Although treating wastewater generally ranks alongside police and fire safety, schools, and transit as the top priorities of any sensible city hall, new ideas about cleaning up sewage almost never attract headlines or TV airtime. In its 90-year history, for instance, The New Yorker, the most urbane and expansive magazine in the country, has never published a feature article on sewage treatment.

In March 1999, not long after he was sworn in as the 47^th mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown called Lesley Estes, the supervisor of the city’s watershed protection program. Brown, who is now California’s governor, wanted the city staffer he called “Creek Lady” to describe the most formidable ideas she had to conserve natural areas, make parks more beautiful, and clean up the city’s waters.

Karachi, the world’s second largest city by population, is emerging from the grips of a deadly heatwave. A persistent low pressure system camped over the Arabian Sea stifled ocean breezes and brought temperatures in excess of 113°F (45°C) to the city of 23 million people in June. The searing heat disrupted electricity and water service, making life nearly unbearable. All told, officials estimate the heatwave killed at least 1,200 Pakistanis, more than twice as many as have died in terrorist attacks this year.

Millions of people across the Middle East face drought, scarce drinking water supplies, and poor sanitation due to civil wars and conflict. Meanwhile, resource constraints and foreign military interventions risk more severe humanitarian disasters.

Frequent readers of New Security Beat are no strangers to the PHE approach to development – projects, often community-based, that integrate population, health, and environmental programming in a single intervention. Practitioners suggest that such integrated programming is more effective and efficient than running simultaneous siloed projects, each focusing on a narrower objective. But does the evidence support this conclusion? How effective is the PHE approach?

To ensure no one is left behind by the next generation of global development goals, a comprehensive mix of robust data is needed to measure progress and guide investments. A recent report coordinated by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network estimates the world will need to spend roughly $1 billion a year to sustain and enhance the statistical systems supporting and evaluating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successors to the Millennium Development Goals expected to guide the development agenda for the next 15 years.

Nepal’s devastating earthquake last Saturday was both tragic and expected. On September 18, 2011, as colleagues and I were driving through Kathmandu, our car started to shake, buildings began to sway, store fronts cracked, hundreds of people jumped out of windows and streamed into already crowded streets. It was the so-called Sikkim earthquake. There were only a few fatalities and injuries – it was a very minor event compared to last weekend’s disaster. But it validated the rationale for our visit: to help launch a disaster relief dialogue involving U.S. government experts, Nepalese security forces, and their country’s emergency responders.

While Chinese officials make full frontal regulatory attacks on smog, untreated sludge, an often toxic byproduct from sewage treatment, continues to quietly spread into groundwater and contaminate soil and food.