“It’s always important when working in policy to consider what we can do beyond conception and look at more implementation,” said Valerie Stahl of New York University at the Wilson Center last month.

Stahl was one of three graduate students presenting their winning papers for an annual academic paper competition, “Reducing Urban Poverty,” co-sponsored by the Wilson Center, USAID, International Housing Coalition, Cities Alliance, and the World Bank. This year’s competition was the third in an effort to better link new academic work on urban issues to actual policymaking. [Video Below]

While climate change will undoubtedly have an impact on societies throughout the world, researchers are still debating whether or not it will cause conflict. John O’Loughlin, Frank D.W. Witmer, Andrew M. Linke, Arlene Laing, Andrew Gettelman, and Jimy Dudhia use a quantitative approach to tackle some of “sweeping generalizations” that have come to characterize this debate in a new study, “Climate Variability and Conflict Risk in East Africa, 1990-2009,” published last month in PNAS. They found that while there is “no statistically significant relationship” between precipitation and conflict, increased heat is correlated with more conflict in East Africa. Still, they also found that other factors, like population size and the space-time lag for violence, predict conflict more reliably than either of the climate-related elements.

“We know maternal health medicines are safe, we know they’re effective, we know they’re essential to keeping women healthy throughout pregnancy and childbirth,” said Kristy Kade at the Wilson Center on October 23. But lack of supply, poor quality, and misuse means they do not always help the women who need them. [Video Below]

The original version of this article, by Lydia Polgreen, appeared on The New York Times.

When Augusto Conselho Chachoka and his neighbors heard that the world’s biggest coal mine was to be built on their land, a tantalizing new future floated before them. Instead of scraping by as subsistence farmers, they would earn wages as miners, they thought. The mining company would build them sturdy new houses, it seemed. Finally, a slice of the wealth that has propelled Mozambique from its war-addled past to its newfound status as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies would be theirs.

“During my career, my viewpoint changed significantly in the understanding and definition of what security really is,” said retired Admiral William J. Fallon at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on November 2. “My current appreciation of it is that it’s much more fundamental, much more personal, much more at the individual human level than I had thought in earlier years.”

The size, composition, and spatial distribution of human populations are constantly changing, and in some areas of the world, they’re changing very rapidly. Related trends in fertility and reproductive health are also in flux. These changes will affect how people experience climate change, both individually and societally.

“Why should you consider taking a demography course in college?” That’s the question Joel Cohen, noted demographer and professor at Rockefeller and Columbia University, looks to answer in a 45-minute introduction to demography produced by the Floating University and released for free on YouTube.

The original version of this article, by Liang Jialin and Jiang Han, appeared in English on ChinaDialogue and in Chinese on Economic Information Daily.

In mid-September, the fishing season got under way as usual in Ningbo, on China’s east coast, after the three-month season when fishing is forbidden. Over 2,000 steel-hulled boats headed out to sea. But, on board, there was little cause for optimism.