In his book, Making America Green and Safe:  A History of Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Alan Hecht offers an insider’s account of the years that shaped sustainable development and climate change policy in the United States. The arc of Hecht’s career spans the evolution of the modern environmental movement. Serving for more than 40 years in the U.S. government, he devoted his career to environmental protection and sustainable development. The stories he tells reflect his belief that “history is a critical part of future planning.”

In the 1980s, the government of Malawi began providing piped water to low-income households in 50 districts, establishing community-run tap committees to collect bills and manage systems. Men made up 90 percent of committee memberships—and problems quickly became apparent.

Germany aims to be a pioneer in green energy and to fight climate change. Yet recent data suggest that the country has failed to meet its own climate goals. Following the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Germany’s “National Sustainable Development Strategy” aimed at a 40 percent reduction in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions between 1990 and 2020. But emissions will not reach the target, having stalled at 73 percent of the 1990 level since around 2010 and even increased in many regions. The government’s latest progress report states that the 2020 goal is not reachable.

China is installing more renewable energy capacity than any other country in the world. At the same time, its energy market is so large that the coal power capacity it is installing is equal to the entire U.S. coal fleet and is supporting high polluting coal projects in developing countries. Evan Barnard reports on this dichotomy in November’s most read post.

The care economy raises a huge range of problems and opportunities for governments, but one issue that is more or less constant across the world is the uneven distribution of unpaid care work: this tends to fall far more on women.

“Right now, it’s the Wild West in regard to governance with geoengineering,” said Paul Wapner, a professor at the School of International Service at American University at a recent panel about solar radiation management (SRM) at the Arizona State University’s Washington Center. According to the Governing Solar Radiation Management report which was the focus of the event, SRM, which theoretically would cool the planet by reflecting sunlight back into space, may be a viable last-resort option if climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts fail. Wapner said that “there’s a danger in SRM, there’s a danger in climate change. And, balancing those risks is part of the exercise and will continue to be part of the exercise.”

After close to 40 years of armed conflict, Afghanistan may be poised to begin a period of economic recovery. Electrifying remote areas and establishing pervasive political control is critical to its success. India is currently planning and funding several major hydropower projects along the Kabul River and its tributaries. Micro-hydropower is bringing electricity to remote areas such as the Banda Miralamji Village in eastern Nangarhar Province. However, in some areas far from the capital, the central government in Kabul and opposition groups are struggling for control and influence. While electrification of a village often eases poverty, health concerns, and improves communication, it does not always benefit the government in Kabul.

The research presented in this article was subsequently published in a peer-reviewed article: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.327

This year, 2018, marks the 60^th anniversary of a landmark publication by a pair of academic social scientists who first recognized the close relationship between population age structure (the distribution of a country’s population, by age) and development. In Population Growth and Development in Low Income Countries (Princeton U. Press, 1958), demographer Ansley Coale (1917-2002) and economist Edgar M. Hoover (1907-1992) theorized that eventual declines in fertility would transform developing-country age structures. Coale and Hoover demonstrated that these newly transformed age structures would exhibit larger shares of citizens in the working ages, and smaller shares of dependent children and seniors (Fig. 1). This transition, they argued, would someday help lift countries with youthful populations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa out of the low-income bracket.