Blog

USAID believes that climate solutions are water solutions — and that investing in water security is essential to building climate resilience.

• 12/10/2023
• Global Waters

The interconnectedness of life on Earth has never been more apparent, and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is using this perspective to explore how climate-sensitive health threats that impact food security and human well-being can be better predicted to help save lives.

• 08/23/2023
• Hannah Button

This year’s theme, #TheHumanRace—a global challenge for climate action in solidarity with people who need it the most—brings the immediate human cost of the climate crisis into the spotlight.

• 06/09/2022
• USAID

The story of Mrs. Rabi Abora from the Mazamni village in Niger is a stunning example of the devastating impact climate change is having on women's livelihoods, nutrition, and health. Her story also demonstrates concrete actions to help mitigate these impacts.

• 05/18/2022
• Shawn Baker

There is growing momentum in the international community to ramp up climate finance for mitigation and adaptation actions. Undoubtedly, a focus on climate change adaptation in the developing world must be a priority for the financing.

• 09/08/2021
• Mohamed Bakarr

Climate change can drive zoonotic diseases––diseases that spread from animals to humans such as COVID-19––due to the expanded range of warmer latitudes.

• 06/23/2021
• Isabela Barriga

The majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and they continue to grow by more than 75 million people per year. Cities, especially rapidly growing cities, are likely to be the driving economic force in many countries, even more so than they are now.

• 12/01/2020
• Stephan Hardeman, Colin Quinn

This is the second of three blogs examining the issues of the COVID-19 pandemic for sustainable landscape programs. The first blog discusses how deforestation and forest fragmentation can increase the likelihood of future pandemics.

• 11/24/2020
• Eric Haxthausen

Originating in Turkey, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers traditionally have met the vast majority of Iraq’s water needs. The rivers are used to pump water into millions of homes and irrigate the historic Mesopotamia agricultural fields.

• 11/17/2020
• Owen Scott

According to USAID’s Southern Africa’s Climate Change Risk Profile, “Changes in water quality and availability will be the dominant changes seen under a new climate.” The sensitivity of livelihoods and economies to these changes, together with a lack of access to drinking water (and contamination of existing supply), threatens water security and resilience in a region where water demands are rising in response to an increasing population.

• 11/10/2020
• Suvritha Rampha, Steve Collins

Natural disasters don’t discriminate based on age. Everyone in a community is affected when a typhoon hits, from the youngest to the oldest. Given that climate change is driving an increase in the number and severity of storms, floods, and drought, even young children need to learn to be prepared.

• 10/14/2020
• Christine Chumbler

The ways we use land—for instance, agriculture, forestry, urban development, or ecosystem protection—has long-term impacts on global climate change. Approximately one quarter of net global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come directly from land use (like agriculture) and land use change (like deforestation).

• 09/22/2020
• Noel Gurwick, Isabela Barriga, Julia Bradley-Cook

As we all know too well, the coronavirus pandemic has left no one untouched, fundamentally altering billions of people’s daily lives, disrupting the global economy, and most notably, with millions contracting the virus and the resulting strain of severe illness, hospitalizations and the tragic loss of human life. The crisis has also laid bare many of society’s weaknesses, including economic inequalities, institutional shortcomings, and inadequate health care delivery systems, leaving vulnerable populations to bear the brunt of the effects of the pandemic.

• 07/30/2020
• Emily Chen

Long-term changes in climate and wildlife habitat can pose significant effects on human health and increase the risk of infectious diseases like the coronavirus (COVID-19). Several of the roots of climate change can increase the risk of pandemics; for example, deforestation increasingly places humans and animals in contact, which enables pathogens from animals to spillover to humans.

• 07/08/2020
• Isabela Barriga

The Climatelinks photo contest received an impressive total of 170 submissions from the Climatelinks community, representing more than 40 countries.

• 12/03/2019
• Steve Hardeman