Blog

Cocoa certification may not be doing its job. The expansion of the international cocoa industry across the world’s tropical regions has caused significant destruction of tropical forests, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and destroying habitat.

• 03/11/2021
• David Miller

The Feed the Future Guatemala Coffee Value Chains Project in Guatemala’s Western Highlands provides technical assistance to members of poor rural households working in the coffee value chain and horticulture.

• 02/16/2021
• Climatelinks

The USAID Feed the Future Learning Community for Supply Chain Resilience is happy to share the launch of a new website aimed to provide coffee companies with the resources they need to combat climate change. The Climate Smart Coffee website, launched in early May, was created to increase private sector engagement and funding in smallholder farmer resilience against climate change.

• 07/02/2019
• Kaitlin Sampson

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) needs a comprehensive map of development. The country holds the largest contiguous block of rainforest outside of Brazil, but as the map below illustrates, much of the remaining forest falls under mining, oil and logging permits.

• 05/31/2019
• Leo Bottrill

Finding ways to adapt to the effects of climate change is no longer optional for most communities - it is necessary. The question is, what are the range of strategies for adaptation? Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is a nature-based and people-centered approach that emphasizes ecosystem integrity as crucial for human resilience to climate change.

• 04/30/2019
• Anila Jacob, Jennifer Kane, Christine Chumbler

Integrating biodiversity and sustainable landscapes objectives in development programming can increase the sustainability of interventions, amplify results and reduce costs. ‘Integrating Biodiversity and Sustainable Landscapes in USAID Programming’ highlights these and other key considerations for USAID staff and development practitioners interested in connections between biodiversity and sustainable landscapes priorities.

• 04/23/2019
• Catherine Wahlen, Jennifer Kane

A new land cover tool originally developed for southeast Asia is now being expanded globally. “Land cover mapping in the Lower Mekong has been challenging in the past, based primarily on outdated maps using different criteria,” said Dr. David Saah, Professor at the University of San Francisco and Managing Principal of the Spatial Informatics Group (SIG).

• 04/10/2019
• Devrin Weiss, Leah Kucera

“My interest in tree planting started when I was very young, when I used to go with my mum to plant trees in the forest, as part of the shamba system of plantation establishment [a Kenyan form of taungya],” recounts Zipporah Matumbi. 

• 03/26/2019
• CIFOR

Northern Guatemala, together with neighboring Mexico and Belize, is home to the largest tropical forest north of the Amazon. Like many other tropical forests, the Selva Maya faces pressures from unsustainable logging and land clearing for agriculture.

• 02/07/2019
• Christine Chumbler

“Do your husbands object to your attending class?”

“No, no, no,” say the women.

“With a show of hands, how many of you are now earning money?”

Nearly everyone in class raises her hand.

• 02/05/2019
• Erin Hughes

This blog features some of our favorite videos that were added to the website in 2018.

• 11/20/2018
• Stephan Hardeman

To increase rural incomes and improve forest management at scale, community small scale logging and charcoal production come out on top.

• 10/30/2018
• David Miller

Can USAID work with the private sector to reduce the rate of deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)? Can this be done at a large scale to increase rural incomes equitably?

• 10/29/2018
• David Miller

In the West Gonja and Sene districts of northern and central Ghana, respectively, deforestation caused by charcoal production is affecting sustainable livelihoods.

• 10/18/2018
• SERVIR

To assist the Government of Malawi and its citizens, USAID/Malawi designed the Protecting Ecosystems and Restoring Forests in Malawi (PERFORM) project.

• 10/17/2018
• Ramzy Kanaan, Gina Althoff