Will climate change cause conflict? That question, which has sparked heated debates in academia and the media, resists simple answers. But is climate change already contributing to conflict in some places? If so, how exactly? And more importantly, what should be done about it? These questions were the focus of a 2013 preliminary report produced for USAID by international development firm Tetra Tech ARD, which examines the climate-conflict nexus in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Peru.

In 2007, an influential analysis by 11 retired generals and admirals characterized climate change as a “threat multiplier” that could aggravate the conditions for conflict. Last week, in a follow-up report launched at the Wilson Center, members of the CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Board framed climate change as a more direct and immediate risk, calling it a “catalyst for conflict.”

Last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) celebrated 150 years of their mission to “protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence.” Though this mission hasn’t changed in the past century-and-a-half, the nature of conflict and crisis response has. [Video Below]

Half the world’s pigs – 476 million – reside in China. Increasingly prosperous consumers are eating fewer grains and demanding a more protein-rich diet, ballooning the pork industry to 15 times its 1960s-era size. In the last 30 years, Chinese demand for meat has quadrupled and China is now the largest consumer of seafood in the world.

In a world faced with rising temperatures, increasingly severe droughts and floods, and a rapidly growing population, how can people adapt to this new way of life – and even thrive? Leading experts discussed this question in-depth during an Aspen Institute Global Health and Development Program event titled, “Building Resiliency: The Importance of Food Security and Population.” The panel took place as part of the Civil Society Policy Forum at the 2014 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC.

What is the future of population and climate change research, and how can this research impact international policy? In a special issue of Population and Environment, environmental and social scientists look at these questions. “One of the most exciting developments in the climate change research community at present is the development of a new generation of climate scenarios,” write Adrian C. Hayes and Susana B. Adamo in the introduction. These can help facilitate more interdisciplinary research.

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.