Despite the appearance of a new, “greener” economy, extractive industries – mining, oil, and natural gas – are now responsible for “moving more earth each year, just for mining and quarrying, than the global hydrological cycle,” writes the Transatlantic Academy’s Stacy VanDeveer in a recent paper, Still Digging: Extractive Industries, Resource Curses, and Transnational Governance in the Anthropocene. The costs of this activity are high and extend well beyond the wallet, he explains.

The original version of this article, by Michael Kugelman, appeared on The Diplomat.

On May 11, Pakistan’s Election Day, approximately 60 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. This figure far exceeded the 44 percent who turned out for Pakistan’s previous election in 2008. Media reports have featured moving accounts of the elderly being carried to the polls, and of women standing in the heat for hours to cast their ballots.

Temperatures in the Arctic have increased at twice the global rate over the past 40 years, vaulting the region to international prominence as an emerging theater for maritime transportation and competition over newly uncovered resources.

The international community should start strategizing now to manage the ambitions of circumpolar states and minimize the potential for conflict, write authors Rob Huebert, Heather Exner-Pirot, Adam Lajeunesse, and Jay Gulledge in a report. Published by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, Climate Change and International Security: The Arctic as a Bellwether explores the geopolitical implications of climate change in the Arctic and puts forth several recommendations for policymakers to consider. Huebert et al. write that “maintaining security and peace in the Arctic will require adapting policies and institutions to the emerging environment there.” They recommend that Arctic states strengthen existing multilateral agreements by, for example, advocating the accession of the United States into the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Further, they propose that the Arctic Council lifts its ban on discussing security issues in order to become a forum for meaningful discussion.

Resilience is a wonderful metaphor. It somehow conveys in a single word the qualities of bending without breaking, of healing after an injury, of tensile rather than brittle strength. Oak and palm trees are resilient to the power of strong winds, before which they bend and then straighten again. Resilient people pick themselves up after being knocked down, draw on their reserves of ideas and strength to deal with difficult challenges, or hunker down until the gale has blown itself away. Resilient economies bounce back, and resilient ecosystems restore themselves after the fire or the flood has passed.

The original version of this article, by Eugenie Maiga, appeared on the Wilson Center’s Africa Up Close blog.

With the 2011 and 2012 food crises in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, calls for urgent action and sustainable solutions to food insecurity in Africa have intensified. While many factors, like rising commodity prices, have been contributing factors, land degradation stands out as a main catalyst. In the search for a solution, indigenous farming techniques may offer some quick wins.

The 2011-12 West African food crisis led to riots in Senegal and Burkina Faso as well as food insecurity for millions of rural and urban poor across the region. The crisis emerged from a number of factors, including instability in northern Mali, increases in global food prices, and low rainfall in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 growing seasons. Many countries in the region are now reassessing and expanding domestic agricultural capabilities. At the top of the agenda for Senegal, a democratic republic on track to reach many Millennium Development Goals, is reducing youth unemployment and increasing domestic agricultural capacity.

The disempowerment of women and girls is the single biggest driver of inequality today, said Helen Clark, administrator of the UN Development Program, during a plenary on the final day here at the Women Deliver conference in Kuala Lumpur, where more than 4,500 people from 149 countries and 2,200 organizations gathered to discuss women’s health, equity, and international development.

A staggering amount of development dollars – one in three, in fact – are lost due to natural disasters and crises. Certain communities are less affected than others by such disasters; they are more resilient. Knowing where vulnerability and strength exist and how to bolster them could help avoid these losses. Yet, today, very little data exists to help development practitioners understand which adaptive capacities are lagging in a given community.