Blog

The game is simple. On a brown digital grassland with a single tree, tiny goats mill back and forth. When you decide how many of those goats to buy or sell and how many to insure, clouds float across the screen and one of two things happens: the clouds stop and rain falls, roughly doubling the goats and producing milk for sale, or the clouds move steadily across the screen and half your herd is wiped out.

• 01/15/2020
• MRR Innovation Lab, Alex Russell

Since 1991, USAID has been investing in actions that help the Agency in understanding climate change risks and opportunities to reduce vulnerabilities.

• 12/05/2019
• Stephan Hardeman

Countries, like people, rely on stories of the past to guide them in the present and help them prepare for the unknown. The genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda ripped out many pages of stories, climate among them.

• 11/26/2019
• James Hansen, Francesco Fiondella, Gloriose Nsengiyumva, Jacquelyn Turner, Desire Kagabo

The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project, funded by USAID, has been supporting farmers to use weather and climate information through participatory group processes and innovative radio programming.

• 11/19/2019
• James Hansen, Jacquelyn Turner, Gloriose Nsengiyumva, Desire Kagabo

In arid regions with already unreliable water and sanitation services, climate change is a threat multiplier for those who rely on functional infrastructure for basic water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) needs.

• 11/12/2019
• Brittany Ajroud, Patrick Nease

In Ghana, a changing climate is affecting the production of cocoa, one of the country’s major cash crops and its second leading foreign exchange earner.

• 10/29/2019
• Alexandre Grais, Lara Murray

As the frequency and magnitude of climate-related hazards increases, these changes are affecting people’s livelihoods, particularly those of rural and vulnerable populations more than ever.

• 10/24/2019
• Jeff Ratcliffe, Marie-Claire Tuzeneu

Farmers around the world increasingly rely on long-range weather forecasts when planning their crops. Traditional timing for planting is no longer as reliable as it used to be, and neither are the rains, thanks to shifts in climate patterns.

• 09/30/2019
• Christine Chumbler

In a crowded banquet hall in Niamey, a dozen people gather around a large piece of paper, chatting excitedly in Hausa and French. They are a diverse group - farmers from hours outside the capital, radio broadcasters, extension agents, meteorologists, government officials and a smattering of NGO workers.

• 09/25/2019
• Kristin Lambert, Amanda Lewis, Mary Allen

The Climate Hazards Center (CHC) has been using the CHC Early Estimates for agroclimatological monitoring and forecast-plus-observation rainfall scenarios since late 2018. The CHC Early Estimates are regional maps that show rainfall conditions for multiple accumulation periods, which are useful for agroclimatic monitoring.

• 09/05/2019
• Agrilinks Team

Climate change impacts, such as sea level rise, flooding, and drought, threaten renewable energy generation, particularly hydropower due to the necessary proximity of power stations to water sources. As a result, energy security and the ability of countries to meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets may be compromised.

• 08/14/2019
• Molly Hellmuth

Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation builds agribusiness’ capacity in myriad ways – from organizational strengthening to business plan design to investor relations – all with the aim of improving their ability to respond to the specific needs of smallholder farmers. Our approach pairs investments in new technologies with targeted services that help agribusinesses accelerate their growth so they can quickly and successfully enter new markets, increase profits, and expand their customer bases.

• 08/06/2019
• Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation

Rivers are the world’s main source of clean drinking water, and their economic and environmental value are fundamental to the health of people and ecosystems. However, river basins face interrelated challenges — population growth, industrialization, urbanization, land use changes (including deforestation and land degradation), and changes in water quantity and quality.

• 07/17/2019
• Owen Scott, Fernanda Zermoglio

In November, I took a canoe trip down a rural western Madagascar river expecting to see a lot of lemurs, but instead I saw thousands of hectares of burned-down forest. The problem extends all over Madagascar, even encroaching on national parks.

• 06/18/2019
• Rob Cohen

Malaria is a treatable and preventable disease, yet malaria kills one child every 30 seconds, or about 3000 children every day. Nearly 92 percent of these cases occur in Africa.

• 06/12/2019
• Fernanda Zermoglio, Sadie J. Ryan