Blog

To strengthen communities' access to and management of water and pasture, USAID EKISIL—which means “peace” in the local language of Karamoja—initiated climate risk management (CRM) actions in the Abim, Kaabong, Kotido, and Moroto districts

• 10/13/2021
• Lorine Giangola, Leah Quin

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

“For me, hope is the feeling that keeps you going, even though all odds may be against you. For me hope comes from action not just words.” Greta Thunberg, World Economic Forum 2021. Greta Thunberg, 18 year-old climate and environmental activist, addressed the World Economic Forum on January 25, 2021 with a call for action to address the climate and ecological crisis

• 02/02/2021
• Isabela Barriga

Congratulations to the 13 winners of the 2020 Climatelinks Photo Contest!

This year’s theme, “Healthy Forests for a Healthy Future,” focuses on nature-based solutions to climate change such as active reforestation, plantations, agroforestry, and natural regeneration. The winning photos tell the stories of individual and community change agents for sustainable development, forest protection, and a climate-secure future.

• 01/25/2021
• Steve Hardeman

Photos are a great way to not only capture climate programming in action, but to tell one’s story. The Climatelinks photo gallery has more than 230 photos depicting climate and development, from gender and inclusion to natural resource management.
Below are the five most popular photos of 2020. Let us know if you have a favorite photo.

• 12/29/2020
• Isabela Barriga

In 1976, Salvador Dali painted an 99 ¼ inch by 75 ½ inch oil painting he called “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln - Homage to Rothko (Second Version)” (Figure 1). When viewed up close, we see the nuanced details of the artist’s work and are likely distracted by the dominant figure that is so clearly in focus.

• 11/06/2020
• Agrilinks

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

Complex relationships between the climate, population growth, land cover change, and other interactions make decisions on land use planning, water permitting, and donor investments in natural resources management challenging. Decision-making on how and where to make investments is improving in Tanzania due to development partners becoming more proficient in using sophisticated environmental analysis tools such as composite index mapping.

• 10/08/2020
• Leif Kindberg, John Whiting

Vanilla. It’s one of the world’s great flavors and scents, coveted for centuries for use in everything from baked goods to soaps. And it is also helping expand tree cover in Indonesia. Indonesia’s islands have been inhabited for millennia. Dramatic increases in population over the last few decades and more recent expansions of unsustainable industrial agriculture have shifted what had been a system in balance.

• 07/21/2020
• Christine Chumbler

Nearly two-thirds of what remains of West Africa’s rainforests are in Liberia. But will that always be the case? Deforestation at the hands of humans once posed the biggest threat. Now climate change is exacerbating the challenge to protect forests and biodiversity. As chief of party of the USAID-funded Forest Incomes for Environmental Sustainability (FIFES) Activity, I’ve seen how our activity, implemented by ACDI/VOCA, is succeeding in this fight to protect forests and forest-dependent communities.

• 04/29/2020
• Glenn Lines

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land, changing precipitation patterns, increasing temperatures, and more frequent extreme weather events are already affecting food security. As extreme events occur more regularly, food systems are likely to be disrupted, creating challenges in food access and potentially causing price fluctuations.

• 02/28/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

In Ethiopian cuisine, onion rules. Stews, sauces, and salads all rely on onions as a star ingredient, and market stalls are stacked high with fragrant bulbs. Across the country, onions contribute significantly to food security, adding taste and nutrients to diets otherwise mainly made up of cereals. Despite their popularity, onion crops yield much less in Ethiopia than in other African countries. Farmers here, like elsewhere, use irrigation to cultivate onions. In fact, farmers prefer to irrigate onion more than other crops, thanks to the high demand and high prices for onions. But yields remain low.

• 02/27/2020
• Agrilinks Team

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

This month we are exploring what it means to build local capacity to address climate change. Building local capacity starts with an understanding of the local stakeholders’ needs.

• 09/10/2019
• Isabela Barriga