Blog

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

Uptake of low emissions agriculture research outputs by policymakers and other stakeholders requires time. Even when researchers are interested in pursuing the scaling and use of research outputs, most are not incentivized to take this on. Allocating targeted resources and donor support, while involving science communicators and outreach specialists can be effective in overcoming constraints to delivering low emission development research to policymakers.

• 10/21/2020
• Arun Khatri-Chhetri

This is the first of three blogs examining the lessons and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for sustainable landscapes programs. At a time when everyone is focused on the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) some might think that ongoing efforts to support programming in sustainable landscapes have little to offer at the current moment.

• 10/19/2020
• Eric Haxthausen

Research suggests that dairy farmers can reduce their carbon footprint by improving animal and herd management. The growing global population and increasing consumption of meat and dairy will increase global animal protein demand by 60 percent by 2030.

• 10/15/2020
• CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security CCAFS

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

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

92 developing countries included livestock-related emissions as a target for mitigation in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). One of the biggest challenges to achieving mitigation in the sector is tracking emissions, for which national inventories are a key tool.

• 10/07/2020
• CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security CCAFS

Residents of Guatemala’s dry corridor are hungry. In 2018, drought-related crop failures directly affected one in 10 Guatemalans and caused extreme food shortage for upwards of 840,000 people according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Thousands of Guatemalans support and feed their families with subsistence farming and the alarming climate trends of the dry corridor are making each year harder to survive.

• 10/06/2020
• Agrilinks

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

Back in 2015, the international community committed to a shared global vision towards sustainable development – the 2030 Agenda – including 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Goals identify the areas in which resources are most needed. But with the realization that meeting the Goals by 2030 would require filling an annual financing gap of 2.5 trillion dollars, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) called upon a broader mobilization of resources, including private ones.

• 09/30/2020
• Marketlinks

Planners at USAID and in host country governments need to choose how to invest funds to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land. Should they focus on establishing or strengthening protected areas in the east? Restoring mangroves in the north? Improving timber harvesting practices in the south? In each country, there are many choices.

• 09/28/2020
• Tim Holland

During this next event in a series of joint Climatelinks-CEADIR webinars, the author of this assessment will present findings and opportunities. Representatives of global reinsurance companies SwissRe and MunichRe will also join to discuss their experiences with parametric insurance for utility-scale VRE in Latin America and beyond.

• 09/24/2020
• Santiago Enriquez

Although half of global mangrove deforestation since 2000 has been in Indonesia, Bintuni Bay and Mimika District have some of the largest intact areas of mangroves in the world. These two areas are also home to many indigenous groups and have special autonomous governance status and exceptional biodiversity.

• 09/24/2020
• Dr. Eric Hyman

In Central Malawi, nestled below Chipata Mountain and slightly to the west of Lake Malawi, lies Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, Malawi’s largest remaining wild landscape and oldest wildlife reserve. The reserve was home to 1,500 elephants in the 1990s. By 2015, there were fewer than 100 left.

• 09/23/2020
• John Kerkering, Katie Moulton