People in developed countries rarely think of weather in life-or-death terms. But millions in the developing world have no choice but to do so. The global rich have stable governments, savings accounts, insurance, and more to fall back on when disaster strikes. People in poorer countries don’t, so they’re often faced with tough decisions in times of drought: Sell the only ox for food and plow by hand next year? Take the kids out of school and put them to work chopping firewood for extra cash? Abandon the farm and family to look for work in the city?

Sovacool et al. in a study published in World Development compare the performance of the first 16 member countries of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) to their performance before membership and to other non-member countries and find little difference in most governance and economic development categories.

“The Zika outbreak is a result of something; it is the result of the lost attention to sexual and reproductive health issues as a human right and women as subjects of rights,” said Jaime Nadal Roig, the United Nations Population Fund representative to Brazil, at the Wilson Center on April 12. [Video Below]

In 2015, the NGO Mercy Corps released some surprising findings from conflict management programs in the Horn of Africa. Interventions from 2013 to 2015 focused on building community-level cooperation, strengthening institutions, and enhancing resilience. The results indicate that natural resource management can be a key governance pillar to build around and that such cooperation can strengthen household resilience to climate and food security shocks. [Video Below]

This Earth Day, the United States, China, and Canada are among more than 170 countries expected to take part in the largest one-day signing of an international agreement in history. The ratification of the climate agreement hammered out at the Paris Conference of Parties (COP-21) last December could be the most significant elevation of environmental issues on the global stage yet.

Today, Africa has the world’s highest fertility rates. On average, women in sub-Saharan Africa have about five children over their reproductive lifetime, compared to a global average of 2.5 children. Research shows that the “demographic transition,” the name for the change from high death and fertility rates to lower death and eventually lower fertility rates, has proceeded differently here from other regions in the developing world.

Iraq has seen its share of calamities in recent years, but none is as dangerous as the impending failure of the Mosul Dam. A breach of the dam will result in a tsunami-like wave that sweeps through cities and hamlets along the Tigris River from Mosul to as far south as Amarah and even Basra. Baghdad would be submerged under five meters of water within four days. Not only do experts estimate the possible fatalities to range from 500,000 to more than 1 million, but consider the logistics of trying to provide electricity, drinking water, food, hospitals, transportation, and diesel for millions of people.