Climatelinks Photo Gallery

Climate change is imposing stress on water availability in mountain localities in Nepal. Marginalized households with limited land holding are getting more vulnerable due to climate change and its impact on water availability. So men are migrating in search of alternative livelihood options while women are also coming upfront in professions that were previously considered only for men. This is helping then to earn bread from their family and to be empowered in a sense while adapting to change.
Activity Depicted : Woman involved in gravel extraction
Picture Location: Humla District Nepal, 2018
USAID supported program: Paani/DAI

Monte Sinai, Chiapas, 2019.
Project: The Alliance for Sustainable Landscapes and Markets

Within the framework of the “Alliance for Sustainable Landscapes and Markets” financed by USAID and implemented by Rainforest Alliance in Mexico we strengthen resilient, sustainable farm and forestland management of coffee producers in Chiapas.

The diversification of crops in coffee landscapes is essential to transform agricultural practices towards a more sustainable future. Not only do fruit trees in coffee crops give shadow, protection and nurture to coffee plants, making them more resilient to funguses and diseases but they also help in the food security of rural communities and in the sustainability of coffee in Mexico.

In Alliance with Olam, we are working with 200 coffee producers in the restoration of their landscapes. We are restoring and reforesting 1, 000 degraded hectares of coffee crops that were devastated by the coffee rust commonly called “Roya” in Mexico.

This picture was taken by Victor Mugarura September 9, 2019, in Ngoma District in Eastern Rwanda. It features one the beneficiaries of Feed the Future Rwanda Hinga Weze Activity, a five-year $32.6 million USAID-funded project (2017-2022) that aims to sustainably increase smallholder farmers’ income, improve the nutritional status of women and children, and increase the resilience of Rwanda’s agricultural and food systems to a changing climate. Hinga Weze works to empower over 530,000 smallholder farmers across 10 districts.

This woman is pictured near a water reservoir constructed as a partnership with Rwanda Agriculture and Livestock Board (RAB) to set up several solar-powered irrigation schemes to irrigate 300 Hectares in 4 districts. The solar scheme is made up of a water source, a solar plates and generator and a 500 cubic metre reservoir. Like all selected scheme points, the pictured reservoir is part of a complete solar-powered scheme located in Rukumberi Sector, a semi-arid area in Ngoma District in Eastern Rwanda where her cooperative will now be able to grow vegetables all-year-round mainly watermelon, tomatoes and green pepper.

This picture was taken by Victor Mugarura September 9, 2019, in Ngoma District in Eastern Rwanda. It features one the beneficiaries of Feed the Future Rwanda Hinga Weze Activity, a five-year $32.6 million USAID-funded project (2017-2022) that aims to sustainably increase smallholder farmers’ income, improve the nutritional status of women and children, and increase the resilience of Rwanda’s agricultural and food systems to a changing climate. Hinga Weze works to empower over 530,000 smallholder farmers across 10 districts.

This man is pictured tending to his tomato garden irrigated using a solar-powered scheme constructed as a partnership with Rwanda Agriculture and Livestock Board (RAB) and Ngoma District. This is part of a project to set up several solar-powered irrigation schemes to irrigate 300 Hectares in 4 districts. The solar scheme is made up of a water source, a solar plates and generator and a 500 cubic metre reservoir. The pictured sprinklers and solar panels are part of a complete solar-powered scheme located in Rukumberi Sector, a semi-arid area in Ngoma District in Eastern Rwanda where his cooperative will now be able to grow vegetables all-year-round mainly watermelon, tomatoes and green pepper.

This picture was taken by Marie Therese Imanishimwe, an employee of Feed the Future Rwanda Hinga Weze on June 30, 2019, in Nyabihu District in Northern Rwanda. It features a group of farmers supported by Hinga Weze, a five-year $32.6 million USAID-funded project (2017-2022) that aims to sustainably increase smallholder farmers’ income, improve the nutritional status of women and children, and increase the resilience of Rwanda’s agricultural and food systems to a changing climate. Hinga Weze works to empower over 530,000 smallholder farmers across 10 districts.

These farmers are being coached on proper spacing of crops as part of the package of good agricultural practices given to farmers in order to improve crop productivity.

Paddy rice transplanting is a laborious task. In some countries, women bear the bulk of this back-stressing work. However, in this area of Madagascar, women and men work together in transplanting rice seedlings. Another interesting feature of rice planting in this area is the cooperation of neighbors in planting individually owned plots.

