“Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that we are facing in today’s world; it is particularly important for us in the Caribbean and for a country like Trinidad and Tobago,” says ECSP Director and Trinidad-native Roger-Mark De Souza in an upcoming documentary by Sustain T&T, a non-profit based in the islands.

To use the military parlance, climate change is often considered a “threat multiplier,” challenging stability and development around the world by exacerbating underlying conditions of vulnerability. South Asia is one region that faces multiple stressors that have the potential to feedback off each other.

Higher temperatures, more extreme weather, rising sea levels, flooding, and increased cyclonic activity in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea are reshaping the environment, warns the Center for American Progress (CAP) in a report.

The original version of this article appeared on The Economist’s Babbage blog.

Earth’s climate is changing, whether you like it or not. As it does, other changes – like rising sea levels or falling crop yields – follow. It is easy to see how this might lead to conflict. Competition for ever scarcer resources such as arable land and its bounty can turn ugly. As the price of food rises the poor, who spend more of their income on it, are hit more than the rich, exacerbating income inequality and leading to disaffection, resentment and, possibly, violence.

Water, energy, and food – this “nexus” of interrelated resource issues continues to garner attention from analysts, policymakers, and the media. Over the next four decades global population is projected to increase to about 9.6 billion and, worldwide, demand for water is projected to increase 55 percent; energy, 80 percent; and food, 60 percent. In a new video about the first of a series of workshops on this nexus, the International Union for Conservation on Nature and the International Water Association explain how they are working to bring together private and public sector water infrastructure experts from across Africa and the world to build partnerships and create some consensus on a “nexus-based approach” to managing scarce resources.

Cambodia to grow by nearly one-third by 2050; Kenya to more than double; Mali to swell to three times its current size. These were the population projections available when Feed the Future, President Obama’s global hunger and food security initiative, was beginning implementation in 19 focus countries around the globe in 2010.

According to the UN, the planet has warmed faster since the turn of the century than any other period on record. Sea-level rise has also increased pace to 0.12 inches a year – almost double the rate observed during the 20^th century. This “unprecedented” rate of climate change is expected to disproportionally impact developing countries, whose socio-economic, political, and physical landscapes make them particularly vulnerable to the effects. The GAIN Index, an interactive mapping tool recently acquired by the University of Notre Dame, can help policymakers prepare for these changes by comparing the climate change vulnerability and readiness of countries around the world.

“The places in the world where the environment is most fragile, women’s health is most fragile,” said Leila Darabi, director of global communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, at the Wilson Center. “The negative impacts on the environment tend to affect women the most. Women are the people who are planting kitchen gardens, women are traditional healers, and so they often feel the impact first when those things are degraded.”

USAID’s annual report to Congress on its global health programs breaks down the broad array of initiatives carried out each year “from the American people” to prevent child and maternal deaths, provide safe access to water, combat infectious disease, and deliver HIV/AIDS relief, among other priorities. Maternal and child health are of particular focus, with the agency helping to launch the Child Survival Call to Action, London Summit on Family Planning, and U.S. Government Action Plan on Children in Adversity last year. The authors report significant declines in maternal and newborn mortality rates for priority countries and the establishment of “national contraceptive security strategies” in 36 out of 47 USAID-supported countries since 2003. “All of these efforts align under U.S. goals to end extreme poverty and promote peace and prosperity worldwide, which result in improved security at home and better markets for U.S. businesses abroad,” writes Assistant Administrator Dr. Ariel Pablos-Méndez.