Blog

The recently published Amazon Vision 2021 Report provides insight into USAID's work to conserve biodiversity and reduce the loss of carbon from the Amazon region. It unifies the Agency’s goals of combating deforestation, conserving biodiversity, creating environmentally friendly economic opportunities, improving the management of important landscapes, and supporting Indigenous rights in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Suriname.

• 11/22/2022
• Lindsey Larsen

In order for USAID to have maximum impact in confronting the most urgent demands of the climate crisis, improved participation at all levels is key. Thus, an increased emphasis on working with Indigenous Peoples and local communities is critical to USAID’s climate efforts.

• 03/03/2022
• Sophie Schrader

This blog is the second part in an Editor’s Pick Series highlighting USAID’s regional approaches to climate and development. The first part of the series featured Climatelinks blogs that reflect these efforts, and this second part features resources and projects with a regional focus.

• 02/09/2022
• Sophie Schrader

When the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu were threatened by forest fires last September, firefighter Jessica Morón and her wildland firefighting team battled the flames to protect the historic sanctuary and its surrounding biodiversity.

• 05/06/2021
• USAID Publications

This blog series features interviews with the winners of the 2020 Climatelinks Photo Contest. This photo, submitted on behalf of Guatemala’s USAID Biodiversity Project, is available on the Climatelinks Photo Gallery.

• 03/10/2021
• Climatelinks

Those who live in and around the Dominican Republic’s Jaragua-Bahoruco-Enriquillo UNESCO Biosphere Reserve have a first-hand understanding of the costly realities of climate change. Harsh, dry conditions and extreme weather make climate risks part of daily life and a top consideration in efforts to protect endemic species.

• 01/07/2021
• Jamie Carson, Elizabeth Hutchison

The Amazon region is home to 1.6 million Indigenous Peoples, all of whom depend on the region’s forest and water resources for their material and cultural survival. Studies have shown that deforestation rates are much lower in places where Amazonian Indigenous Peoples have strong land tenure rights, making Indigenous Peoples important allies in biodiversity conservation.

• 05/12/2020
• USAID Biodiversity Integration Case Studies

As one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, Peru has an abundance of natural resources that have represented natural wealth throughout the nation’s history. However, this richness is not often fully understood and has been unsustainably managed as a result. Over the past decade, an increasing turn toward a green economy has helped shift the way that Peru’s natural resources are viewed.

• 04/24/2020
• Paloma Vásquez

Biodiversity conservation is essential to development––across multiple sectors, geographies, and contexts. Geospatial analysis can support integration of biodiversity conservation with a range of sectors at USAID, including climate change, and a new guide, developed by USAID’s Office of Forestry and Biodiversity and the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, explains how.

• 04/23/2020
• Mark Higgins

USAID/Peru’s Amazonia Verde project aims to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services in priority areas of the Peruvian Amazon and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use change. To achieve these goals, an inter-office design team at the USAID/Peru Mission spent two years designing an integrated project that supports biodiversity conservation, combats illegal logging and deforestation, addresses negative impacts of extractive industries, strengthens Indigenous people’s rights and resources, and supports Peru’s international commitment to reduce GHG emissions

• 04/14/2020
• USAID Biodiversity Integration Case Studies

Water security is integral to the health and sustainability of our communities and ecosystems. Achieving water security, however, is challenging for several reasons including poor governance, resource competition and poorly-conceived economic development.

• 05/20/2019
• Basil Mahayni

Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world. But their habitats are being threatened by human activity.

• 05/14/2019
• SERVIR Global