Blog

This is the final of three blogs examining the lessons and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for sustainable landscape programs.

• 02/12/2021
• Eric Haxthausen

My passion for entrepreneurship started when I was pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in Clothing Textiles at Egerton University. I started a shop to sell soft furnishing for fabrics such as bed covers, curtains, baby sets etc. This business however did not go as smooth as I had earlier imagined.

• 01/14/2021
• Stella Sigana

In mid-2020, Climatelinks added sector pages to its website. The 14 pages, accessible by hovering your mouse over “What We Do” in the website’s top navigation menu, showcase sector-specific work on climate change that USAID is undertaking in a variety of contexts. Each sector page houses an introductory overview detailing related climate impacts and stressors, as well as potential solutions.

• 12/30/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

In 2020, the Climatelinks community focused on a broad range of monthly themes, including disaster risk management, private sector engagement, energy, and sustainable landscapes. Below you’ll find a selection of great stories that were not as heavily viewed, and that you may have missed when they were originally posted:

• 12/23/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

Over the course of 2020, the Climatelinks community contributed over 120 blogs on topics varying from mangrove restoration in coastal Sierra Leone to flood early warning systems in East Java, Indonesia. Below are the five most visited blogs of 2020.

• 12/15/2020
• Stephan Hardeman

There is an urgent need to speed and scale up profitable business models that secure sustainable, deforestation-free supply chains. There is also a need to develop innovative strategies to scale landscape restoration and conservation.

• 10/28/2020
• Climatelinks

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

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

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

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

Smallholder rubber plantations represent a threat and an opportunity for carbon stock and biodiversity in Indonesia. A threat because poor agriculture and forestry practices lead to overuse of pesticides and fertilizers, water and river pollution and deforestation; and an opportunity because smallholder rubber plots hold a much higher biodiversity and carbon stock than their most common alternative: palm oil monoculture.

• 08/28/2020
• USAID Green Invest Asia 

The amount of development assistance available for clean energy, sustainable landscapes, and climate adaptation investment is relatively small. Partner governments have multiple urgent and competing needs for public expenditures, recently exacerbated by the global pandemic and recession.

• 08/19/2020
• Dr. Eric Hyman

Why do many community-based forestry enterprises (CBFEs) perform poorly even after years of donor and government investment? This was one of the questions that motivated a USAID Productive Landscape (ProLand) project investigation into CBFEs as a strategy for improving land management.

• 08/14/2020
• Mark Donahue, Ian Deshmukh

Open, transparent, and competitive renewable energy procurement, coupled with declining prices for solar and wind technologies, has facilitated billions of dollars of investment at record low prices. According to the Renewables 2020 Global Status Report, 109 countries around the world had held renewable energy auctions by 2019, up from 98 in 2018. Worldwide, auctions have become an emerging best practice to procure least-cost energy.

• 08/04/2020
• Sarah Lawson, Araí Monteforte