2014 promises to be a superlative year – and that’s not necessarily a good thing. Complex, “super” disasters like Super Typhoon Haiyan are becoming more frequent, more systemic, and more destructive. Global trends, from population dynamics to food, water, and energy scarcities, threaten to further complicate the playing field. But by finally getting serious about resilience – the much discussed buzzword of 2013 – we might reduce our vulnerability, restore our communities, and build back better, rather than just picking up the pieces.

Twenty thousand girls under the age of 18 give birth every day, and 90 percent of these births occur within the context of marriage, according to the UN Population Fund’s latest State of the World Population report. This year’s edition, launched at the Wilson Center on October 30, focuses on adolescent pregnancy and finding ways to better protect this vulnerable group of young women.

Following a surge in global food prices in 2008 and again in 2011, policymakers and scholars have paid increased attention to the intersection of food security and political volatility. [Video Below]

When Super Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines last month, the incredible damage visited on the people, infrastructure, and land was shaped by trends that have been in motion for decades. The country’s population has been growing rapidly, with high concentrations of people living in cities and along the coast; economic growth had been steady, but weak governance and corruption may have exacerbated vulnerability; and the gradual loss of coastal forests and mangroves left many communities exposed to the full brunt of the typhoon’s storm surge. On a positive note, wireless technology and crowd-sourced data helped in disaster response.

Compared to East Asia and Latin America, the “demographic transition” in Africa has been slower to date, prolonging periods of rapid growth and creating very youthful populations. But, explains David Canning in this week’s podcast, “the high level of fertility in Africa doesn’t seem to be something that is set in stone.”

Developing countries with youthful populations may have the opportunity to take advantage of a phenomenon called the “demographic dividend,” when a decline from high to low fertility rates leads to slower population growth and a large working age population. But “age structure alone isn’t going to make it happen,” says Jay Gribble of Abt Associates in this week’s podcast.

“Population-related data from census, surveys, and other administrative data can and must be used for adaptation to climate change,” says José Miguel Guzmán in this week’s podcast from the launch of The Demography of Adaptation to Climate Change. As the devastation from Typhoon Haiyan shows, population density, poverty levels, and even building construction quality can have a huge impact on how vulnerable a particular area is to extreme weather, flooding, and other effects of climate change.

In the latter half of last century, Thailand and other East Asian countries successfully capitalized on shifts in their age structures to gain a boost in economic productivity, a phenomenon known as the demographic dividend. Today, despite the hitherto sluggish pace of Africa’s demographic transition, scholars and politicians remain hopeful that similar changes on the continent may lead to faster development in coming decades. [Video Below]