Solar farms—just like regular farms—cover large swaths of land, requiring between 3.5 to 16.5 acres per MW of generating capacity. The largest solar plant in the world, the 648 MW Kamuthi facility in Tamil Nadu, India, covers ten square kilometers. But it will be dwarfed by the 3,450 MW facility under construction on China’s Tibetan Plateau, which will span 298 square kilometers when completed. Building these large plants requires fundamentally changing how the land they sit on is used, which—without careful planning—could have negative impacts on the environment and local communities that could potentially lead to conflict. The backlash could not only derail solar projects, but could also fuel resistance to future renewable energy development.

Can the ocean and river ecosystems of the world survive the sand dredging needed to supply the cement for global construction? In September’s most popular post, Kimberly Yang explores the impact that widespread sand mining is having on China’s rivers and coastal waters, driven by China’s construction boom. The consequences are significant, but Chinese construction and real-estate companies are exploring ways to lessen the environmental impact of sand dredging.

The two poles of our planet—the Arctic and Antarctica—demand greater attention right now. For decades, the United States has played a leadership role in both regions, a responsibility that it must continue to fulfill as a warming climate and other drivers of change are creating new challenges and opportunities. Regrettably, the Trump Administration has not devoted the resources or high-level attention necessary to maintaining American leadership position on these critical matters.

The silver tsunami is approaching: Many countries, not all of them rich, are facing the challenges of an ageing population thanks to growing life expectancies and shrinking birth rates.

Water engineer Gordon Mumbo of USAID’s Sustainable Water Partnership grew up in the small Kenyan village of Kamuga. Year after year, he watched as frequent floods from one of Kenya’s major rivers, the Nyando, disrupted village life. After 30 years of a wide-ranging career in water, for the first time since his childhood, he has returned to his birthplace, where he leads a team building community engagement in the Mara River basin.

Last May, the European Union announced an ambitious plan to dedicate 10 percent of its 2019 humanitarian aid budget to education during emergencies. At the same time the European Commission released its first policy on education in emergencies, observing that “access to quality education is being denied to millions of children by increasingly protracted conflicts, forced displacement, violence, climate change and disasters.” As a result, the Commission notes, “uneducated, lost generations” have been forced “to embark on perilous journeys to Europe and other regions of the world, affecting their stability and development.” The European Union’s announcement is a welcome development for global education, which has received scant attention from international aid agencies and languished at the margins of the international humanitarian agenda.

When I arrived at Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar in July, the infamous monsoon was well underway. The rain was intense, roads were muddy, and it was very difficult to move around. Cox’s Bazar—the closest big town to the Rohingya refugee camps—is now the base city for most of the humanitarian agencies working with the refugees. The distance between Cox’s Bazar and Kutupalong Camp—the world’s largest refugee camp—is barely 30 kilometers. However, due to the rain and the area’s hilly terrain, it seemed like it took ages to get there.

The research presented in this article was subsequently published in a peer-reviewed article: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-73065-9_3

The Kurdish people’s century-long quest for self-determination reveals a key aspect of ethnic separatist conflicts. Ideas of nationhood can endure for generations, unifying people across borders and often making separatist conflicts hard to resolve. But how much harder is it to resolve separatist conflicts than other violent, non-territorial intra-state wars (such as political revolutions)? In practical terms, how much longer, on average, can policymakers expect separatist conflicts to persist and reoccur than the typical political revolution? These are tough questions. Surprisingly, demography helps us find the answers.