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.

“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.”

Accessing maternal health care is already a challenge in many countries, and when conflict erupts or a disaster strikes, it can get even worse, leaving millions of women on their own while at their most vulnerable, said Ugochi Daniels, chief of humanitarian response for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Women and girls also become more vulnerable to violence during times of crisis, she said, by virtue of nothing but their gender. [Video Below]

Last week, the Islamic State’s ignorance of the role of demography in their local success may have led them to overplay their hand. Seeking to dissuade Jordanians from following their government in actively supporting the alliance arrayed against them, they executed a captured Jordanian pilot in horrendous fashion, burning him alive. Yet Jordan is not like Syria or Iraq, where violence against westerners or Shi’a or other minorities has helped split people from their allegiance to the government. Instead, this act of violence seems to have unified Jordan’s Sunnis against the Islamic State for their actions against a fellow Sunni Muslim. Jordan has expanded its assault, striking dozens of targets in Iraq for the first time.

“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.

Water is a key ingredient for peace, especially in the Middle East. The Jordan River, which forms the border between Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, and Jordan, is central to the interrelated political and environmental challenges facing the region. Addressing these challenges requires not only high-level diplomacy but also direct, people-to-people engagement, which can form lasting relationships that go beyond water, said experts at the Wilson Center on October 17. [Video Below]