Climatelinks Photo Gallery

The debate and justification in climate change is going on for years but now they are visible on the ground. This is the picture of a village in Humla District, where the community is facing changed patterns of precipitation and adapting to changes by changing the roof type. This community used to have flat mud roofs that are now turned into tin roofs to combat changing precipitation patterns. Picture location: Humla District, Nepal, 2018 USAID supported program: Paani/DAI

Forest Fire. It is a crisis the world is facing at the moment. Amazon is on fire; the forest of Indonesia is burning as well. These forests provide more than 20% of the oxygen of our planet. Forest Fire is an additional risk to the human health and climate change. This photograph depicts the prayer of a tree; it is requesting the humankind not to let it burn intentionally. Taken in Dhaka, Bangladesh on August 2, 2019.

In Djetkoram village, Catholic Relief Services is distributing cash as part of a Cash-for-Work project, which is helping people from the local community, as well as those who have recently been displaced by Boko Haram violence in Niger. The majority of displaced people are seeking refuge in local communities, putting a strain on already vulnerable host families coping with the affects of climate change and poverty.

Adam Bassaí, 49 years old, works to prevent fertile land from transforming into desert in September of 2016. He and other community members from the village construct barriers along sand dunes using dried plants. In exchange for this work, they receive cash from CRS in Niger. The cash provides an injection of resources that can be used to address a range of needs. With support from USAID-OFDA, this project is helping more than 6,000 households in Diffa, the region of Niger most affected by Boko Haram violence. The cash distributions are also supported by Global Affairs Canada in partnership with Development and Peace (CARITAS Canada).

Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic. September 11, 2018.

This image describes the educational activities for development of capacities in adaptation strategies and flood prevention in the Las Terrenas River by the Fundación REDDOM under the Climate Risk Reduction Program. With these actions we can support the reduction of flood risks in urban areas near the riverbank.

A beneficiary from the Community of El Pato, Zaragoza, Antioquia. Caucasia, Antioquia, November 9, 2017. USAID-Oro Legal Activity. Partners: Beekeeping Associations, Mineros SA Foundation, Oleoductos of Colombia Foundation, Hacienda La Leyenda.

Photo Credit: Jorge Eliecer Martínez, USAID-Oro Legal Project.

One hundred and fifty single, women heads of household make up more than half of the beneficiaries of USAID's Legal Gold beekeeping activity in Antioquia, Colombia. Why is beekeeping in a gold mining project? Despite the commonly held view that everybody who is involved in gold mining is a millionaire, artisanal gold mining sustains tens of thousands of marginal families in Colombia. However, as the price of gold rises and mining activities become more intensive, miners at the lower echelons of the value chain, particularly women, find it ever harder to eke out a living; there is just not enough gold left for them to find. These same people lack another vital resource, land, and for that reason beekeeping provides an attractive economic alternative that allows women to undertake their multiple roles in the home and still make a decent living. They work tirelessly “like bees in a beehive” to make their apiaries a mainstay of the family economy. This initiative has been developed in five mining municipalities, providing almost 11,000 beehives for 300 families and producing 350 tons of honey a year; a number that will increase national honey production by 25%. Bees are dying off in record numbers throughout the world; Colombia is no exception. The project supports over 326 million bees roaming the region for nectar, pollinating plants and transforming the landscape. As an added bonus, the apiaries are installed on more than one thousand hectares of rehabilitated ex-mining land.

The Pasig River runs through the heart of Manila and flows from Laguna de Bay to Manila Bay. The river was a major source of water, food and livelihood and offered an alternative mode of transportation. In the 1990s, Pasig River with all its garbage and foul odor, was declared biologically dead. Rehabilitation efforts started after the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission was created in 1999. The photo shows a section of the Pasig River two decades after rehabilitation.

Planting trees in the Caño Seco neighborhood, in Las Terrenas, is a measure of risk reduction in the face of indebtedness. Clarimel is one of the young women who has committed to this type of activity, not only sowing but also training the population of the area.

