Blog

Illegal farming is threatening Madagascar's largest dry forest in the Menabe Antimena Protected Area. With the support of USAID Hay Tao, the forests and their unique biodiversity have a better chance of withstanding the complex challenges facing one of the poorest countries in the world, whose citizens depend on its natural resources for their livelihoods.

• 10/11/2022
• Becky Band Jain

This blog is the second part in an Editor’s Pick Series highlighting USAID’s work with Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

• 04/19/2022
• Sophie Schrader

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

The agriculture sector across the globe not only feeds the world’s population but it also provides nearly 27 percent of worldwide employment. Yet the sector faces significant sustainability challenges: it is estimated to contribute more than one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions through a combination of agricultural activities and land use changes, and it consumes, on average, 70 percent of the world’s freshwater resources.

• 11/18/2021
• Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security

Climate mitigation is essential for helping communities prepare for the impacts of climate change and prevent worst-case climate scenarios. USAID helps countries achieve more ambitious climate targets under the Paris Agreement and provides the foundations for sustainable growth through renewable energy and natural climate solutions.

• 05/20/2021
• Isabela Barriga

USAID has been supporting countries in low-emissions long-term planning through its Transparency and Long-term Strategies (T-LTS) project.

• 04/21/2021
• Derina Man

BiodiversityLinks, USAID’s newly refreshed and relaunched knowledge portal for biodiversity conservation, features key USAID tools and resources, as well as new evidence and learning.

• 03/09/2021
• Climatelinks

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

Armenia’s Ararat Valley, a 1,177 square-kilometer swath of land located to the east of Mount Ararat, is home to critical artesian aquifers and central to the country’s economic stability. The aquifers are a frequently tapped resource for public services, agriculture, and fish farming, as well as cooling of Armenia’s nuclear power plant.

• 10/27/2020
• Jamie Carson, Elizabeth Hutchison

“Climate change does not drive conflict in a vacuum but contributes to conflict in already fragile contexts and in combination with a number of other critical factors.” This is one of five themes to emerge from a literature review as reported in a new study, which critically assesses how peacebuilding programming can also produce adaptation benefits (and vice versa).

• 08/11/2020
• Christine Chumbler

Competition for natural resources such as water, land, and forests can be a source of contention, and sometimes even violence. Climate change can exacerbate these issues by impacting resource availability and quality. As climate variability increases, so will its potential to worsen conflict. 

• 08/10/2020
• Isabela Barriga

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

Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) is a region in Southeast Bangladesh historically impacted by porous borders, instability and armed conflict. More than two decades of fighting formally came to a close in 1997 with the signing of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord but social, economic and political integration is a work in progress.

• 07/14/2020
• Agrilinks

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

In this post, the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security (EEFS) project describes how its Water Governance Scorecard can inform policy discussions on water use within the agriculture sector. Water is at the nexus of food security and climate risk management. Smallholder farmers depend on reliable access to water to support production through rainfall and/or irrigation systems. As climate risks mount, variability in water availability and allocation will affect the competitiveness and resilience of the agriculture sector.

• 03/17/2020
• Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security