India has the second largest – soon to be largest – population of any nation on the planet and boasts a rapidly developing economy, yet it consumes only a fraction of the energy of China or the United States. Much like China before it, the Indian government has proposed an ambitious system of hydroelectric projects in an attempt to catch up.

A new model of integrated development, combining population, health and environment (PHE) interventions, is efficient, effective, and relatively inexpensive. But more rigorous program evaluations are necessary to prove its value, argues John Pielemeier in this week’s podcast.

Climate change vulnerability is closely tied to population dynamics, says Kathleen Mogelgaard in this week’s podcast. “We know that population size, composition and spatial distribution around the world is constantly changing, and that these changes do have implications for climate change exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity – the three elements of vulnerability.”

At last month’s launch of the USAID Water and Conflict Toolkit at the Wilson Center, Gidon Bromberg explained that the toolkit is about much more than just conflict. “It’s put very much in forefront the possibilities of peacebuilding,” he says in this week’s podcast. “Water is an opportunity in areas where there aren’t many opportunities.”

Effective development interventions often require thinking outside the box. In southern Malawi’s Lake Chilwa basin, where environmental degradation, public health, and population dynamics intersect in unpredictable ways, people like Deepa Pullanikkatil of Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) are challenging conventional thinking with promising results.

What’s the best way for America’s chief development agency to help other countries reach prosperity and democracy? Increasingly, it’s creating partnerships not just with other governments, but with the private sector too, says USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah in this week’s podcast.

Gender-based violence in developing countries is more than just a product of culture, war, extreme poverty, or historical patriarchy; it’s also a result of rapid economic change and urbanization, according to Alison Brysk, a fellow at the Wilson Center and the Mellichamp professor of global governance at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

How clean can coal be? What is the future of food security in water-deprived regions, and how will that affect national security? Dennis Dimick, National Geographic Magazine’s executive editor for the environment, discusses some of the most pressing global environmental problems in this week’s podcast.