It is difficult to find a country feeling the negative impacts of climate change more severely than Bangladesh. Name any alarming, seemingly far off effect of a warming world being discussed in the halls of Washington or the summits of Copenhagen, and there is a good chance Bangladesh is experiencing it today. Flooding, drought, sea level rise, mass migration, and crushing poverty are exacerbated by a growing population and rapid urbanization. This perfect storm of climactic and demographic trends presents a looming crisis for Bangladesh, no more so than when it comes to food security.

The original version of this article appeared on the Inter Press Service.

What does gorilla conservation have in common with the provision of contraceptives to women? How does rural-urban migration contribute to global warming? What does city planning in Kenya have to do with coastal erosion in the Philippines?

As their five-year funding cycle for supporting integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) programs around the world came to a close this fall, leaders from BALANCED Project – Building Actors and Leaders for Advancing Community Excellence in Development – came together at the Wilson Center to discuss lessons learned, best practices, and new ideas for the future.

Sub-Saharan Africa is not only the fastest growing region of the world demographically but is also one of the most vulnerable to climate changes, according to many measures, and already facing natural resource scarcity in many areas. These factors combine with existing development challenges to create security threats that African governments and the United States should be concerned with, says ECSP Director Roger-Mark De Souza in a presentation for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies’ introductory course on demography and the environment at the National Defense University.

The original version of this article appeared on the Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation (ECC) Platform.

The Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation team talked to Eileen Hofstetter from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. She is co-author of the Inventory of Shared Water Resources in Western Asia released at this year’s World Water Week in Stockholm. The Inventory was prepared by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.

The BALANCED initiative in Tanzania’s Saadani National Park, “the only terrestrial park in the country with a contiguous marine area,” released the results of a 2012 progress survey on its efforts to create community champions for sustainable natural resource management and family planning awareness. Compared to the last survey in 2009, they found increased family planning awareness, higher contraceptive distribution and usage, and improved discussion and acceptance of contraceptive use from male partners. BALANCED-trained community-based distributors provided contraception to “31 percent of all pill users and 21 percent of all condom users.” Survey results also show a greater community awareness of the impact of individual and collective actions on the surrounding biosphere. The report calls for the continued training of community-based distributors and PHE “champions,” along with outreach to the private sector in order to ensure training and distribution can continue without the permanent presence of the BALANCED Project.