Blog

In 2021, the Climatelinks community submitted over 160 resources on topics ranging from climate resilience in WASH and agriculture to environment and energy trends in Latin America and the Caribbean. Other notable documents included the 2020 Amazon Vision Report, an updated SERVIR Service Planning Toolkit, and more than 30 Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) Annexes on climate change. 

• 12/16/2021
• Stephan Hardeman

With agriculture driving deforestation, global climate protection and biodiversity conservation goals seem to collide with the drive to produce more food. Researchers warn of an impending “food security-biodiversity-climate” crisis and “looming land scarcity.”

• 10/12/2021
• Daniel Evans

Monitoring forest loss remotely is needed for formulating policies and strategies to address deforestation.

• 04/29/2021
• Ankit Joshi

In Indonesia’s Papua Province, a province on the eastern edge of the Indonesian archipelago that shares an island with the nation of Papua New Guinea, reducing deforestation is the most effective way to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

• 04/22/2021
• Christine Chumbler

The baby chimpanzee nestled in its mother’s arms was a joyful surprise for the Bossou Forest community of southwest Guinea. On November 14, 2020, residents witnessed the first birth of a western chimpanzee in the Bossou Forest in almost a decade.

• 03/18/2021
• Destina Samani, Matthew Steil, Katie Moulton

As a boy growing up on the outskirts of Vietnam’s Cat Tien National Park, Koren Gren spent his days surrounded by the natural world. Today, he still does.

• 01/15/2021
• Winrock International

Worldwide, local communities in the tropics and subtropics control 22 percent of the forest carbon in those regions. For several decades, development organizations have promoted sustainable forest use approaches to help communities manage these forests. One such approach is the establishment of community-based forestry enterprises (CBFEs) that sell forest products or services.

• 05/19/2020
• Mark Donahue, Ian Deshmukh

The world’s natural capital—such as water, land, forests, soil, wildlife, and fisheries—safeguards and underpins the health and well-being of billions of people. At the same time, natural resources are facing unprecedented threats in the form of pollution, habitat loss, and extinction. Together, these threats can impact long-term economic growth, livelihood opportunities, and the ecosystem services that support human well-being.

• 05/04/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

Since 2012, the USAID Vietnam Forests and Deltas program (VFD) has been helping the Government of Vietnam develop and operationalize a national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program that has already directed over USD $500 million to forest owners as financial compensation for maintaining forest cover. For example, Vietnam’s hydroelectric power plants now reward upstream forest owners whose trees keep soil in place, avoiding the sediment buildup that drives up operating costs.

• 03/19/2020
• Lauren Keller

The wheels are spinning, but the vehicle is going nowhere. It’s rainy season in Vietnam, and dirt roads have become rivers of mud. It’s not uncommon for a vehicle to become mired in the muck. But in this case, the vehicle holds much-needed funds that won’t be delivered to community-based forest owners unless a team of determined forest fund staff rescues it. It’s a sticky situation — but one that may not happen much longer.

• 03/13/2020
• Jennifer Norfolk

The recent forest fires in Brazil and Bolivia showed once more that traditional approaches to sustainable development and nature conservation are not sufficient to reduce carbon emissions from land use and stop the ongoing destruction of natural resources.

• 01/07/2020
• Ruben Coppus

South America may be sitting, unaware, on a pile of climate gold, ammunition in efforts to forestall global warming. New maps of tropical and subtropical peatlands suggest these carbon-rich wetlands are more widespread in South America than on any other continent, with significant deposits in the Andean mountains.

• 11/25/2019
• CIFOR

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

“The water is pushing very hard on our islands and communities,” recounted the Bonthe Deputy Mayor, during a recent meeting with USAID staff in the southwestern district of Sierra Leone. His description captures the profound impacts that climate change is having on coastal communities.

• 04/29/2019
• Julia Bradley-Cook

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