Climatelinks Photo Gallery

Maya Rana is a small farmer in B-Gaun, Banke district, trained to utilize safe Integrated Pest Management (IPM) developed by the USAID IPM Innovation Lab (IPM-IL, 2015-21), led by Virginia Tech and iDE managed in Nepal. Climate change has made disease and pest problems worse. Nepal has been impacted by invasive pests including the Tuta Absoluta and Fall Armyworm. Tuta is a devastating tomato pest that arrived in Nepal in 2016. The IPM-IL developed an effective, safe IPM based Tuta package with the agricultural research system. Maya is checking a Wota-T trap to monitor for Tuta moths and uses safe bio-pesticides (Neem and BT) to control outbreaks. Maya also demonstrated a bamboo net house to grow tomatoes designed by the IPM-IL to exclude Tuta. In the last year, Maya earned over $8,000, including $1,800 from tomatoes using the IPM technologies. Maya uses many IPM-IL verified technologies including Trichoderma, pheromone traps, bio-pesticides, coco peat clean medium for nurseries, drip (for resilience), insect netting, and more. The IPM-IL is working with USAID Nepal FTF projects, the private sector, and the government’s agricultural research and extension system to scale adoption of IPM based crop packages to cope with climate impacts.

When he was still young, Emiliano used to trek through the forests of Mt. Kitanglad with his father. In one of their excursions, they spotted an eagle. Emiliano told his father that they should shoot it, but the latter vehemently refused and warned him that if they killed the eagle, they would anger the spirits. The Talaandig tribe, to which Emiliano’s family belongs, believe that bad luck would befall a family if any member killed anything that lives in the forest. Since then, Emiliano vowed to protect the eagles for the rest of his life, and part of this mission is protecting the forests where the eagles live.

His dedication to protecting eagles, and the fact that he had seen all six living Philippine eagles in the mountain, earned him the title “Eagle Master” among his peers. In one of his forest patrols in early 2018, Emiliano discovered his seventh eagle, then estimated to be about three months old. He named the young raptor “Pamarahig”, a local word which means “plea”, to resound his earnest request: “I am reaching out to the world that we should protect forests and wildlife.” For Emiliano, Pamarahig symbolizes this very important message.

USAID/Malawi supports sustainable forest management and forestry friendly enterprises. This picture shows Pyxus Agriculture Limited concession within the Viphya Plantation, captured during a field visit with the USAID/Malawi SEG Office Director. The main product harvested from the plantation is firewood, which is supplied to tobacco farmers contracted by Alliance One Tobacco Malawi Limited. The firewood is used for curing tobacco. Post-harvest, some residual woods (lops and tops) do not meet the criteria for tobacco farmers’ firewood requirements due to smallness in diameter (below 6cm) or lengths (below 1m). The residual wood is used to produce legal, licensed and sustainable charcoal. The charcoal provides an alternative to the illegal charcoal in order to reduce deforestation through the illegal cutting of trees.

Kalanje Village, Mangochi District, March 2021, Malawi. The vertical garden method combines permaculture and bio-intensive agriculture to create a highly productive home garden using a small amount of land and 50% less water (only the top under the cover has to be watered, then the water trickles down). It utilizes sustainable agriculture practices and local materials making it used in increasingly dry environments due to climate change. USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) is supporting Malawi (through WFP) to change lives of rural communities through a range of various climate change mitigation interventions. These includes productive asset creation for smallholder farmers to be better equipped against climate change.

Active members of Disi Women Cooperative have been working in these nurseries located in Wadi Rum. These nurseries aim to preserve and grow seedlings to be planted in their natural habitat, at the heart of the desert.

These women are supporting and providing for their families by working in the Mitsubishi Corporation funded “Wadi Rum Ecosystems Restoration Project”.

Clean water is already hard to come by in the Korogocho (Swahili for shoulder to shoulder) slums of Nairobi, but when heavy rainfall leads to flooding, it only exacerbates the situation. Clean water sources get contaminated, leaving residents vulnerable to many risks, including waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

Namilongo School, Zomba District, Malawi, April 2021 - Matilda Chikondo and Standard 8 students. WFP is working with smallholder farmers to improve crop yield and protect their environment from the effects of climate change. These communities also partner with surrounding schools, re-greening the area and setting up veggie gardens. Matilda Chikondo believes it is important to support the school as a community member. She has two children in this school and together with the neighbours, they have planted over 4,000 trees. This protects the school from natural disasters which have become more intense and frequent because of climate change. The veggie gardens are used to teach children about climate-smart agriculture and money from the sales are used to help kids in need to buy school supplies and uniforms. USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) is supporting Matilda and 85,000 other families (through WFP) to change lives of rural communities through of a range of various climate change mitigation intervention.

