The ongoing violence in Syria exhibits the potential for water problems – a historic drought, in this case – to exacerbate existing social and political problems and contribute to humanitarian crises. In a recently released infographic, Circle of Blue combined data from the European Commission Joint Research Center’s Global Conflict Risk Index and the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to identify 10 hotspots around the world where water “could play a role in developing or exacerbating humanitarian crises” in 2016.

Hundreds of Yemenis have been killed since Houthi rebels overthrew President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi at the beginning of April. The instability next door has led Saudi Arabia to intervene with a bombing campaign and, most recently, impose a blockade of Yemen’s port cities to cut off what they claim is Iranian resupply of rebels. Besides blocking weapons though, the blockade is also having a major impact on food security and food assistance, and is even affecting livelihoods in Somalia.

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.

In Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War, Jeff Colgan provides an indispensable starting point for researchers interested in the relationship between oil and international conflict.

While there has been much research on the effect of valuable natural resource extraction on a state’s domestic development (e.g., the “resource curse”), Wilson Center Fellow Jeff Colgan focuses on how natural resource extraction affects foreign policy. In Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War, Colgan finds that “petrostates” – countries where revenue from oil exports exceeds 10 percent of GDP – are twice as likely to engage in inter-state conflict than non-petrostates.

Much ink has been spilled on the growing trend of global land grabs – land purchased en masse in developing countries like Ethiopia by foreigners mainly for agricultural export. But along with land, investors often also gain the right to use local water, and sometimes with little consideration for local livelihoods. Fred Pearce recently looked into these “water grabs” in a series for National Geographic.

Dialogue at the Wilson Center tackled demography and the environment last week, interviewing Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Wilson Center public policy scholar Caryle Murphy about her new book, A Kingdom’s Future: Saudi Arabia Through the Eyes of Its Twentysomethings, followed by John Sullivan, director of the Environment and Health and Safety News Division for Bloomberg BNA, on the most important energy and environmental issues of 2013.