Climate change is affecting the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events, altering precipitation patterns, and disrupting ecological systems. These changes undermine the resilience of both ecosystems and communities. In USAID’s 2022-2030 Climate Strategy, the Agency commits to supporting and scaling the climate resilience of people, places, ecosystems, and livelihoods vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
How USAID Supports and Scales Climate Resilience
USAID is helping people, communities, and countries anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to current and future climate impacts by scaling climate services for risk-informed planning, decision making, and early action; mainstreaming adaptation in sector policy and practice; focusing on key areas of engagement; and increasing finance for adaptation.
Measuring Adaptation: Increasingly Necessary but Not Always Easy
In response to increasingly severe climate change impacts, more development programs include climate adaptation actions. With this increased effort comes a greater need to track how adaptation supports climate resilience so practitioners know if their activities are working and how to spend the increasing flows of adaptation finance. Although there is no “one size fits all” approach to measuring adaptation, there are some underlying principles that can help determine the most appropriate metrics.
Safeguarding Sierra Leone’s Power Grid: How Big Data Helps Build Climate Resilience
Power system operators around the world are racing to build system resilience to climate change. This requires investments in infrastructure, but deciding when and where to invest is complex, especially when local data is scarce. In Sierra Leone, a feasibility study utilized global data and climate change models in combination with local geographic data to recommend adaptations for the country’s power grid based on potential climate change impacts.
Nuru Nigeria Hosts Green Field Day to Strengthen Farmers’ Resilience
Farmers in northeast Nigeria face many unique shocks and stressors that threaten their livelihoods, making them one of the hardest-hit communities by the climate crisis. The USAID-funded Building Sustainable Livelihoods Program hosted a Green Field Day event to provide an opportunity for communities in fragile contexts to learn about critical adaptation techniques to prepare for and manage worsening climatic conditions.
Linking Science with Lived Experience to Conserve the Amazon
Under the USAID and NASA–funded SERVIR-Amazonia activity, a team of scientists worked in the southwestern Amazon to gain a deeper understanding of ecosystem services in the region. Their goal was to understand how deforestation, forest degradation, and road construction affect biodiversity and ecosystem resilience in order to support residents in improving the climate resilience of their communities and the region as a whole.
Explore additional Climate Resilience blogs here.
Jamie Schoshinski
Jamie Schoshinski is a Program Associate with Environmental Incentives, primarily supporting USAID’s Advancing Capacity for the Environment (ACE) project as a Climatelinks Content and Social Media Manager. Jamie has a Master’s in Environmental Policy from American University and a BA in English and Political Science from Temple University.