November 30, 2018

In developing countries, women often have key economic roles in fish marketing and processing. Fishery stocks worldwide are depleting rapidly due to overfishing and pollution and face additional risks from climate change. Fish are critical sources of high-quality protein for human and wildlife populations.

September 23, 2015.

USAID's Clean Power Asia (CPA) program partnered with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to assess the power sector of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) vulnerability to natural, technological, and human-caused threats, and to develop a resilience action plan to address the highest-risk vulnerabilities.

In support of these activities, technical experts from NREL and CPA visited existing power generation facilities, including a hydro-power dam site, and the EDL-GEN solar power project in the Naxaithong district, Vientiane. The EDL-Gen solar power project is the first-ever utility scale PV project in Lao PDR. Previously, the USAID-NREL Partnership conducted a technical potential assessment for solar PV in Laos.

Read more about the solar PV technical potential assessment in this report: http://bit.ly/2kEbSMF. Learn more about the power sector vulnerability assessment in this webinar: http://bit.ly/2P3Triy. Photo taken by Nathan Lee, NREL, November, 2018.

The Bangladesh Wind Resource Assessment project, made possible with support from USAID's Bangladesh mission and the Bangladesh Power Division, focused on utilizing observed data from meteorological stations to adjust and inform a model that created a database for Bangladeshi investors, policy-makers and transmission planners to quantify and locate where the best wind resource and development sites were. In this photo, a boy in Chandpur, Bangladesh is learning how wind is measured with a cup anemometer. Read more about the project in this report: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/71077.pdf. Photo taken by Mark Jacobson, researcher from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in 2015.

Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica, November 2014. In spite of its small size, Costa Rica accounts for nearly 6 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Cloud forests like the one at Monteverde are crucial habitat for plants and animals, such as this colorful hummingbird. Recent studies predict that cloud forests worldwide will diminish by 60 to 80 percent in the next 25 years as a result of climate change.

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.

Limón Province, Costa Rica, November 2014. Pineapples are by definition unsustainable, requiring high use of agrochemicals and replacing large swaths of land with a single, spiny crop. However, pineapples are also extremely popular, so in spite of their inherent unsustainability, they’re not going anywhere. To meet increasing global demand for sustainably produced crops, companies in Costa Rica are investing in improved agricultural practices, certifications, and better conditions for laborers.

Chirripo Volcano, Costa Rica, 2014. Agroforestry is gaining popularity worldwide as a method of sustainable land management. At AsoProLa, an agricultural cooperative high in the mountains of Costa Rica's Puntarenas province, coffee is grown in the shade of banana trees. Coffee grown in this manner requires less agrochemicals, provides habitat to animals, and tastes better than non-shade grown varieties.

Mangroves are a salt-tolerant species that can grow in warm water, and are frequently planted to help adapt against climate change impacts, such as reducing the impacts of shoreline damage and alleviating seawater intrusion. In Zanzibar, a local NGO called ZACEDY is committed to empowering local citizens to build their adaptive capacity by planting mangroves along the coast. Part of ZACEDY’S mission is also to uplift members of the community by creating local job opportunities. These are some of the women involved in the mangrove planting project. At the national level, the United Republic of Tanzania is engaged in a National Adaptation Planning process to scale up the country’s adaptation efforts—such as building coastal resilience through planting mangroves—focused on improving cross-sectoral coordination, integrating adaptation into development planning, and expanding access to climate finance.

In the arid regions of northern Kenya, groundwater boreholes are providing increased climate resilience and water security. In this picture, nomadic pastoralists and their camels access groundwater.

Kusor, Palawan, Philippines, June 20, 2019.
By Jessie Cereno, Talakatha Creatives.

In Kusor, southern Palawan, Philippines, women farmers plant cassava to help augment their livelihood and get less resources from the forest. The USAID-funded Protect Wildlife Project, together with partners like Lutheran World Relief and Sunlight Foods Corporation, is teaching and helping communities in southern Palawan to grow high-value crops, such as ube and cassava, and improve their farming practices. Together with local government partners, Protect Wildlife trains beneficiary communities in sustainable farming of high-value crops as an alternative to livelihood practices that adversely impact our natural resources and wildlife habitats. The project partnered with ECLOF, along with local governments and the private sector, to help communities get started on farming high-value crops and connecting them with buyers who can guarantee sustainable purchase of those crops, while redirecting farmers’ activities away from forests to help conserve natural resources and protect biodiversity. By enhancing their livelihoods, these farmers, many of whom are from upland indigenous communities who rely on traditional slash-and-burn farming, exert less pressure on their land, forests, water, wildlife and other natural resources, particularly in the Mount Mantalingahan protected landscape where they live.