Climatelinks Photo Gallery

Making the irrigation system more climate-resilient includes securing land titles for water users and paying upstream communities for conserving the forests that provide water to the irrigation system. Unseasonable droughts and unpredictable rainfall are no longer a worry. We are able to reliably grow rice and other crops because the canal provides sufficient water.

Ruth Tercero used to sow corn and beans for family consumption and no return of investment. As years went by, climate change challenges increased and she faced long periods of drought and low access to water, which affected or caused the complete loss of her crops. Working with the project, Ruth diversified her crops to amaranth and found an alternative to increase her income and overcome climate change challenges. In addition to using amaranth in several meals a day, Ruth could also buy from local markets corn, beans, and other food like animal protein, fruits and vegetables, that allowed her family to consume a more diverse diet.
 

Lawin Patrollers in the Philippines serve in more functions than just forest patrols. They documents violations, prepare reports, participate in apprehensions, and help educate communities where illegal forest activities are rampant. USAID and the Philippines' Department of Environment and Natural Resources have developed an innovative system to aid the forest patrollers in doing their job. Lawin Patrollers are determined to fulfill their duties in order to contribute to forest protection. 

Dzaleka Refugee camp, Dowa District, August 2020. Musago Mirida is a mother of 3 and a refugee from Burundi in Malawi. She was born a refugee in Tanzania in the 1970s. In 2012, she went back to Burundi and stayed there for two years. In Burundi, she lived along the lake Tanganyika. Her husband was a fisherman and she was cultivating rice, sweet potatoes, plantain. When they came back to Burundi, neighbors were not happy since they were competing for natural resources (water and land) which have become more scarce with the impact of climate change. This evolved into an open conflict and because of violence, she had to leave Burundi to Malawi in 2014. Now, she depends on the food assistance and she works in people’s fields to have some money to buy clothes for her children. Thanks to USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) support, Musago and 45,000 refugees living in Malawi are receiving cash assistance which enable them to buy food in the local market (such as rice in the picture).

This is what the shores of Lake Victoria look like from Luzira Port Bell in Kampala, Uganda. Local industries dump chemicals, while fishermen, residents and tourists dump plastic bottles and old fishing nets. The water hyacinth has also invaded the lake, making it difficult for even motor boats to travel across the lake.

Lake Victoria is the world’s largest tropical lake and supports the largest fresh water fishery in the world, producing about 1 million tons of fish every year. Fish cannot continue to survive in this water much longer. While global climate dialogue and policies are great, we need leadership that can take action today to save this precious resource.

To mitigate the impacts of climate change and resource depletion in the Imiría Regional Conservation Area, located in the Peruvian Amazon, artisanal fishermen from four neighboring Indigenous communities, local and regional authorities, and experts in the field are joining efforts to assess the Imiría lagoon’s fisheries’ resources. With technical assistance from the USAID Pro-Bosques Activity, a comprehensive fisheries evaluation is taking place and will serve as key input in the design of a Fisheries Management Plan, which will contribute to the sustainable management and governance of natural resources in this regional conservation area. 

June 2021, Lokokoi, Karamoja, Uganda.

Stephen Lomugemoi, 30, in his maize field. Stephen provides for his five children through farming, an increasingly difficult task in an agricultural area with increasingly inconsistent rainfall. He says his harvests are vulnerable to dry spells and severe flooding, which can both destroy crops, and he struggles with food shortages for 2-3 months of every year.

Two years ago, Stephen and his neighbors participated in a Mercy Corps training to learn about drought-resistant crops and improved agricultural techniques, then started a farmer group to maintain a plot of maize together. The practices they’ve implemented have greatly improved the productivity of the land, and Stephen was motivated to diversify his personal farming to include beans, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes, which has benefitted his family. He says that before, he didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but with the knowledge he received from Mercy Corps, he feels confident that his family will be food secure in the future.

Cattle are being directed into pens for feeding in Lukange, Zimbabwe, in September of 2019. Droughts and floods happen with increasing frequency in Zimbabwe and other countries in Southern Africa. Small-scale farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture are hit the hardest by the unpredictable cycles of drought and flood. Through demonstration sites, CRS is teaching low-income animal farmers in these affected areas new agricultural methods that help them plant drought-tolerant fodder crops to feed their animals.

Through the Zimbabwe Integrated Agriculture and Nutrition (Ag-Nut) project, CRS implements an integrated Value Chain approach in 15 rural wards in Beitbridge District, Matabeleland South Province. The Ag-Nut project uses Farmer Learning Centers (FLCs) as entry platforms into the community; teaching smallholder farmers to use improved forage and feed technologies to increase goat value chain productivity in the smallholder sector. CRS partners with ILRI and Caritas Masvingo on the Ag-Nut project.

This photo was taken in Silvia, Cauca, Colombia, and shows a group of Guambianos Indigenous people, who are working with Paramos and Forest Activity of USAID in the conservation of Paramos, one of the most important ecosystems in Colombia that provide water for 70% of the Colombian population.

The Paramos Ecosystem, according to investigations, can hide more carbon in the ground than tropical forests. Protecting and conserving these ecosystems is one of the main goals of the Colombian State as they aim to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement.

