Blog

In November 2020, two back-to-back category 4 hurricanes, Eta and Iota, struck Central America, making landfall on the coast of Nicaragua, near its border with Honduras, and also affecting El Salvador and Guatemala. Altogether, they caused an estimated one billion US dollars in damage. Despite such impacts, the region was better able to prepare for and respond to Eta and Iota using space-based technologies.

• 10/26/2021
• Betzy Hernandez Sandoval, Emil Cherrington, Kel Markert, Eric Anderson, Daniel E. Irwin, Ashutosh Limaye, Peter Epanchin, Bathsheba F. Bryant-Tarpeh

In July, Climatelinks explored the important health and climate impacts of air pollution. As the world’s largest environmental health risk, air pollution contributes to approximately 6.7 million premature deaths each year. This is a significant development challenge, as low and middle income countries are at the highest risk for the greatest health burdens from poor air quality.

• 08/24/2021
• Climatelinks

Across the globe, people are struggling to improve air quality, but the sources of pollution that cause the most harm are a moving target. They can differ by location, time of year, and time of day.

• 07/29/2021
• Lauren Azmon

As one of the most densely populated countries in the world, Bangladesh understands how critical a reliable energy supply is to the country's growth. However, Bangladesh is currently dependent on a waning natural gas supply and has reached a point where it must evaluate energy independent paths that are sustainable, cost-effective, and ensure long-term domestic energy supply. 

• 05/11/2021
• Isabel McCan, Carishma Gokhale-Welch

Improving energy efficiency is an integral but often-overlooked part of low-emission development (LED) strategies that can help countries reach their climate targets while meeting growing demands for energy.

• 05/05/2021
• Andrew Fang, Michael McNeil, Katie Koerper

Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius demands a dramatically different power sector – one that helps reduce overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 7.6 percent globally each year from 2020 to 2030.

• 04/23/2021
• Sophia Peters, Michaela Palmer

The convergence of tropical atmospheric currents generate a steady wind across Northern Colombia. This persistent climatic phenomenon provides the potential for a very reliable and expansive source of wind-generated power.

• 04/22/2021
• Tedi Rabold

Climate mitigation and support for the Government of South Africa’s green growth agenda were central to the conception of USAID South Africa Low Emissions Development Program (SA-LED).

• 04/21/2021
• Peter Nash

South Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and a major energy consumer with some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, is also home to some of the greatest climate disasters.

• 04/20/2021
• Ipshita Nandi Banerjee

South Africa—the third most biodiverse country in the world—is home to more than 95,000 known species and a diverse range of biomes, from forests to deserts to river delta systems and more. The rich biodiversity of these natural areas plays an important role in the South African Government’s progressive green economy agenda, as it recognizes that those areas provide a wide range of ecosystem services for its people, including food, water, clean air, medicine, resources for livelihoods, recreation, and energy to power daily life and industry.

• 08/27/2020
• Mona Khadr

Climate impacts social and economic development across sectors, in numerous ways. Each sector also has unique opportunities to contribute to climate solutions. USAID integrates climate change in development programming across a variety of technical fields.

• 06/18/2020
• Isabela Barriga

With the climate changing in fast and uncertain ways, getting the right information for infrastructure design is becoming more challenging. USAID spends over a billion dollars a year building infrastructure across our humanitarian assistance and development portfolios, so it’s important that the Agency get it right. Infrastructure matters to international development. How the world grows, advances, and develops is (literally) built on a foundation of infrastructure.

• 02/03/2020
• John Pasch

Strong, resilient infrastructure can help countries better prepare for climate variability and change, such as more severe and frequent weather events or sea level rise. Basic infrastructure is failing, insufficient, or non-existent in many developing countries, and changes in climate can damage infrastructure across sectors from energy, health, education, and others.

• 01/29/2020
• Isabela Barriga

As USAID and the international community know, if infrastructure fails during a crisis, the implications on human lives are enormous. To ensure future floods and other extreme weather events don’t cause the level of damage and misery seen in the wake of Idai and Kenneth, there are two myths that we urgently need to dispel.

• 01/28/2020
• Michael Szönyi

The Climatelinks photo contest received an impressive total of 170 submissions from the Climatelinks community, representing more than 40 countries.

• 12/03/2019
• Steve Hardeman