Climatelinks Photo Gallery

Mrs. Tahani, an active member of Sabha’s Community (Mafraq Governorate, Jordan), working in Sabha’s Nursery, learning sustainable techniques, and contributing to supporting her family and overall community livelihoods. Through WADI, women will play an integral role in community-based natural resource management across Jordan. In partnership with the Hashemite Fund for the Development of Jordan Badia, the first women-run community nursery was established at Sabha, Mafraq in 2016. The nursery produces high-quality native seedlings using state-of-the art practices. The seedlings are used for landscape restoration throughout Jordan. Many of these women broke social barriers to work at the nursery with proven professional and personal success. They are now role models in their communities and are setting a standard of professional excellence for nursery management in the Kingdom. Hashemite Fund for the Development of Jordan Badia is a partner organization under the United States Forest Service funded Watershed Development Initiative.

A woman stays inside a temporary makeshift hut as recent flood swept over the area and caused damage to the house, cattle and belongings in Munshiganj, Bangladesh. Almost every year floods, which are primarily caused by climate change, occur in Bangladesh.

Numerous analyses have highlighted Nigeria's potential to accelerate growth through investment in farm and non-farm businesses in conflict-afflicted areas like North-East Nigeria. Under Feed the Future Nigeria's Integrated Agriculture Activity program in the North East, a series of non-farm-based skill development trainings supported Halima Hamidu (in photo), an Internally Displaced Person-IDP and mother of eight children. She was trained in soap, balm, vaseline, toilet cleaning liquid, and hand sanitizer production. Apart from using the products for her family, Halima sells them to other women in her community to support the school fee of her children and buy food. Inspired by her financial independence, more women in her community are interested in joining the business. The insurgency in the Borno state of North-East Nigeria forced Halima to migrate from the border town of Madagali first into an IDP camp and later into the Yolde Pate community of Yola South area of Adamawa State.   

As an economic growth driver, the Nigerian Government envisions transforming agriculture as a sustainable and profitable sector with technology transfer for economic and food security. Nigeria has almost 50 percent of the female population, most under 30, with prevalent inequalities and poverty in the North-East. With no basic understanding of poultry farming, Aishatu, 30, a diploma holder, is now in her 9th set of poultry farm production. From raising just 2-3 chicks, she now makes a profit of ₦35,000 (US$85) per month, enough to support her family, paying her daughter Rukaya's school fees, and helping her aged parent's medication. Trained under Feed the Future Nigeria's Integrated Agriculture Activity program on poultry management, good care, nutritious feed, and medication, Aishatu is now a proud poultry business owner with over 100 broiler chickens and five turkeys. Before this, she was engaged in sachet water hawking in the streets of Yola, in the Adamawa state of Nigeria, just to make ends meet and often got exposed to dangerous activities. 

Nigeria is considered a food deficit country, where 72 percent of the population is employed in the agriculture sector, a mainstay of its economy. Ibrahim Lawan, 32, in this photo with certified sorghum seeds, is accompanied by other farmers of Douwuro Producer group of Namtari Manga community, in South Yola area of Adamawa state in North-East Nigeria. A smallholder farmer, he is known as a certified Seed Producer for Sorghum and Rice in his community. In this region of Nigeria, crop yields have reduced due to climate change from dry spells, drought, increased temperature, weather variability, invasive crops, and pests. The smallholder farmers in his community prefer to buy seeds from Ibrahim over the traditional varieties as they are drought tolerant, require less water, are early maturing, pest resistant, and high yielding. Trained under Feed the Future Nigeria's Integrated Agriculture Activity program, Ibrahim sells certified quality seeds in his neighborhood and takes care of his family expenses very well. 

Grace Michael, 45, is a farmer in the Zarawuyaku community of Biu, Borno state in North-East Nigeria. With seven children, she is the only income earner in the family and an active member of the Diza Farmers Producer group, formed under Feed the Future Nigeria's Integrated Agriculture Activity program in October 2020. Her group selected Grace as a Community Based Seed Producer CBSP and was provided with Foundation seeds of groundnut (SAMNUT-22 variety) to grow Certified seeds after training from Nigerian National Agricultural Seed Council-NASC. The improved variety of groundnut seeds she grows are climate-resilient in terms of high yielding, early maturing, drought-resistant, pest-resistant, and have high oil content compared to the traditional variety. Grace, who lost her husband ten years back, expects about 1,000kg of certified seeds that she can sell for ₦471,500 (US$1,150). With this income, she can support herself and her children to buy food, education, and better care.  

Climate change-related risks in North-East Nigeria add to poor rainfall, droughts, food insecurity, and risk of famine. The crop and vegetable growing season of June-July is crucial for Easter Thomas, 54, a mother of eight children who live in the Wakama community of Biu in Borno state of Nigeria. She is an agri-entrepreneur who understands the importance of food access during the coming dry season and increasing climate change events of low rainfall and droughts. While diversifying her livestock and chickens, she also prepares herself for the next 6-8 months, when there will be almost no access to vegetables in her area. She is drying the Okora-ladyfinger and Amaranthus leaves traditionally by processing and preserving them to extend their storage life to make them available in the off-season. Easter was trained under Feed the Future Nigeria's Integrated Agriculture Activity program in August 2020 on various livestock management and nutrition-related aspects, including homestead gardens to grow different vegetables. 

I had been in the beachside city of Nha Trang for a few days, enjoying daily beautiful sunrises (in spite of not being a morning person). On the final day, I was walking around, and I found Mr Hiep, one of the "easy riders" who take foreigners on all-included motorcycle tours of Vietnam's countryside. I paid about $60/day for six days, which covered all of our expenses and included, for free, riding behind Mr. Hiep (but in front of my strongly secured backpack on the back of the bike). 

