2023 Climatelinks Photo Contest Winners
The 2023 Climatelinks Photo Contest was a great success. We received over 250 submissions from the Climatelinks community, representing more than 40 countries. Congratulations to the winners! Special thanks to everyone who participated in the contest.
To view all of the photo submissions, as well as photos from our blogs and past contests, visit the Climatelinks photo gallery. Visitors may also submit their own photos to the gallery year-round.
Introducing the winners:
Taking Climate Action While Improving Nutrition
As part of Breakthrough ACTION Nigeria, a USAID cooperative agreement, the leader of the Hasken Mata women’s empowerment group encourages them to source locally available food––sometimes from their own homestead gardens––to make healthy meals. Sustainable farming is one way to take climate action while improving families’ and communities’ nutrition.
Credit: Ramatu Ada Ochekliye
Country: Nigeria
Deaf Communities Developing Their Own Lexicon for Climate Action
Disaster management interventions often target people who can see, hear, and respond to instructions. As part of USAID’s Climate Resilience of the Deaf: Signs for Inclusive Governance and Development project, the Oscar M. Lopez Center works with Deaf organizations in the Philippines to create a lexicon of Filipino Sign Language that helps climate-related disaster preparedness programs reach deaf people, like these women who shared how they could not evacuate in time during typhoons.
Credit: Maya Rani Devero for USAID/Philippines
Country: Philippines
Revolutionizing Honduran Tourism: Empowering Innovation and Preservation
USAID’s Transforming Market Systems Activity is collaborating with national and local tourism institutions in Honduras to bolster the capabilities of local tourism stakeholders, empowering Indigenous Peoples to foster innovative and progressive tourism offerings within the country's natural landscapes, nature preserves, and heritage sites. Creating sustainable, economic opportunities for Indigenous Peoples and local communities furthers USAID’s Climate Strategy just transition goals.
Credit: André Anchecta
Country: Honduras
Empowering Women Leads to Sustainable Power
Kaarinah Luvango, a senior engineer for the Kenya Electricity Generation Company (KenGen), overlooks the Ngong Wind Power Station where she revolutionized operations, resulting in the turbines operating at 100 percent capacity for the first time in more than three years. KenGen joined the USAID Engendering Industries program in 2020, helping Kenya progress toward its target of 100 percent sustainable energy by 2030 in a more inclusive way.
Credit: Alec Jacobson
Country: Kenya
Plastic Man
Modou Fall, aka “Plastic Man,” dons a colorful cape made of plastic bags he collected from the ocean while on a quest to rid Senegal's capital of plastic waste that clogs waterways, beaches, and streets to improve food security. He is working with USAID’s Feed the Future’s Dekkal Geej project to educate local fishermen, the government, and the private sector through community meetings, organized cleanups, and his dramatic presence.
Credit: Gabe Gentry
Country: Senegal
Solar-Powered Vending Machines Provide Clean Water in Drought-Stricken Kenya
The Smart Tap System in West Pokot, Kenya, is helping to make it safer, faster, and easier to collect the water people need for drinking, washing, and planting. The system, which is funded with support from USAID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, functions like a solar-powered "vending machine,” allowing people to withdraw water with simply a tap of a token on the machine’s electronic interface.
Credit: Abel Gichuru/Action Against Hunger
Country: Kenya
Towering Manggis Trees on Mt. Mantalingahan Sequester Carbon
Field researchers with USAID’s Sustainable Interventions for Biodiversity, Oceans, and Landscapes project record the measurements of a towering Manggis tree in Mt. Mantalingahan Protected Landscape in southern Palawan, Philippines. Their ecological assessment will help local stakeholders protect the area’s biodiversity, including Manggis trees, which offer a natural climate solution to the climate crisis by sequestering large amounts of carbon.
Credit: Blue Motus for USAID
Country: Philippines
Expanding Seedling Production in Lebanon Amidst Climate Change
Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change in Lebanon because of the limited availability of water and land resources and pressures from urbanization. USAID’s Community Support Program provided a new greenhouse, climate-controlled germination room, and germination machine that expanded seedling production capacity in the region.
Credit: Hassan Tabikh/USAID Community Support Program
Country: Lebanon
Powering Portable Tuberculosis Diagnostic Machines with Clean Energy
A portable digital X-ray machine runs on a Mobisun Solar rechargeable power bank, which ensures people can be screened for tuberculosis locally. Funded through USAID’s Tuberculosis Local Organizations Network Regions 1 and 2 project, this stable and clean energy source is taken to the doorsteps of the hardest-to-reach communities in Nasarawa State, Nigeria, improving health outcomes and equity.
Credit: Onyinye Genevieve Kene-Eneh
Country: Nigeria
Increasing Women’s Economic Opportunities and Resilience Through Land Tenure
In Quelimane, Mozambique, the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance project’s support for clarification of rights to land and resources related to responsible land-based investment has resulted in land-use rights for many farmers (85 percent women) and farming contracts. These contracts provide inputs, extension support, and guaranteed purchases to advance economic empowerment, household well-being, improved productivity, and resilience after Cyclone Idai.
Credit: Thais Bessa
Country: Mozambique
Solar-Powered Bottling Factory
RC Cola’s bottling factory installed a 720kW solar photovoltaics system in Gijilan, Kosovo, as a result of a private sector partnership and market linkages from a solar rooftop feasibility assessment. The USAID Kosovo Energy Security of Supply project creates opportunities for corporations, businesses, and individuals to take advantage of solar power where it can have the greatest market and climate impact.
Credit: Lorik Haxhiu
Country: Kosovo
Colombian Youth Committed to Environmental Leadership and Conservation
Colombia Youth Conservation Corps students measure a river’s flow velocity, width, and depth, which are influenced by watershed management and climate change. Supported by the Forest Service and USAID through the Colombia Forests and Wetlands Support Program, the youth gain personal and professional tools to support their entry into the labor market, skills to diversify their livelihoods, and knowledge to help them become environmental leaders in their territories.
Credit: Luz Andrea Arias Lopez
Country: Colombia
Growing Rice–and Hope–in South Sudan’s Floodwaters
After unprecedented flooding in South Sudan submerged crops and ruined harvests, Action Against Hunger partnered with the local community in Paguir to seek new solutions to combat hunger in the face of climate shocks. Now, community members are building resilience through a rice growing project, the first of its kind in Paguir, which allows farmers to plant crops even in the deepest floodwater. These new crops replace sorghum, which is unable to grow in water.
Credit: Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Country: South Sudan
Climatelinks
Climatelinks is a global knowledge portal for USAID staff, implementing partners, and the broader community working at the intersection of climate change and international development. The portal curates and archives technical guidance and knowledge related to USAID’s work to help countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.
