As the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) gets underway in Paris, #resilience appears with increasing frequency on my Twitter feed, and I frequently hear talk about “socio-ecological resilience,” “climate-resilient development,” and “resilience programming.”

In his speech on climate change and national security on November 10, Secretary of State John Kerry said climate change is already a “threat multiplier,” and that worse is to be expected if climate change continues unchecked. But the relationship between the environment and violent conflict is complex and often indirect. Researchers have been wrangling for years over the role that global environmental change plays in fueling conflict and state fragility.

The dark eyes and hair of the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Afghans almost blend with the other migrants’. The brown skin tones are also not giveaways, but ask them where they come from, and you notice the hesitation – trying hard to blend into the crowd of Syrian migrants at Europe’s border crossings, afraid of being spotted and sent back.

The world’s second most populous country – projected to be first by 2022 – is developing faster than ever before, roiling the social, political, and environmental landscape. [Video Below]

“Clean energy has gone from being the ‘right thing to do’ in combating climate change, to being the most cost-effective option for many energy-insecure countries,” said Carrie Thompson, deputy director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Regional Development Mission for Asia, during a day-long conference on renewable energy at the Wilson Center on October 27 (read part one of our coverage here).

As most of the world’s governments are puzzling out what they can offer to combat global climate change, a sensitive but critical aspect of the problem is coming into clearer focus: population. The word appears 20 times in a new 66-page synthesis of country pledges to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Secretariat. And those are the mentions of population in the context of size or growth, not the word’s more frequent use as a synonym for “people.”

In the midst of a minefield on day two of Desert Storm Task Force Ripper, Marine Corps Operations Officer Richard Zilmer stepped out of his armored personnel carrier, squinted up at the sky, and saw nothing but black from horizon to horizon. Iraqi forces, trying desperately to blunt the attack of coalition armies, had set fire to hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells and oil-filled trenches.

More than 225 million women in developing countries want to avoid or delay pregnancy but are not using safe, modern, and effective contraceptive methods. Such a gap between women’s contraceptive behavior and reproductive goals is called an unmet need for family planning, and no region has more unmet need than sub-Saharan Africa. [Video Below]