This photo shows the FOSA youth group of southwestern Madagascar in action, cleaning up previously burned areas in the protected area and planting seedlings from their successful tree nursery to help with reforestation efforts. The Menabe Antimena Protected Area is experiencing unprecedented rates of deforestation - at this rate the forest within the protected area may be gone in 4 years. A complex set of issues has contributed to the destruction of this protected area, but perhaps the biggest contributing factor is the massive influx of migrants to the area who are fleeing famine and poverty in the drought stricken south of Madagascar. These climate migrants participate in the illegal cultivation of maize and other crops within the protected area to survive - the demand for these illegal products is mostly being driven by a corrupt network of powerful corporations. If this unique dry forest disappears, the already dry region will likely experience desertification similar to the south, resulting in a second crisis for the region. Youth groups like FOSA provide a ray of hope in the midst of this dire situation - they recognize the threats to their own livelihoods through the destruction of their local environment, and are taking the reforestation of the region into their own hands. With the support of the USAID Mikajy activity in Madagascar, this youth group started a tree nursery to help reforest the protected area with native tree species as well as to provide economic benefit to FOSA members. They sell their seedlings at a modest price, and help others join in the reforestation efforts. They also sell cash crops in addition to native tree species. Tetra Tech ARD is the implementing partner for USAID Mikajy.

In February 2020, a team of USAID staff from E3's Global Climate Change Office and MSI consultants visited a field site in Siem Reap province to conduct a focus group discussion with beneficiaries and farmers of Cambodia's Rice Field Fisheries II Project. The purpose of the Agency-wide Climate Risk Management (CRM) evaluation was to gain a better understanding of how climate risks to USAID activities are being managed and how the CRM policy supports climate-resilience development. From February 20-26, the team conducted key informant interviews and focus group discussions for five USAID/Cambodia activities in three provinces: Sen Monorom, Preah Vihear, and (photographed here) Siem Reap. One finding from this group discussion in the photograph was that farmers were employing adaptive management practices, such as prioritization for at-risk community groups in the rice field fisheries. In this way, beneficiaries were managing climate risks affecting USAID programming and development results.

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. 

We travelled to meet with 9 primary schools in the desert of Northern Kenya to hear about their poor access to water and the resultant poor sanitation and hygiene levels. We congregated under this large tree, an odd but very welcome thing in a desert. With droughts becoming longer, girls are continually pulled out of school to help their mothers carry water across longer, unsafer distances. Many girls are married off to ensure the survival of their family. This is the reality of climate change for the most affected girls, many of whom do not understand where it all went wrong. 

The goal of my project is to teach and encourage youth in schools and communities to learn about the climate crisis, develop a solution for an issue they are passionate about, and take action to lead real, powerful environmental change in their communities. Working with locals and stakeholders around the community, I will create a plan for change and to achieve goals aimed at addressing climate change and ecosystem destruction. This plan will assist all efforts to shift into regeneration. It will also assist in changing laws and policies in the environment where all of this takes place. I will be directly reaching out to different communities in order to have their input and see if they want to collaborate.

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.   

Silverio Mendez embraces his daughter on their family farm in January of 2019. He and his wife Irma Mendez live in Barrio El Cedro, Chiquimula, Guatemala with their 5 daughters and 2 sons. Silverio has lived here all of his life and his family has been on this land for approximately three generations. The area of Honduras where they live is known as the Dry Corridor, where water is in short supply due to extended droughts.

CRS works in this area with the Water Smart Agriculture program (ASA) to help farmers to improve the soil quality and its ability to hold moisture by applying Conservation Agriculture techniques. These techniques protect and restore vital soil and water resources. Relatively easy to implement, water-smart agriculture is cost-effective, and delivers fast results and long-term benefits such as sustainability and resilience.  This helps farmers, crops and communities thrive, which leads to more secure and prosperous farms in areas where farmers now face extreme poverty because of an increasingly erratic and extreme climate. CRS worked with Silverio to adopt these practices and he has been able to see that the soil humidity is much greater in the plot with cover crop.

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.

William Sanico resides in a barangay (village) in Bago City, Negros Occidental, that is located within the buffer zone of Mt. Kanlaon Natural Park. He is a special kind of farmer. He farms green charcoal for a living.

In the province of Negros Occidental, the popular local grilled chicken dish called “inasal” drives the demand for charcoal and fuelwood. Because of this, locals would cut trees inside and around the park to produce and sell charcoal as their means of livelihood..

USAID B+WISER helped the city expand and realign this initiative to also mitigate deforestation due to charcoal making and timber poaching, and increase awareness on forest conservation. The program also helped Bago City develop a payment for ecosystem services mechanism to generate funds to support this program and other forest and watershed conservation activities.

Today, William is among over 100 farmers supported by this USAID B+WISER Project-enhanced project, benefitting from environmentally sustainable livelihood and improved income, while also helping alleviate deforestation and advocating forest protection and conservation.

Participating in this agroforestry program, William is happy. Not only is he able to provide for his family, he is also helping save the remaining forest of Mt. Kanlaon Natural Park.