This view was spotted on the first day, as we drove from coastal Nha Trang upward, into mountainous central Vietnam. It was beautiful, but looking back, it was also one of the first of many instances where I spotted deforestation on my trip. It's quite visible in this photo, if you imagine what the untouched landscape might look like. Even the tallest peak has some deforestation. 

In spite of all that, it's a beautiful photo, and there are many landscapes in Vietnam like it. 

Peaceful view of a fishing boat off the coast of Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam.

Bustling Nha Trang, Vietnam, as seen from the Po Nagar Cham Towers, a set of ruins located above and across the river from the city proper. Po Nagar is an oasis of green amongst quite a busy city - the distinction is seen here as the eye wanders from bottom right to top left. 

This picture shows CaRE-NGO Kaduna's Climate-Smart Agriculture Centre where they do rooftop farming, corridor vegetable farming, grow yams in sacks, vegetative propagation of trees, a tree with more than 10 varieties of mangoes, fish farming, grasscutter farming, rabbit farming, snail farming and lots more; in the urban center. These pictures evidently demonstrate the effort of Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Small Grant Programmes (SGP) of the United Nations Development Programme in Nigeria and CaRE-NGO Kaduna, in the fight against climate change. These facilities are currently open and accepting visitors to see what is being done in this center. The source of these pictures is CaRE-NGO Kaduna Climate-Smart Agriculture Centre in Sabon Tasha in Kaduna.

This photo is taken on the dated 14 August 2018 from Manikganj, Bangladesh. In  this photo one woman is harvesting jute plants from land. Jute-growing areas of Bangladesh to explore the potential resource use efficiency for economic benefits of selected climate smart practices to marginal landholder farmers. Integrated crop management (ICM) practices as part of climate smart jute farming (CSJF) was practised by 170 randomly selected farmers in six villages. An estimation of cost of adoption, change in fibre yields, net returns and human development index (HDI) before and after ICM interventions was done. The mean HDI value increased by 38.85% and farm income by 31.5%. The net benefits of adaptation to climate smart jute technologies were estimated based on specific adaptation actions. Empirical scientific evidence of the study indicates that the livelihoods of marginal landholders can be improved using new crop varieties, changing planting dates and bringing necessary changes in other variable inputs for line sowing, intercropping, weeding, nutrients, water and retting.

The 338,000 newly planted acacia trees in El Bagre in Antioquia, Colombia, transform 304 hectares of land that previously resembled desert as a result of illegal gold mining. Acacia trees not only bring life back to eroded soils, but they provide an all-year supply of floral nectar for bees that populate apiaries recently established with 114 families in El Bagre.

Not only does apiculture contribute to their incomes—they sold 1.3 tons of honey from their first harvest and expect to raise that number to 6 tons this year—its impact on local ecosystems contrasts strongly with gold mine production that these families previously depended on. The trees also help mitigate climate change and store more than 250 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare.

USAID’s Artisanal Gold Mining Activity worked with local communities, the Colombian government and the private sector in the departments of Antioquia and Chocó to rehabilitate 17,000 hectares of degraded mining land, while simultaneously strengthening livelihoods and contributing to the health of the environment.

A Guatemalan farmer plants tree seedlings on his coffee farm to reforest and diversify his livelihood. The Feed the Future Guatemala Coffee Value Chains Project in Guatemala’s Western Highlands provides technical assistance to members of poor rural households working in the coffee value chain and horticulture. Through improved soil conservation, agroforestry, agricultural best management practices and coffee processing, farmers sustainably increase the value of harvests from existing fields. They also increase tree cover by increasing trees outside of forests, which reduces the need to harvest timber and wood fuel from forests. The resulting reduced rates of deforestation and forest degradation will help mitigate the contribution of forest carbon to climate change.

Reem Al-Zubaidi went against social norms and left her village—Om Hussein, Jordan—to work at the Sabha Community Nursery to grow different Mediterranean native plants such as saltbrush (Altriplex halimus) seedlings. The U.S. Forest Service, in partnership with The Hashemite Fund for Development of Jordan Badia, implemented the USAID-funded Sustainable Environmental and Economic Development (SEED) project, which provided Reem with intensive technical and soft skills training that made her a star at Sabha Community Nursery. As native seedlings like Mediterranean saltbrush develop, they go through a “hardening phase” that helps them endure the harsh conditions of the desert and attain a survival rate as high as 85 percent. Rangeland seedlings absorb and store carbon dioxide due to their quick growth and comparatively rapid reproduction rate. Reem’s contribution, along with those of other SEED beneficiaries, sets the stage for a landscape reforestation process that will provide essential ecosystem services and help mitigate climate change as seedlings lock carbon in their fiber.

USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance is working with the World Food Programme to change the lives of rural communities in Malawi through a range of environment and development interventions. Since 2017, farmers in the Usi village, Machinga District, have planted more than 1,800 trees. These plantings, along with the adoption of natural regeneration practices, have contributed to an 80 percent increase in biomass and forest cover in the catchment area. Meanwhile, farmer adoption of water harvesting measures and production practices raised the groundwater table by 35 cm and increased crop yields by 60 percent from an average of 500 to 800 kilograms. USAID’s sustainable landscapes programs in Malawi have supported community land management plans and the Government of Malawi’s Nationally Determined Contribution and its Forest and Landscape Restoration Strategy.