Last week, a new study out of The Lancet projected that in 2015, 233 million married or in-union women worldwide will have an unmet need for modern family planning.

A well-known Chinese proverb describing the relationship between the central government in Beijing and its people says, “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away” (天高皇帝远, tian gao, huang di yuan). It’s not too far of a stretch to apply the same proverb to the current state of China’s environment sector, where relatively strong pollution control laws are poorly enforced on the ground.

While it can be convenient to think of human health and the environment as unrelated silos, they are in fact closely related. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) recently released a report underscoring this point especially for Africa, where large numbers of people are directly reliant on natural resources for their livelihoods.

The original version of this article, by Jason Beaubien, appeared on NPR’s health blog, Shots.

“The meek shall inherit the earth” – that seems to be the latest message from the United Nations Development Program.

Some 52 percent of the world’s population lives in cities, a proportion that will only grow throughout the next few decades. Understanding the health challenges facing urban residents is crucial for those who seek to improve human health, especially since many of these challenges differ from those facing inhabitants of rural areas, where global health resources have traditionally been concentrated. At a private meeting on March 4 at the Wilson Center, experts described how factors ranging from climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to reproductive health and rights impact urban health.

Many of the fastest growing countries in the world today are also the poorest. A recent bulletin from the National Transfer Accounts Project, “Lower Income Countries and the Demographic Dividend,” examines what it takes for lower-income countries to experience a demographic dividend and the economic growth associated with that period. Achieving the demographic dividend is dependent on a country achieving low fertility rates, which, when coming from a period of high growth, temporarily increases the ratio of the working-age population to dependents, like children and the elderly. For lower-income countries to do this, the report recommends that policymakers invest in healthcare and education programs and focus on boosting the labor force participation rate. Looking forward, the report advises that it is not too early for lower-income countries to begin developing social security and pension programs to support the latter stages of the demographic transition too.

Fifty years after independence, Uganda has one of the highest population growth rates in the world at 3.3 percent – a rate which puts the country on track to nearly double in population over the next two decades. More than 50 percent of the population is under the age of 18. This large youth cohort will ensure that the country continues to grow for decades to come, even if couples choose – and are able – to have smaller families. And according to the State of Uganda Population Report 2011, “with more than one million people added to the population every year, the quality of [health] service delivery will suffer.”

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is “a promise is a promise: time for action to end violence against women.” The theme reflects that although there are a number of treaties and conventions that on paper promise to protect women’s rights, equality, and security, in reality, those promises to protect human rights have been broken time and again.