Last week, the United Nations concluded one of the last negotiations on the road to adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in September. We’ve entered the home stretch of a process that has taken more than two years, bringing governments, civil society organizations, and communities together to define the development goals and targets that UN member states will be expected to aim for over the next 15 years.

REDD+, a global framework designed to reward governments for preserving forests, has pledged nearly $10 billion to developing countries. But minorities, indigenous people, the poor, and other marginalized groups that live in forest areas often end up paying more than their fair share of the costs of environmental cleanup and conservation while getting less in return. What can be done to change this?

In my tiny, half-an-island country of Timor-Leste, cemeteries smell of jasmine and come to life on All Saints’ Day. Families have picnics and kids roam wild over the tombstones. Here, stepping on somebody else’s family tombstones is not seen as an offense but as the norm; after all, since there isn’t enough land to hold so many graves, not stepping on one is impossible unless you have mastered levitation.

“With current neglect of family planning, the UN’s recent projection of a 2100 world population of up to 12.3 billion is a possibility,” says a report from the University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. Increased voluntary family planning efforts are needed, the authors contend, to meet existing demand for contraceptives, stabilize the threat of global food insecurity, and reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

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.

As Saddam Hussein drained Iraq’s famed marshes to punish the rebellious tribesmen who lived in them, Amjad Mohamed packed his few possessions, grabbed his fishing rod, and fled south to Basra with his extended family.

Earth’s thin upper-crust of soil is kept in balance by a complex carbon and nutrient cycle that is increasingly threatened by human exploitation and climate change, according to a review in Science. The chemicals trapped in topsoil and subsoil are crucial to plant growth, but are being depleted at rates much higher than they are being replenished, writes Ronald Amundson et al. For instance in the central United States, estimated soil erosion rates exceed production rates by 10 times.

Pope Francis sparked worldwide discussion and jubilation among many green advocates after releasing Laudato Si, the first Papal encyclical to focus directly on the environment. The pontiff touched on everything from pollution and sustainable development, to anthropogenic climate change and water security in his 180-page missive.