From the cultural hub of Lahore down to the bustling ports of Karachi, smog is king in Pakistan, with citizens enduring unhealthy air quality for much of the year. The smog, generated mostly by crop and garbage burning and diesel emissions from furnaces and cars, could get worse by the end of this year when Pakistan opens five new Chinese-built coal power plants, funded by a $6.8 billion venture under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) initiative. These five plants are just the beginning of the Pakistan government’s planned 7,560 MW expansion in coal power, which are CPEC-energy priority projects. “It’s a perfect storm for a pollution crisis,” said Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center’s Asia Program. “The poor will continue to burn a variety of polluting materials to produce fuel, and now you’re also going to be introducing dirty coal into the mix. Combine that with crop burning in the countrywide and car exhaust fumes in rapidly growing cities, and you’ve got a really smoggy mess on your hands—and in your lungs.”

In the 1980s, the government of Malawi began providing piped water to low-income households in 50 districts, establishing community-run tap committees to collect bills and manage systems. Men made up 90 percent of committee memberships—and problems quickly became apparent.

After close to 40 years of armed conflict, Afghanistan may be poised to begin a period of economic recovery. Electrifying remote areas and establishing pervasive political control is critical to its success. India is currently planning and funding several major hydropower projects along the Kabul River and its tributaries. Micro-hydropower is bringing electricity to remote areas such as the Banda Miralamji Village in eastern Nangarhar Province. However, in some areas far from the capital, the central government in Kabul and opposition groups are struggling for control and influence. While electrification of a village often eases poverty, health concerns, and improves communication, it does not always benefit the government in Kabul.

This year, 2018, marks the 60^th anniversary of a landmark publication by a pair of academic social scientists who first recognized the close relationship between population age structure (the distribution of a country’s population, by age) and development. In Population Growth and Development in Low Income Countries (Princeton U. Press, 1958), demographer Ansley Coale (1917-2002) and economist Edgar M. Hoover (1907-1992) theorized that eventual declines in fertility would transform developing-country age structures. Coale and Hoover demonstrated that these newly transformed age structures would exhibit larger shares of citizens in the working ages, and smaller shares of dependent children and seniors (Fig. 1). This transition, they argued, would someday help lift countries with youthful populations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa out of the low-income bracket.

In September, Ambassador David Balton, a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative, testified before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, testifying against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing). “We don’t even know just how much illegal fishing is going on,” said Ambassador David Balton, a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, in a recent Wilson Center NOW interview. IUU fishing is a major threat to the global fisheries industry as well as the oceans. “Even when nations get together and establish rules for fisheries or stocks across jurisdictional lines, it’s difficult to enforce the rules against everyone, and there is unfortunately a high percentage of illegal fishing that takes place.”

Huo Chang grows visibly exasperated as he speaks about his city’s water crisis. From his office in Beijing’s largest state-owned environmental investment and service company, China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group (CECEP), the water expert explains how Beijing is in the throes of a population and economic boom that has left its water resources both polluted and depleted. In response to these opposing pressures, the city turned to controversial measures to avoid a Cape Town-like Day Zero crisis in which Beijing would no longer be able to meet the daily water needs of its population of nearly 22 million.

In January 2017, President Anthony Carmona swore in Nikoli Edwards, age 25, as the youngest temporary senator in Trinidad and Tobago’s history. “I have been very much involved in piecing together the puzzle when it comes to how we develop the holistic young person in Trinidad and Tobago,” said Senator Nikoli Edwards in a Wilson Center interview with Roger-Mark De Souza, a Wilson Center Global Fellow, on Edwards’s personal journey into youth advocacy and the importance of engaging young people in decision-making.

“China can simultaneously be the world’s biggest polluter and the leading developer and employer of clean energy technologies,” said Joanna Lewis, an associate professor of science, technology, and international affairs at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at a recent event at The Brookings Institute on China’s local and global environmental agenda. “It’s not just megawatts being added, it’s actual investment in the innovation of these [renewable energy] technologies.”