This common sighting in the rivers of the Peruvian Amazon portrays a "buoyer," a person whose job consists of untying the logs that have floated to the bank of the river-like buoys from the forest concessions, a journey that usually takes over 24 hours. Nearly 40% of the Amazonian population in Peru rely economically on the timber value chain-including over 250,000 families, mostly of indigenous descent- which presents a unique opportunity to draw increased attention to the challenges and opportunities the forest sector faces nationwide. The Pro-Bosques Activity aims to capitalize on timber harvesting by promoting sustainable forest management in Peru, strengthening forest governance with innovative forest control and monitoring tools, while promoting private sector engagement and indigenous participation in forest value chains.

Jean Bruno, nursery agent, and his wife on April 12, 2019. Sahambavy, Fianarantsoa, Centra Madagascar on their tree nursery.

The ASOTRY project, implemented by ADRA and funded by USAID/FFP, restores forests through reforestation activity. It contributes to mitigating global warming by soaking up greenhouse gas emission. In Madagascar where bush fire and slash hand-burn agriculture are a common practice, reforestation is crucial.

In Lamokula Village, South Konawe District, Southeast Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, USAID though Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience (Adaptasi Perubahan Iklim dan Ketangguhan – APIK) project brought the community to build their preparedness in facing flood risk. The community members agreed to have Abd Jalil as the leader of disaster preparedness group in the village. Among various capacity building activities that he received, he really likes the use of local wisdom for disaster risk reduction. The communities are already familiar with mosque speaker and cellphones during flood emergency and evacuation. However, electricity and phone signal often become challenges during extreme condition. Learning from this experience, the APIK project encouraged the community to take benefit of kentongan (bamboo slit drum) as a supporting early warning system tool. As manual as it is, kentongan with its loud noise becomes a very reliable communication tool for Jalil and his community. They have used the kentongan to alert people to evacuate during three flood events in 2019. People hit the kentongan from one household to another and created a chain of noises. “It’s simple yet has a huge benefit during an emergency situation,” said Jalil.

July 25, 2019.

In March 2019 in Son La Province, Vietnam the USAID/Vietnam Vietnam Forests and Deltas Project joined with Son La Province for a ceremonial tree planting commemorating Vietnam’s commitment to sustainable development. In Son La Province, the Vietnam Forests and Deltas project supports Vietnam’s Payments for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) mechanism. The project supports the transition from cash-based payments to electronic payments to improve transparency and accountability, and works with provincial authorities to better monitor and evaluate the impact PFES has on Vietnam’s forests. The Vietnam Forests and Deltas project is implemented by Winrock International in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam.

Palabek Refugee Settlement, Northern Uganda. August 31, 2018.

Incorporating the Resilience Design and Permagarden methodologies of the USAID TOPS/SCALE program.

Learning principles from African Women Rising’s resilience design and permagarden program, South Sudanese refugees in Palabek refugee settlement deploy techniques that help mitigate destructive flooding and seasonal drought. Mulch, contour swales and berms, deep soil preparation, biomass planting, drought tolerant perennials and tree crops. The permagarden method helps meet the short-term food needs of the refugees as it builds their long-term resilience. Despite refugee camps being inherently degenerative, refugees learn to manage natural resources through the intentional design of their compound, harvesting water and capturing waste streams to enhance the fertility and productivity of their 30m x 30m plot of land. The management of existing trees and planting other multipurpose trees, living fence and other biomass plantings provide materials for building, pest remedies, dry season nutrition and medicine. This helps reduce pressures on the environment – such as the collection of fuelwood, gathering of wild foods, burning of charcoal - that will continue to worsen as time goes on, exacerbating tensions between host communities and refugees. Strengthening the ecological base of food systems also reduces vulnerability across time by shoring up resilience in the face of climate instability and extreme weather events.

For more information: https://www.africanwomenrising.org/about-us/agriculture/

Drying the harvest from her refugee permagarden at the onset of the dry season, Palabek refugee settlement.

Palabek Refugee Settlement, Northern Uganda. Incorporating the Resilience Design and permagarden methodologies of the USAID TOPS/SCALE program. December 13, 2018.

