When I first came on board the Wilson Center last Earth Day, I wrote that I wanted to forge new paths and identify ways that reproductive health, environmental conservation, and women’s empowerment affect our lives today and in the future.

In 2013 the United Nations Population Division revised its population projections to show that population could grow even faster than previously anticipated, especially in Africa. Planning ahead for feeding a hot, hungry, teeming planet is both a numbers game and social venture. Calories, climate change, and acres of land are some of the factors on one side of the equation. The 7 billion people in the world, projected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, are on the other.

If current projections hold, Africa’s population will more than double in 40 years, putting more people at risk of food, water, health, and economic insecurity as the climate changes, as well as negating progress made in reducing carbon emissions per person. But what if it didn’t? [Video Below]

Imagine you’re a woman living in Pakistan who would like to decide if and when to have children. You’re going to school, or you’ve got a job, or you’ve had a child and simply want some space before your next pregnancy. How easy will it be for you to get your needs met?

Blue Ventures has become a leader in the population, health, and environment (PHE) community through its work with the remote, semi-nomadic Vezo people living along Madagascar’s southwestern coast. In a new short documentary, The Freedom to Choose: Empowering Communities to Live With the Sea, Blue Ventures describes how their approach has helped the Vezo respond to the combined challenges of resource scarcity, poor reproductive health, and unsustainable livelihoods.

Last year a Kiribati man, Ioane Teitiota, claimed asylum in New Zealand, stating that his home island, which is on average just two meters above sea level, was becoming uninhabitable thanks to rising seas. So-called “king tides” routinely wash over entire portions of the archipelago.

For years, the Chepang people have lived off the land in Nepal’s forested central foothills. Communities cleared trees to start small subsistence farms, harvested the surrounding area for firewood, and eventually moved on after the wood, soil, and water were depleted.