Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jean Bruno, nursery agent, and his wife work at their tree nursery in Sahambavy, Fianarantsoa, Centra Madagascar. In Madagascar, where bush fire and slash hand-burn agriculture are a common practice, reforestation is crucial. The ASOTRY project, implemented by ADRA and funded by USAID/FFP, restores forests through reforestation activities.

• 09/17/2020
• Climatelinks

We are in a time of crisis and great uncertainty. Faced with the current situation, we need to support Latin American countries so the food security of the population is not at risk. Ensuring production, mobility, and distribution of food is one of many current challenges.

• 09/15/2020
• Agrilinks

Tanzania’s Rufiji River Delta hosts the largest mangrove forest in Eastern Africa, a critical coastal ecosystem that provides habitat for migratory birds and diverse marine life, stabilizes the shoreline, and traps sediment and nutrients washing downstream in the Rufiji River. Unfortunately, overexploitation and degradation of these mangrove forests present a persistent challenge.

• 09/10/2020
• Olivia Freeman, Dr. Mwita Mangora