Learning principles from African Women Rising’s resilience design and permagarden program, South Sudanese refugees in Palabek refugee settlement deploy techniques that help mitigate destructive flooding and seasonal drought in the context of displacement. Mulch, contour swales and berms, deep soil preparation, biomass planting, drought tolerant perennials and tree crops- these are all core activities that help AWR farmers plan for a food-secure future. The permagarden method helps meet the short-term food needs of the refugees as it builds their long-term resilience. Despite refugee camps being inherently degenerative, refugees learn to manage natural resources through the intentional design of their compound, harvesting water and capturing waste streams to enhance the fertility and productivity of their 30m x 30m plot of land. The management of existing trees and planting other multipurpose trees, living fence and other biomass plantings provide materials for building, pest remedies, dry season nutrition and medicine. This helps reduce pressures on the environment – such as the collection of fuelwood, gathering of wild foods, burning of charcoal - that will continue to worsen as time goes on, exacerbating tensions between host communities and refugees. Strengthening the ecological base of food systems also reduces vulnerability across time by shoring up resilience in the face of climate instability and extreme weather events.

For more information: https://www.africanwomenrising.org/about-us/agriculture/

A farmer in Palabek Ogili, Northern Uganda, harvesting greens for an evening meal from her garden.

July 2018. Palabek Ogili, a host community for Palabek Refugee Settlement, Northern Uganda. Incorporating the Resilience Design methodologies of the USAID TOPS/SCALE program.

A host community for refugees from South Sudan, Palabek Ogili has seen pressure on the natural resource base of its community dramatically increase since the opening of Palabek refugee settlement a few years ago. Recognizing that competition for scarce resources between refugees and host community members can lead to even greater conflict and environmental degradation, African Women Rising’s Resilience Design field crop program helps farmers conserve precious water and soil resources as they continue to grow food to feed their families.

Participants in African Women Rising’s agricultural programs learn skills to conserve and manage rainfall, use locally available soil amendments to build soil fertility, and design cropping systems that can provide food and income well into the lean hunger and dry seasons ahead.

Deep soil preparation, proactively ‘banking’ rainwater in the soil through contour swales and berms, mulching the landscape, drought tolerant crop varieties, perennial crops that bear food in the dry season- these are all techniques that help protect key water and soil ecosystem services in the face of a shifting environment.

For more information: https://www.africanwomenrising.org/about-us/agriculture/

Palabek Refugee Settlement, Northern Uganda. Incorporating the Resilience Design and Permagarden methodologies of the USAID TOPS/SCALE program. July 24, 2019.

Working with refugees to map the flow of water and nutrients across the landscape in Palabek refugee settlement. This participatory exercise is part of African Women Rising’s permagarden program that proactively trains refugees to mitigate flooding and drought by understanding the way heavy rainfall, sunshine, and the slope of the land all can negatively affect the landscape. Focusing on the basic principles of water and soil biology and using a design framework to help farmers capture rainwater and enrich the soil using local materials such as manure, wood ash, tree leaves and charcoal dust. It’s a process of learning and using guiding principles to design the best set of interventions possible.

For more information: https://www.africanwomenrising.org/about-us/agriculture/

Encouraged by leaders of a new, farmer-focused enterprise called Sesame Farmers Development Association in Magway Township in Myanmar's Central Dry Zone, producers in July and August 2019 began experimenting with new methods of dealing with erratic and extreme weather aimed at preventing crop losses. The Association teamed up with USAID's Value Chains for Rural Development project and the local Land Use Department to brainstorm ways they could better conserve water and control erosion in their sesame fields. By using small, easy-to-build, earthen "check dams" in shallow trenches around their fields, farmers developed new ability to prevent their fields from being inundated during periods of torrential rain. They also began planting wild almond saplings as windbreaks around their sesame fields to stem erosion and provide a second source of income (the trees produce sterculia gum that can be exported to Korea.) The new practices are working, farmers say, and sesame plants are healthier than in previous seasons, with "extra" stems flowering beautifully in advance of the coming harvest.