USAID's Paramos and Forests Activity is supporting the Colombian State in the protection of 100.000 hectares of paramos through changes in cattle and agriculture, and payments for environmental services, among other mechanisms.

The Indigenous Cabildo of Guambia is one of the partners of USAID in this goal.

For a lot of the women in the Puros Village, Kaokoland, Kunene Region, Namibia, collecting firewood is a daily task. This is a task for survival in a harsh desert climate where the search for firewood is more and more wide-ranging as this commodity becomes scarcer. This means having to walk further and further from the village week by week. 

USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean (CCBO) program – the agency’s flagship program for combating global ocean plastic pollution – enhances solid waste systems and capabilities to make sizeable contributions to climate change mitigation and adaptation. By building circular economies and improving system efficiencies, CCBO helps countries and communities around the world address the root causes of climate change and minimize their potential future impact, while also building more resilient systems and cities that can withstand and adapt to the current and anticipated effects of climate change. Samaná Province, Dominican Republic, primarily a tourist destination, produces over 134 tons of waste each day. Much of this waste is disposed of in open dumps, which emit methane and commonly spark air-polluting fires, as well as leak into local rivers and bays, flowing out to the sea. By remediating and beginning the closure of open dumps in the DR, CCBO has secured an estimated 31,345 Metric Tons (MT) – approximately 69 million lbs – from leaking into the environment and 217,675 MT – approximately 480 million lbs – of waste was aggregated through program technical assistance. This man, pictured here, walks through the open dump prior to its closure, picking more valuable pieces of waste.

A woman potato farmer inspects a demonstration farm in Hooghly, West Bengal. With a group of other women, she has leased land and entered the PepsiCo supply chain as an independent farmer for the first time. This was also the first women-led PepsiCo demonstration farm in West Bengal, increasing recognition of women’s role in agriculture. Over the past two years, USAID and PepsiCo have reached over 1,000 women farmers with improved agriculture techniques and provided gender awareness training to all PepsiCo staff in West Bengal. The innovative partnership between the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program and PepsiCo is demonstrating that women’s empowerment can increase the potato supplier base for PepsiCo, improve yields and profitability for rural farmers and PepsiCo, and promote the adoption of sustainable and regenerative farming practices that advance USAID’s and PepsiCo’s global climate change commitments. Working in partnership with women, USAID and PepsiCo are learning from women in the community about the constraints and opportunities for their increased participation and benefit sharing in the PepsiCo potato supply chain.

Workers carry piles of bricks on their heads in a brick factory in Narayanganj, Bangladesh. Brick kilns emit large quantities of environmental pollutants into the atmosphere causing harmful impact on agricultural yields, climate and health.

The ‘Midday Meal Scheme’ is a school meal programme of the Government of India designed to improve the nutritional status of school going children nationwide. The program supplies free lunches on working days for children in primary & upper primary classes in Government, Government aided, local body, Education Guarantee Scheme & alternate innovative education centers. Madarsa & Maqtabs is supported under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan & National Child Labour Project Schools are run by the Ministry of Labour.

Through this scheme, the Indian Government serves 120,000,000 children in over 1,265,000 schools & education guarantee scheme centers. It’s the largest such program in the world. This picture shows rural school children who are participating in the above mentioned ‘Midday Meal Scheme’ program during their lunch at a school campus in the East Medinipur district, West Bengal, India.

USAID’s Clean Cities, Blue Ocean (CCBO) program – the agency’s flagship program for combating global ocean plastic pollution – is providing economic recycling incentives and reducing emissions from transporting to distant recycling markets. The program grantee, the Plastics Credit Exchange (PCX), is implementing the Aling Tindera Network, a local waste to cash system to enable community members to sell plastics to local, women-owned businesses in exchange for cash. Recyclables are then routed directly to local, responsible recycling facilities. Supporting the creation of a market for ubiquitous community plastic waste also reduces the environmental impacts of plastics, helps to clean up communities, and puts cash back in the pockets of community members. In just two weeks, one USAID-supported Aling Tindera partner, Aling Janine (pictured here), not only diverted over 800 kilograms of plastic waste away from the streets of Barangay 161, but has also helped her neighborhood find ways to make extra income while cleaning up.

As the impact of climate change on coffee becomes more evident, producers and buyers question the intensive cultivation methods, which rely on inorganic fertilizers and full sun exposure, promoted during the last decades. Deforestation is another consequence of intensive cultivation, as producers clear forest to maximize yields. Deforestation releases greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. This isn’t the type of change that will sustain coffee cultivation today or in the future.

Solidaridad, an international civil society organization with over 50 years of experience in developing solutions to foster more sustainable supply chains, work with farmers to produce more on less land, it is what we call the Coffee of the Future, which protects the forest within farms and surrounding areas.

It has reduced its reliance on inorganic fertilizers; it’s produced in the shade and uses climate-resistant varieties. It also makes economic sense to producers. Over 10,000 producers across Latin America are already producing the Coffee of the Future.

This photo was taken in La Celia, Risaralda, Colombia, by Juan Manuel Cornejo. Coffee producer Orlando Castañeda appears in this photo, working in the shade on a coffee plantation as part of the Coffee of the Future program by Solidaridad