As President Obama readies a new road map for addressing climate change in the United States, experts warn that poorly designed and implemented initiatives, especially in already-fragile parts of the world, could unintentionally provoke conflicts, rather than diffuse them.

“Most of the world’s poor are farmers; they share the same profession and the same challenges,” said One Acre Fund’s Stephanie Hanson at a recent Wilson Center event on small-scale farming, climate change, food security, and migration. They are tasked with growing enough food to support their families with only tenuous access to land and natural resources, the most basic of tools, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns to deal with. [Video Below]

A woman sat crouched on the side of a busy road in Dakar, a baby in a sling on her back and a basket of peanuts in front. I know only a little French, and no Wolof, but I decided to try anyway. “Bonsoir,” I said, and smiled at the toddler beside her. “Combien?” I asked, pointing at the peanuts.

She smiled back at me, we negotiated a sale, and in exchange for the coins in my pocket I walked away with a few bags of the small, tasty nuts that are grown throughout the “peanut basin” of central Senegal.

Arrayed along India’s southwest coast is a 1,600-kilometer-long mountain chain with forests older than the Himalayas: the Western Ghats. The mountains are one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world, and UNESCO recently recognized the region as a World Heritage site. They’re also one of the tensest of India’s emerging battlegrounds between development and conservation and a potential recruiting ground for its Maoist insurgency, called the country’s “greatest threat to internal security.”

In may not be surprising that China, home to so many other superlatives, also faces desertification on a grand scale. According to China’s State Forestry Administration, over 27 percent of the country now suffers from desertification – more than 1,000,000 square miles, or about one-third of the continental United States – impacting the lives of more than 400 million people.

The original version of this article, by Keith Schneider, appeared on Circle of Blue. Choke Point: India is a research and reporting initiative produced in partnership between Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum and Asia Program.

Perhaps because India is so big, so bewildering and chaotic, and so determined to update its elusive rural identity with sleek urban flare, Indians and the national press are fascinated by how the nation’s wild animals are faring amid the dizzying change. In many cases, not well.