energy scarcities, threaten to further complicate the playing field. But by finally getting serious about resilience – the much discussed buzzword of 2013 – we might reduce our vulnerability, restore our communities, and build back better, rather than just picking up the pieces.

When Super Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines last month, the incredible damage visited on the people, infrastructure, and land was shaped by trends that have been in motion for decades. The country’s population has been growing rapidly, with high concentrations of people living in cities and along the coast; economic growth had been steady, but weak governance and corruption may have exacerbated vulnerability; and the gradual loss of coastal forests and mangroves left many communities exposed to the full brunt of the typhoon’s storm surge. On a positive note, wireless technology and crowd-sourced data helped in disaster response.

The past three years – and more pointedly the past 12 months – have laid witness to monumental, if not heartbreaking, incidents of gender-based violence. The gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi last December; the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl left for dead in a pit latrine in Western Kenya last June; the mass sexual assault of women in Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolution in Egypt and since; all were high profile atrocities that ignited outrage around the world.

Last month, more than 10,000 negotiators from 189 countries attended the latest UN climate change conference, known as the 19^th Conference of the Parties, or COP-19, this year held in Warsaw. To many, COP-19 fell frustratingly short of its already low expectations: there were no significant new agreements and 132 developing countries along with many major non-government groups staged a walkout in protest. However, it was notable for several signs of continued progress in bringing women’s voices to the negotiating table.

The original version of this article, by Laura Robson and Caroline Savitzky, appeared on Blue Ventures’ Beyond Conservation blog.

The excitement was palpable as we gathered with almost 200 of the world’s finest population-health-environment (PHE) practitioners, researchers, and advocates in Addis Ababa for the International PHE Conference earlier last month! With all of us working on integrated projects encompassing family planning, community health, sustainable livelihoods, and environmental initiatives, there were many ideas and progress updates to be shared.