Climate change mitigation efforts are more broadly supported when they are framed as a public health issue, according to results recently published in Climatic Change. After polling U.S. participants with political identities ranging from very liberal to very conservative, authors Nada Petrovic, Jaime Madrigano, and Lisa Zaval found most participants, except those who identified as very conservative, believed “health” to be the most compelling reason to reduce fossil fuels.

One in five African states produce hydrocarbons, and most of these are heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues to finance their governments and generate foreign exchange. Further, an emerging group of East African states are waiting on international oil companies to develop new oil and gas reserves. But Africa’s record using non-renewable oil and gas resources to trigger economic and social development is poor – and plummeting prices may portend more instability to come.

It’s been 14 years since the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 acknowledging women as important agents of change in recovery from conflict and peacebuilding generally. But between 1992 and 2011, only four percent of signatories in 31 major peace processes around the world were women, and only 12 out of 585 peace agreements referred to or made provisions for women’s needs in the reconstruction process.

Two studies push back on recent analyses that claim to demonstrate empirical links between food aid and conflict and climate change and conflict.

Climate change and conflict – what’s the relationship? In a recently completed set of field-based studies for USAID, the Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability set aside “yes-or-no” questions about whether climate change causes conflict and replaced them with pragmatic and politically informed questions about how climate change is consequential for conflict in specific fragile states.

“We cannot ignore the new reality that climate change has become a major foreign policy issue in the 21^st century,” a new film by Hal and Marilyn Weiner concludes.

Few would argue with the notion that socioeconomic development is contingent on peace, safety, and security. What goes for nations, goes for people too – especially young people.

From the Roman poet Juvenal’s observations about bread and circuses to Marie Antoinette’s proclamation, “let them eat cake!” the link between food and political stability is well established in pop culture. In academic and policy circles, however, it’s a source of considerable debate.