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.

Water is the foundation of human society and will become even more critical as population growth, development, and climate change put pressure on already-shrinking water resources in the years ahead. But will this scarcity fuel conflict between countries with shared waters, as some have predicted, or will it create more impetus for cooperation?

Yunnan province is a microcosm of the intertwined natural resource challenges facing China. Dams, development, deforestation, drought, and climate change threaten China’s most biodiverse province – all while it increases its exports of agricultural products and electricity to China’s coastal provinces. These competing demands bring into question the sustainability of China’s development paradigm and the country’s environmental security.

Cooperation, not conflict; that’s the theme of this year’s World Water Day. Collaboration over water has been the rule rather than the exception over the past 70 years, UNESCO explained in the launch of their International Year for Water Cooperation initiative earlier this year (which the rest of the UN is thoughtfully supporting).

But the fact that there’s need for such an initiative shows that water conflict and other water issues are not far from the minds of global policymakers. Scarcity, drought, climate change, food security, disease – water impacts people and their governments in so many ways. Here’s a rundown of some of our best related posts.

A well-known Chinese proverb describing the relationship between the central government in Beijing and its people says, “Heaven is high and the emperor is far away” (天高皇帝远, tian gao, huang di yuan). It’s not too far of a stretch to apply the same proverb to the current state of China’s environment sector, where relatively strong pollution control laws are poorly enforced on the ground.

The original version of this article, by Jason Beaubien, appeared on NPR’s health blog, Shots.

“The meek shall inherit the earth” – that seems to be the latest message from the United Nations Development Program.

Friction between Japan and China in the East China Sea has escalated this year to the point where jets on both sides have been scrambled and Chinese military vessels have locked their fire control radar onto their Japanese counterparts multiple times. The source of this tension is the Senkaku (as they are known in Japan) or Diaoyu (if you’re in China) Islands – specifically, who owns them.

The 2009 Copenhagen summit was a watershed moment in the history of climate change negotiations, especially from an Indian perspective. Brazil, South Africa, India, and China – the “BASIC” group – asserted their position, which led to a virtual collapse in talks, ostensibly marking the ascent of the global “south” and relative descent of the “north.”