As the war in Syria shows no signs of letting up, a recent article in Middle Eastern Studies put forward the hypothesis that the brutal conflict was triggered by government mismanagement of the country’s recent drought, which lasted from 2006 to 2010. It’s a story we’ve heard before.

Against the stunning backdrop of Marojejy National Park, I recently crossed paths with a conservationist from a very different background, working on the opposite side of Madagascar. But, it turns out, the communities we work with face many of the same challenges, and our meeting spawned a new population, health, and environment (PHE) program.

This past December, Bangladesh turned 42, bringing the country Henry Kissinger once predicted would become a “basket case” into comfortable middle age (though perhaps this analogy breaks down for countries like Switzerland, age 722).

Nearly every local story has a global context. This is especially true when it comes to the environment, and there may be no better way to show that context than through visualization. But in developing countries, where so many important changes are happening, journalists often lack the resources or skills to make data visualization a part of their repertoire.

These days, when the going gets tough, women “increase the peace.” From U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the international community has learned that women’s leadership can contribute a different voice to fostering peace, alleviating poverty, and fighting for the rights of the oppressed.

In many parts of the world, climate change exacerbates existing inequalities – between men and women, rich and poor, landed and landless. Climate change responses, therefore, should carefully address these forms of vulnerability.

We hear this often, but in practice, it can be difficult to do.

The past three years – and more pointedly the past 12 months – have laid witness to monumental, if not heartbreaking, incidents of gender-based violence. The gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi last December; the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl left for dead in a pit latrine in Western Kenya last June; the mass sexual assault of women in Tahrir Square during the 2011 revolution in Egypt and since; all were high profile atrocities that ignited outrage around the world.

Last month, more than 10,000 negotiators from 189 countries attended the latest UN climate change conference, known as the 19^th Conference of the Parties, or COP-19, this year held in Warsaw. To many, COP-19 fell frustratingly short of its already low expectations: there were no significant new agreements and 132 developing countries along with many major non-government groups staged a walkout in protest. However, it was notable for several signs of continued progress in bringing women’s voices to the negotiating table.