Individuals face immense challenges in displacement contexts, particularly where climate, conflict, and displacement intersect. In Mozambique, climate impacts have combined with conflict to displace nearly a million people. Entire livelihoods, identities, and stability are vanishing. Women, men, girls, and boys are not just losing homes; they are losing their place in traditional societal roles, too. This chaos—and responses by the international community—are reshaping Mozambique’s gender dynamics.

We live in a world marred by healthcare disparities. Pregnancy-related deaths and disabilities remain unacceptably high. Nearly 800 women die each day due to preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and scores more suffer from lasting disabilities. Shockingly, 90% of these preventable deaths occur in low-resource settings.

Iraq is incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Temperatures are increasing, rainfall is decreasing, and the country experiences prolonged periods of drought. These conditions, as well as the destruction of wells and irrigation systems in the Islamic State’s (IS) targeted 2014-2017 campaign to destroy agricultural livelihoods, have created a growing water problem in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains. Indeed, water levels there have dropped low enough to subject crops to drought stress, endangering drinking water systems and affecting the ability to grow crops and raise livestock.

For centuries, farmers around the globe have tilled the soil to prepare for planting. Traditional tilling, however, exposes the bare earth to wind and water, causing erosion and the loss of soil organic carbon, as well as lowering soil quality and crop yields. In the US Corn Belt tilling has degraded  approximately 35% of the land– about the size of Montana. In China, erosion from traditional tilling has degraded over 50% of agricultural soils. In the two countries soil erosion and loss of soil fertility is creating annual economic losses of $1.9 billion and $3.7 billion, respectively. Nevertheless, farmers are often hesitant to switch to no-till practices.

The recent arrests of women in Dasht-e-Barchi of Kabul, Daikundi province, and Jaghori district of Ghazni in Afghanistan by the Taliban for inadequate adherence to Islamic dress codes highlights a critical and distressing situation. These events are not an isolated occurrence. Rather, they are a reflection of the intensifying oppression and systemic threats faced by women in the country, particularly those from ethnic and religious communities such as the Hazaras.

Usually, Ms. Li charges her BYD electric car at a TELD station during her half-hour lunch break. However, today was different – it took an extra ten minutes to complete the charging, providing her time to enjoy a cup of coffee. This slight delay was due to her participation in a Shanghai demand response pilot designed to encourage consumers to adjust electricity usage according to electricity grid conditions. Like a coin toss, this pilot could be a big win for protecting the grid and accelerating low-carbon transport in China, but many infrastructure obstacles could derail this decarbonization.

We take for granted the way health programs are financed—and often forget that there are biases in financing functions that undermine equitable access to health care.

For instance, through gender advances, women now decide on contraceptive use and childbearing. Yet the health financing related to those services tends to emphasize improving efficiency and optimizing resources, without necessarily aligning its objectives with gender equity or inclusivity.

A quiet agricultural community in east, central Iowa is a surprising place to learn about the evolution of communes in the United States. While a graduate student at Iowa State University, I first visited the Amana Colonies in 1979. The brick homes, the woolen mill, and the community kitchens were first built in 1855 by a group of German immigrants, forming the now oldest commune in the country.