“Interest in earth observation—and in particular, the value to what we do in development internationally—has never been higher,” said Jenny Frankel-Reed, adaptation team lead at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Frankel-Reed spoke at the Wilson Center’s recent panel discussion of the earth observation data program known as SERVIR, which included insights from USAID’s soon-to-be-released evaluation of the program.

“Climate work is practical, common-sense, good development,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy assistant administrator at the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “It’s prevention, and we all know that preventative medicine is the best medicine.”

Last month, for the first time, 195 countries formally agreed to take steps to slow and eventually reduce carbon emissions. “This is potentially one of the most important things that’s ever been done for your children, your grandchildren…and their welfare in the future,” said Andrew Light, professor of public philosophy at George Mason University. [Video Below]

“Clean energy has gone from being the ‘right thing to do’ in combating climate change, to being the most cost-effective option for many energy-insecure countries,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Regional Development Mission for Asia, during a day-long conference on renewable energy at the Wilson Center on October 27 (read part one of our coverage here).

The renewable energy sector has reached a critical inflection point where costs are competitive with fossil fuels and investment is ramping up in a big way, said more than a dozen experts at a day-long conference co-hosted by ECSP and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Global Climate Change on October 27.

Stretching across northern Africa, the Sahel is a semi-arid region of more than a million square miles covering parts of nine countries. It is home to one of the world’s most punishing climates; vast expanses of uncharted and unmonitored desert; busy migration corridors that host human, drug, and arms trafficking; governments that are often ineffective and corrupt; and crushing poverty. It is not surprising then that the area has experienced a long history of unrest, marked by frequent military clashes, overthrown governments, and insurgency.

In “On Demographic and Democratic Transitions,” published in the February edition of Population and Development Review, author Tim Dyson postulates that the so-called “demographic transition” – a two-step process in which diminishing mortality rates are followed by decreases in total fertility – is an important predictor of a society’s transition from autocracy to democracy. Specifically, Dyson suggests that the population surge resulting from a decline in mortality may tend to destabilize pre-democratic regimes, while a subsequent drop in fertility rates may empower women and raise the median age of a population, thus paving the way for democracy to emerge. Dyson demonstrates a statistically significant correlation between population aging and inclination toward democracy, echoing the work of New Security Beat contributor, Richard Cincotta.

“The world my father told me about 50 years ago was a divided world,” says Hans Rosling, famed Swedish statistician and development expert, in a new video. Standing in the middle of one of his trademark graphs of development indicators, his body neatly splitting the data, he gestures: “In many people’s minds, the world still looks like this: developing and developed.”

“But it’s a myth,” he continues, “because the world has improved immensely in the last 50 years.”