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Deforestation, forest degradation, poaching, and environmental problems caused by climate change pose serious threats to many of West Africa’s already fragile ecosystems, including the region’s biodiversity-rich forests. Award-winning international journalist David Goodman learned about the severity of these threats as he traveled to the countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia to document the work of the USAID-funded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program.

• 08/26/2020
• West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change program

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

Half the world’s total mangrove deforestation since 2000 has taken place in Indonesia, where the main driver is conversion for shrimp ponds. A new cost-benefit analysis by the USAID-funded Climate Economic Analysis Development, Investment, and Resilience (CEADIR) Activity sheds light on the financial and economic value of mangrove conservation, including impacts on near-shore fishing and greenhouse gas emissions.

• 08/11/2020
• Dr. Eric Hyman

To enable scaling of climate programs, development assistance organizations can help partner countries leverage new sources of financing, including institutional investors, impact investors, and international and domestic capital markets. However, new approaches are necessary to achieve impacts on a much larger scale.

• 07/29/2020
• Eric Hyman

One of the major challenges in monitoring forests is identifying forest degradation processes. Degradation events can be “small, subtle, and temporary,” making their identification difficult. However, recent years have seen advancements in satellite remote sensing technology, which has in turn revealed changed patterns of illegal deforestation activity in the Amazon rainforest.

• 07/24/2020
• Kelsey E. Herndon, Africa I. Flores-Anderson

Vanilla. It’s one of the world’s great flavors and scents, coveted for centuries for use in everything from baked goods to soaps. And it is also helping expand tree cover in Indonesia. Indonesia’s islands have been inhabited for millennia. Dramatic increases in population over the last few decades and more recent expansions of unsustainable industrial agriculture have shifted what had been a system in balance.

• 07/21/2020
• Christine Chumbler

In 2015, India set an ambitious goal of creating a sink of as much as 3 billion tons of carbon by 2030. To do that, the country will need to increase tree cover by 10 million hectares and enhance forest stocks on a further 10 million hectares—about one-quarter the total area of California—which is a huge task.

• 07/15/2020
• Christine Chumbler

Long-term changes in climate and wildlife habitat can pose significant effects on human health and increase the risk of infectious diseases like the coronavirus (COVID-19). Several of the roots of climate change can increase the risk of pandemics; for example, deforestation increasingly places humans and animals in contact, which enables pathogens from animals to spillover to humans.

• 07/08/2020
• Isabela Barriga

The amount of development assistance funds available for climate mitigation and adaptation is small relative to the increasing need for it and relative to the magnitude of private capital flowing to developing countries. Improving domestic revenue mobilization, for instance through taxation, can only go so far because many developing countries have relatively small economies. Furthermore, the global pandemic and economic recession only add to the numerous, urgent competing needs for public expenditures.

• 06/25/2020
• Eric Hyman

Do you have great photos of climate and development? Do you want to promote your work on Climatelinks? Now is your chance! Submit your photos so we can share your work or your organization’s work with our global community of climate practitioners. Our 2020 Photo Contest theme is Healthy Forests for a Healthy Future.

• 06/17/2020
• Climatelinks

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a global system that certifies responsible forest management. In some cases, FSC has severed ties with, or “disassociated” from, paper and timber giants worldwide when their direct or affiliate operations have harmed forests and people.

• 06/09/2020
• Natcha Tulyasuwan, Binod Chapagain, Panicha Chandragholica

• 05/27/2020
• John Fay, Admore Chiumia, Ramzy Kanaan

Yao Ahou, a cocoa farmer in Côte d’Ivoire, is well aware of the challenge she faces in farming for the core ingredient for the world’s chocolate. “For us cocoa farmers, our problem is climate change. When we expect the rains, it is the sun that comes up, and when the sun is expected, it is the rains that come.

• 05/26/2020
• Ethan Budiansky

A pivotal insight emerging from three years of co-creating climate-smart business models with companies—both investors and those seeking investment—is that there is not one private sector, but a multitude of actors with varied incentives, timelines, and decision processes. Each requires a targeted approach; any strategy that assumes one homogeneous private sector—or one investor profile—will struggle to gain traction.

• 05/21/2020
• Yohann Formont