Blog

The 2015 Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on planetary health final report, “Safeguarding Human Health in the Anthropocene Epoch,” begins: “Far-reaching changes to the structure and function of the Earth’s natural systems represent a growing threat to human health.”

• 06/13/2019
• Christine Chumbler

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

The countries that share the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan – frequently experience agricultural, hydrological, meteorological, and socioeconomic droughts.

• 06/10/2019
• Agrilinks Team

This year’s World Environment Day theme focuses on a global challenge with pressing implications on human health and the environment: air pollution.

• 06/05/2019
• Isabela Barriga

This month saw the release of a dire UN report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warning that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. 

• 06/04/2019
• Agrilinks

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) needs a comprehensive map of development. The country holds the largest contiguous block of rainforest outside of Brazil, but as the map below illustrates, much of the remaining forest falls under mining, oil and logging permits.

• 05/31/2019
• Leo Bottrill

Landscapes and the complex, interlinked spatial units that comprise them are changing at an accelerating rate. Land use change, especially deforestation and forest degradation, are among the main contributors to global greenhouse emissions.

• 05/30/2019
• Ioana Bouvier, Silvia Petrova, Lovasoalalaina Parson

Cyclone Idai left more than 1,000 people dead and thousands more missing, potentially affecting millions in Southern Africa. As emergency response and recovery efforts continue, another disaster is likely unfolding elsewhere on the continent: Idai pulled precipitation South, away from Eastern Africa, resulting in persistent dry conditions affecting crops at the start of the main growing season. That’s where NASA Earth Observations come in.

• 05/29/2019
• Agrilinks Team

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), due to its all-weather capability and observational characteristics, is a vital tool for assessment of forest structure. Nonetheless, there has been a knowledge gap in the applied use of SAR technology for forestry applications.

• 05/28/2019
• Africa I. Flores-Anderson, Kelsey E. Herndon, Dr. Rajesh Bahadur Thapa, Leah Kucera

As my third trip to Malawi in a year came to an end, it was apparent that we have reached a milestone that many might not have thought achievable when we started this project five years ago. On April 4, I attended the launch of Malawi’s new National Greenhouse Gas Inventory System (GHG-IS), where Government of Malawi officials delivered speeches fully endorsing the system. 

• 05/24/2019
• Blanca Bernal

The Ferlo region of north-central Senegal is a vast expanse of dry savannah covering over a third of the country’s total area. With only a few small, scattered settlements, this region is almost exclusively reserved for pastoralism, both by tradition and government policy.

• 05/23/2019
• Agrilinks Team

According to the United Nations, close to 1.7 billion people – almost 25% of the world’s population - rely on forests for shelter, livelihoods, water, food, and fuel security. Forests renew our air supply, as they take in large amounts of carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

• 05/22/2019
• SERVIR Global

Water security is integral to the health and sustainability of our communities and ecosystems. Achieving water security, however, is challenging for several reasons including poor governance, resource competition and poorly-conceived economic development.

• 05/20/2019
• Basil Mahayni

In 2017, hurricanes Irma and Maria were forecast to hit the Dominican Republic. ClimaPlan, a USAID project working with the Dominican municipality of Las Terrenas, recognized that these hurricanes would provide an opportunity to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the city’s climate resilience and adaptation capacity.

• 05/16/2019
• Molly Hellmuth, Joanne Potter

Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world. But their habitats are being threatened by human activity.

• 05/14/2019
• SERVIR Global