AGADEZ, Niger — The world dismisses them as economic migrants. The law treats them as criminals who show up at a nation’s borders uninvited. Prayers alone protect them on the journey across the merciless Sahara.

“Before the famine my life was better. I was a man in my own country,” Abdi Abdullahi Hussein, a Somali refugee living in Kenya, tells The Climate Reality Project. “When you have livestock and a farm and it all disappears, it feels like falling off a cliff.”

“Climate change and food insecurity are the twin crises that may define Africa’s future,” said the World Bank’s Ademola Braimoh at the Wilson Center on September 13. One proposed solution is so-called “climate-smart agriculture” (CSA), an approach to farming that aims to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change while increasing agricultural production and income. But according to a panel of experts, smallholder farmers around the world have either been slow to adopt CSA practices or failed to sustain their usage over time.

The Nile River is shared by 11 countries, for which it is vital for food and energy production, freshwater, and as a means of transportation. Sharing the resources of the Nile has, however, been politically difficult. Recently, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has caused a major dispute with downstream Egypt which fears the dam will affect water flow in its own territory.

Barren barley and wheat fields stretch across the dry landscape of northern Afghanistan, the result of persistent drought and flash flooding that has left thousands of people facing food shortages and loss of work.

Obstetric fistula is a devastating childbirth injury caused by prolonged obstructed labor. It can lead to incontinence and infection, social stigmatization as others recoil in horror, and even mental illness. Between 50,000 to 100,000 women each year are affected by it – and it’s entirely preventable with proper medical attention.

In 2007, the world crossed a threshold:  for the first time in human history, the majority of people lived in urban areas. Today, Africa and Asia are the only remaining continents where the rural population outnumbers urban, but they are urbanizing at unprecedented rates. This rapid growth is a double-edged sword. While urbanization spurs economic opportunity and often increases access to infrastructure, it is also widening disparities in health and development, according to a new data sheet by the Population Reference Bureau.