Urging a better understanding of the roots of instability, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs on Wednesday said that fighting poverty will provide security benefits to the developing and the developed worlds:

“Instability will grow where poverty festers in an extreme form, that’s what we’re seeing in the Horn of Africa. This isn’t a crisis about Islam, this isn’t a crisis about geopolitics, this is essentially a crisis of extreme poverty.”

He cited mosquito nets, medicine, and fertilizer as three means to improve health and livelihoods among the world’s poor.

Representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia came together with other international partners in Georgia’s capital city of Tblisi today to discuss the impact of environmental concerns on peace in the region.

Regional cooperation may be the solution to problems such as environmental degradation and access to natural resources, according to Ambassador Roy Reeve, head of the OSCE Mission to Georgia.

The meeting is part of the Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC).

Environmental problems such as climate and water scarcity pose growing risks to the world’s future, says a new report from the World Economic Forum. Global Risks 2007 offers sobering scenarios of threats quickly coming down the road: over the next 10 years, more than 1 million people in the developing world are expected to die from disease, while loss of freshwater services is projected to claim somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000 lives.

Already the world’s sixth-largest country, Pakistan’s population could double to 300 million people in the next 40 years if the current rate of growth continues. Population and Welfare Minister Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain announced new plans to promote contraception and smaller family norms as a way to stem the tide. This marks a major policy shift for a country where discussion of such measures was once taboo, he noted:

“There was a time when you couldn’t talk about family planning, but now things have changed and we are also bringing clerics on board.”

The outreach plan will focus on urban centers and industrial areas, and include contraception as well as sex education.

A World Economic Forum report ranks 115 countries—together comprising 90 percent of the world’s population—by their relative gender gaps. Countries were ranked by the relative inequality between men and women in economics, education, political status, and health and survival. According to London Business School Dean Laura Tyson, who helped shape the report’s methodology, the rankings reveal a lost economic opportunity:

“Countries that do not fully capitalize effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential. We hope to highlight the economic incentive behind empowering women in addition to promoting equality as a basic human right.”

Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland have the smallest gender gaps. The Philippines, at six, is the only Asian country in the top 10. The United States comes in at 22.

From Haiti to Sudan, countries in crises often share the problems of rapid population growth and deteriorating environmental resources.

To promote dialogue on the links connecting population, environment, and conflict, the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center launched this blog as a clearinghouse for information and insight on today’s new security threats.