Blog

Originating in Turkey, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers traditionally have met the vast majority of Iraq’s water needs. The rivers are used to pump water into millions of homes and irrigate the historic Mesopotamia agricultural fields.

• 11/17/2020
• Owen Scott

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

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

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

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

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

Forests cover 69 million hectares in Peru, representing nearly 60 percent of the country (MINAM 2014). Loreto and Ucayali are the two largest Amazon regions in Peru and are traditionally occupied and protected by Indigenous Peoples. These communities have ancestral ties to Amazon forests in Peru and are important allies in supporting sustainable forest management.

• 09/09/2020
• Isabela Barriga

Los bosques cubren 69 millones de hectáreas en Perú, y representan casi un 60% del país (MINAM 2014). Las Regiones Loreto y Ucayali son las dos regiones amazónicas más grandes del Perú y están tradicionalmente ocupadas y protegidas por Pueblos Indígenas, asentados en comunidades nativas.

• 09/09/2020
• Isabela Barriga

With climate change exacerbating the number and intensity of weather-related natural disasters like typhoons and floods, it is important that communities prepare for when a disaster hits. We need to think through what to do during an emergency, and how to reduce its negative long-term impacts.

• 09/02/2020
• Christine Chumbler

While at first glance the relationship between education and climate change may not be clear, a number of challenges and opportunities become apparent when the two are considered together. Climate change education is highly relevant to youth, who will grapple with the impacts of climate change for decades to come.

• 09/01/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

There is great value in pushing for youth education in climate change action. Designing projects that focus on issues youth care about can lead to unexpected, positive outcomes. And engaging youth as active participants with the autonomy and agency to act can have lasting effects long after a development project ends.

• 08/25/2020
• Mike Thayer

“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