This year’s World Water Day is taking on a broader theme than years past: sustainable development. The theme makes sense as two major international processes – the drafting of the Sustainable Development Goals to replace the Millennium Development Goals, and the most anticipated UN Climate Summit in years – are taking place in 2015. Decisions made over the next nine months will play a huge role in relationships between nations and global development priorities going forward.

For two villages in southern Malawi, climate change and contraception have become intertwined. So much so, that long-held cultural assumptions are starting to change.

Hans Rosling has always been an innovator when it comes to bringing big ideas to big audiences. The Norwegian doctor, statistician, and co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation has become known – to the kind of people who watch TED Talks anyway – for lively presentations aimed at demystifying common ideas about global development and demography. On Gapminder.org, he literally stands chest-high in water appealing for your donation to help him “cross the river of myths.”

With intense drought in Sao Paulo and California, devastating floods in Malawi, and escalating water-energy confrontations in many developing countries, it is no wonder water is making headlines. It’s also gained the attention of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which lists water crises as the world’s number one risk in its recently released Global Risk Assessment.

“Political demography is a discipline whose time has come,” said Rob Odell of the National Intelligence Council at a gathering of demographers and researchers in New Orleans. “You can sense this inherent dissatisfaction” with a lot of analytical and predictive tools in international relations, he said, and “political demography provides policymakers a way to think about long-term trends.”

The Sahel – spreading from the Red Sea to the Atlantic as the Sahara Desert transitions to Sudanian savanna – is drought prone and suffers from chronic food insecurity. Yet, the region also boasts the highest fertility rates in the world, and the highest rates of marriage for young girls. This creates unique vulnerabilities that are being compounded by climate change, says ECSP’s Roger-Mark De Souza in an episode of Wilson Center NOW.