The Sahel – spreading from the Red Sea to the Atlantic as the Sahara Desert transitions to Sudanian savanna – is drought prone and suffers from chronic food insecurity. Yet, the region also boasts the highest fertility rates in the world, and the highest rates of marriage for young girls. This creates unique vulnerabilities that are being compounded by climate change, says ECSP’s Roger-Mark De Souza in an episode of Wilson Center NOW.

Climate change negotiations seem to crawl along interminably at the pace of the glaciers they are meant to protect, with little perceptible progress as meeting follows meeting and conference follows lackluster conference. But this year we are seeing remarkable momentum building toward a historic conference in Paris in the closing days of 2015, by the end of which we will either have a new international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, or we will have seen the last of truly global efforts to strike a deal on saving our planet.

You could say the people living along the banks of the Thondwe River in southern Malawi were lucky. At least they’d been warned of the flash flood in early January that would burst through an earthen dike, wash away their homes and crops, and leave more than 4,000 of them homeless.

In 2009, the U.S. Congress passed a five-year, $7.5 billion aid package for a country it had all but abandoned just 10 years earlier. Indeed, if one word can summarize the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, “volatile” might be it. Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. has appropriated nearly $61 billion in aid to Pakistan – more than twice what it received since independence in 1947.

Accessing maternal health care is already a challenge in many countries, and when conflict erupts or a disaster strikes, it can get even worse, leaving millions of women on their own while at their most vulnerable, said Ugochi Daniels, chief of humanitarian response for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Women and girls also become more vulnerable to violence during times of crisis, she said, by virtue of nothing but their gender. [Video Below]

Though the bull market for metals and energy may be ending, global food prices remain stubbornly high. The inflation-adjusted FAO Food Price Index is down from the near historic heights of 2007-08 and 2011 but still higher than at any point in the previous 30 years, putting a brake on several decades of progress in reducing world hunger.

Climate change and youthful demographics can combine to create security risks in already fragile contexts, according to a new report commissioned by UNICEF UK and co-authored by the London-based research organizations International Alert and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Nigeria’s population is only two percent of the world population, but we contribute about 10 percent of the maternal mortality,” said Oladosu Ojengbede, professor and director of the University of Ibadan’s Center for Population and Reproductive Health. [Video Below]