The Mara River traverses nearly 14,000 kilometers in Kenya and Tanzania, flowing through the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya and the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It is a vital water source for more than 1 million people in the area, as well as for 2 million zebras and wildebeests. In fact, the Mara River Basin is “one of the most ecologically important basins in the world,” according to Basil Mahayni, Deputy Director of USAID’s Sustainable Water Partnership’s (SWP). Communities in Kenya and Tanzania depend on the Mara River Basin for a variety of needs, including drinking water, livelihoods, and ecosystem preservation. Therefore, water security in this basin is essential to ecological health of the basin and its wildlife and the region’s economic development.

Safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are vital for human well-being. However, 1 in 3 people (approximately 2.2 billion) still lack safe drinking water, 4.2 billion do not have access to safely managed sanitation services, and 829,000 people die annually from unsafe water and related sanitation and hygiene around the world.

Climate-related disasters are a major source of human and material losses. Poverty and low level of economic development are important determinants of environmental vulnerability. Achieving stable and sustainable development thus represents an important strategy to reduce adverse impacts of climate change. However, present efforts to evaluate possible consequences of climate change in the future suffer from too optimistic assumptions about economic growth in poor countries, as we document in a new article just published in the journal Global Environmental Politics.

The world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China, is projected to fulfill its Paris commitment to reduce the proportion of coal in its energy mix ten years ahead of schedule. However, the country remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, and coal conversion practices are steadily on the rise. In this month’s top post, China Environment Forum’s Richard Liu, Zhou Yang, and Xinzhou Qian track China’s risky gamble on coal conversion.