The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) tool has been proven to support Eco-guards by collecting, measuring, transmitting, and evaluating data to improve the effectiveness of wildlife conservation efforts, leading to strengthened forest management and climate change mitigation. This tool is being used throughout The West Africa Biodiversity and Low Emissions Development (WABiLED) Program, which is a four-year program funded by the USAID with 3 main objectives: combat human trafficking wildlife and improve the conservation of great apes; reduce deforestation, forest degradation, and biodiversity loss in key transboundary landscapes; and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration derived from forest and land use.
Climatelinks Photo Gallery
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Welcome to the Climatelinks photo gallery. Here you can find a range of climate change and development photos from our photo contest, our blogs, and USAID’s Flickr sites. Submit your photos to the photo gallery here.
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- Photo Country: Sierra Leone
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Biomonitors and Eco-guards enforce regulations that mitigate activities contributing to climate change, such as illegal logging, poaching, and habitat destruction. The eco-guards help maintain the balance of ecosystems and preserve carbon sinks like forests and wetlands that absorb greenhouse gasses. By engaging with local communities, they promote sustainable practices that reduce emissions and enhance resilience to climate impacts.
Sierra Leone’s coastal areas provide a vital source of livelihoods for communities through fish and oyster production. In addition, the country’s almost-1,500 square kilometers of coastal mangrove forests protect against extreme storms and are carbon-dense, storing 194 tons of carbon per hectare. Yet these benefits are eroding as rice fields and other land uses displace the forests. Forest area has decreased by approximately 25 percent over the past two decades in four primary coastal mangrove regions of Sierra Leone. USAID’s West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change program (WA BiCC) engages community members to restore lost mangrove forests. WA BiCC’s ecosystem-based mitigation and adaptation activities are helping conserve and restore these mangroves, increasing community resilience and carbon sequestration.
The problem of land degradation in Sierra Leone. Erosion is washing away the top surface of the land in Allen town, in Freetown Sierra Leone as a result of poor land degradation by the communities, due to poor housing plans and poor waste disposals
The photo shows poor land degradation in Sierra Leone
This photo will help in the advocacy for climate change awareness and how to help the community and the country manage the situation
The relevant program receiving the climate change by USAID is Save life of Sierra Leone through land check and tree planting
Partners involved in the program is Women of God's Ambassadors Ministerial Network Worldwide, Freetown Sierra Leone
Many farmers in coastal Sierra Leone cultivate rice as their staple food. In doing that, they clear land including mangrove forests to make way for their rice farms. Unfortunately, this has a counterproductive effect as the water during high tides overwhelms the rice farms and destroys these crops. WA BiCC introduced this new approach called "rice-mangrove integration" where mangrove plants are replanted around the rice farms to protect the rice crops from overwhelming amounts of water. These mangrove forests also serve as spawning grounds for fish, oysters, and other aquatic species, increasing food security in these communities, including Bonthe in coastal Sierra Leone.
Sea level rise and accompanying coastal flooding is proving to be a major risk to the lives and livelihoods of the people of coastal Sierra Leone, including this Momaya community. Now, community members are using discarded oyster shells, sand, and stakes to build embankments that will protect their property from coastal erosion.
The effects of Climate Change, including coastal flooding, affect everyone in coastal Sierra Leone. These women, recognizing what is at stake, are contributing to the building of an embankment by fortifying these artificial barriers with sand fetched from the shore. In this picture, women in the Momaya community are packing old sacks with sand and sending the sacks over to the men constructing this embankment.
A mudslide devastates the Regent Community in Freetown, Sierra Leone.