Blog

Fact sheets from active and recently closed USAID natural climate solutions programs are now available.

• 12/08/2023
• Lindsey Larsen

Deforestation threatens biodiversity and has negative health and economic impacts on communities. Nearly half of Mexico is covered by forests, which host 10 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Making Mexico a critical net carbon sink for the world.

• 01/12/2023
• Tedi Rabold

Addressing climate change and conserving forests go hand-in-hand, but what does that look like in practice? This blog outlines six approaches for using the power of nature to address the climate crisis.

• 11/16/2022
• Neeha Mian

Forest protection plays a critical role in maintaining the world’s biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and supporting global economic growth.

• 01/28/2021
• David Miller

The end of USAID’s five-year LESTARI project (2015-2020) in Indonesia is an opportunity to recognize USAID’s collective achievements with the Government of Indonesia in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land use in both biodiverse and carbon-rich landscapes.

• 11/02/2020
• Tedi Rabold

Perú es el cuarto país con el mayor volumen de turba tropical, cuya mayor parte se encuentra relativamente menos degradada en comparación con otras regiones del mundo. Sin embargo, esto podría cambiar. La creciente presión del desarrollo y la carencia de políticas específicas de protección ponen en riesgo a las turberas de Perú y sus reservas de carbono.

• 10/06/2020
• Isabela Barriga

Peru stands as the country with the fourth-highest volume of tropical peat, most of which is relatively less degraded than in other regions of the world. However, this could change. Increasing development pressure and lack of peatland-specific protection policies puts Peru's peatlands— and its carbon reserves—at risk. 

• 10/01/2020
• Isabela Barriga

Why do many community-based forestry enterprises (CBFEs) perform poorly even after years of donor and government investment? This was one of the questions that motivated a USAID Productive Landscape (ProLand) project investigation into CBFEs as a strategy for improving land management.

• 08/14/2020
• Mark Donahue, Ian Deshmukh

One of the major challenges in monitoring forests is identifying forest degradation processes. Degradation events can be “small, subtle, and temporary,” making their identification difficult. However, recent years have seen advancements in satellite remote sensing technology, which has in turn revealed changed patterns of illegal deforestation activity in the Amazon rainforest.

• 07/24/2020
• Kelsey E. Herndon, Africa I. Flores-Anderson

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global system that certifies responsible forest management. In some cases, FSC has severed ties with, or “disassociated” from, paper and timber giants worldwide when their direct or affiliate operations have harmed forests and people.

• 06/09/2020
• Natcha Tulyasuwan, Binod Chapagain, Panicha Chandragholica

A pivotal insight emerging from three years of co-creating climate-smart business models with companies—both investors and those seeking investment—is that there is not one private sector, but a multitude of actors with varied incentives, timelines, and decision processes. Each requires a targeted approach; any strategy that assumes one homogeneous private sector—or one investor profile—will struggle to gain traction.

• 05/21/2020
• Yohann Formont

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

Guatemala is part of a global movement to place its economy on a path toward greater efficiency and cleaner, less resource-intensive growth.

• 09/28/2018
• Jennifer Park, Jonathan Schwarz, Xiomara Lima

In their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), 92 developing countries mentioned livestock-related emissions, and 48 of the 92 explicitly mentioned intentions to reduce emissions from livestock-related sources such as enteric fermentation, manure management and biogas, and grasslands and silvopastoral systems. But how do countries plan to document reduced emissions?

• 10/12/2017
• Julianna White