One of the biggest challenges to improving health care in developing countries is that it’s not necessarily a great job. Midwives and other auxiliary health workers often face very difficult working conditions with little training, poor pay, and no hope of advancement. This can translate to poor results and even abuse of patients.

“Even though small-island nation states generally are responsible for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, small islands are already expending scare resources on strategies to adapt to growing climate threats and to also repair themselves after they have hit,” says Maxine Burkett, associate professor of law at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in this week’s podcast.

“Advancing reproductive health and family planning can positively influence and advance a number of sustainable development priorities,” says Director of USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health Ellen Starbird in this week’s podcast.

“The thing that is most gripping about the SDGs is their desire to be much more transformative in terms of what they mean for the planet,” says Manish Bapna, executive vice president and managing director of the World Resources Institute, in this week’s podcast.

When it comes to international development, a resilience framework is key, says Tom Staal, acting assistant administrator of the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID, in this week’s podcast.

“After Ukraine, ISIS, terrorism…there are a lot of distractions in 2015,” says Nick Mabey, founder and chief executive of the environmental NGO E3G, in this week’s podcast. “Short term issues are important, but they’re not everything.”

“Adaptation is very theoretical. When you talk about ‘resilience,’ you draw these Venn diagrams and you draw these really complex issues, but at least at the IPCC level, we didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what people were actually doing,” says Eric Chu in this week’s podcast.