Across India, where I live and work, I can clearly see the connection between land rights and peace and security.

With respect to personal safety and security: 12 percent of all murders here are related to conflicts over land.

On a provincial level: few weeks go by without newspapers here reporting on violence between communities who are battling over land.

As our ferry slowly made its way across the Pangani River along the northern coast of Tanzania, I sat next to a woman whose child held her hand tightly. The boy and I exchanged smiles, but we mainly admired the view. The late morning sun was behind us as the royal blue river met the cloudless sky.

The original version of this article, by Michael D. Lemonick, appeared on Climate Central.

Harvard’s David Keith calls it the “goofy Goldfinger scenario” – a rogue nation, or even an individual, would conduct an unsupervised geoengineering experiment – and he confidently predicted in a story I wrote last month that it would never happen.

Sub-Saharan Africa is a key region both for conservationists and those working for improved public health. Nine of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots are in sub-Saharan Africa, as are two of the five most important wilderness areas. This hotbed of biodiversity is also home to many of the world’s most rapidly growing populations and swelling urbanization, which is putting increased pressure on natural resources.

Water – and its relationship with development, food, demography, and conflict – dominated October’s top 10 posts. Jeremiah Asaka’s guest contribution on resource conflict in Kenya and Kate Diamond’s look at SAB Miller’s surprisingly on-point summary of the water-energy-food nexus were new additions. Carolyn Lamere’s posts on the health of the world’s major aquifers and the political situation along the Nile basin made reappearances. And the drought across the U.S. West is still on, driving interest in Graham Norwood’s summary of how it might impact world food prices and its connection to climate change.

The original version of this article appeared in The Nature Conservancy’s October issue of their Science Chronicles newsletter.

It seems like everywhere you turn recently, you hear how the planet’s population is headed to 10 billion. And obvious questions follow: How can we balance far more people with the natural resources needed for their survival? How will we get more food? How will we get more energy?

Access to safe water is often taken for granted in developed countries. But last week at the 22^nd annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, panelists argued that the impact of dirty water on women’s health is an important but neglected story, not only in developing countries like Nigeria, but also in the United States.

While Pakistan’s demographic challenges are perhaps well known – two-thirds of the population of 180 million is under 30 years old – increasing security concerns have prompted discussions about exactly how much the country’s youthfulness is affecting its prospects for peace. On October 10, the U.S. Institute of Peace and George Mason University’s School of Public Policy hosted a day-long conference on “Youth Bulge, Public Policy, and Peace in Pakistan” to tackle this question.