Climatelinks Photo Gallery

Southwest Bangladesh is a watery world. Houses perch on steep riverbanks. Storms pummel fragile coastlines. It’s hard not to see this starkly beautiful place as engaged in a battle between water and land, with the water winning. But the land has a new ally, a living hem of mangrove forests made possible by Winrock International’s Climate Resilient Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CREL) project, funded by USAID. “If we don’t have trees, we are flooded,” says Bharati Rani Bishwash, who was left homeless after a typhoon in 2009. It’s a view that many Bangladeshis share. “I’m taking care of the trees now,” says Bishwash, “and in time the trees will take care of me." Subject: Bharati Rani Bishwash Location: Koyra, Bangladesh August 17, 2017

The members of a local Disaster and Risk Management committee in Belamboa bas Village, South-West region of Madagascar, in April 02, 2019, planting cactus seedlings.

This region is Madagascar is hit by a chronic drought, that causes severe food insecurity among the community and their cattle. When the local Disaster and Risk Management Committee received support from ASOTRY project, funded by USAID/FFP, to implement a disaster management plan, they decided to plant cactus on a 4 hectares field, as a coping measure to food shortage for the cattle. Cactus is known to be resilient to hot and dry climates.

USAID Adaptasi Perubahan Iklim dan Ketangguhan (USAID APIK) conducted a participatory climate vulnerability and risk assessment in 2017, noting that tidal wave has occurred repeatedly in Segoro Tambak Village, Sidoarjo District, East Java Province, Indonesia and affected a community that is 80% dependent on fisheries. The wave gushed over embankments and flooded houses and roads in the village, causing livelihood and infrastructure damage.
USAID APIK and community members pursued a collaboration with the Marine and Fisheries Polytechnic of Sidoarjo to apply a silvofishery method. Silvofishery is a sustainable fishery technique that promotes conservation through mangroves cultivation alongside embankments.
"I never realized that mangrove has many advantages. I realized that it will take a couple of years before the tree is fully-grown, but I am sure it will be worth it,” said Kodro, a fish farmer in Segoro Tambak. Mangroves are renowned as an important component of climate adaptation and mitigation due to its carbon storage capacities and ability to protect terrain from sea-level rises. Therefore, silvofishery is a suitable adaptation strategy for Segoro Tambak, as it will help strengthen the community’s resilience by ensuring the sustainability of the village’s livelihood source and environment.

Photo Date: June 6, 2018

The U.S. Forest Service International Programs, through USAID’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment, is working in Central Africa to train communities on improved fire management. Uncontrolled fires pose a huge threat to Central African forests and can cause large releases of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when burned, further exacerbating the effects of climate change. However, fire within forest-savannah mosaic landscapes in the Congo Basin can be both a management tool as well as a threat. If used in a sustainable manner, fire can help maintain pastureland and protect forests, farms, plantations, and villages. If used haphazardly, intentional and accidental fires can burn out of control, impacting large areas and threatening villages, farms, and forests. Here, during a trailing in May 2017, a local “fire brigade” is trained in how to control and suppress fire so that they can better deal with uncontrolled fires in their communities.

Children are often most vulnerable to climate impacts. Parents and their children may face increasing risks over time. These impacts include extreme weather events and climate-related malnutrition, increases in the prevalence of malaria and other diseases, water and sanitation problems, and air pollution. Inhaca Island, Mozambique. October 31, 2014.

Terraced rice production is a climate adaption tool. It reduces the velocity of water runoff and the resulting soil erosion by reducing the length of sloped land surfaces. This helps protect the soil from moderate flood risks. It can also trap and hold rainwater to make it feasible to cultivate water-intensive crops (such as rice). The flatter areas of land increase the ability to retain and absorb water if the soil is sufficiently permeable. However, it is labor intensive to construct and maintain the terraces.

November 30, 2018.

The USAID-NREL Partnership, in coordination with Clean Power Asia, partnered with the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR) to conduct a vulnerability assessment of the country's power sector. The assessment included a review of climate change related risks as well as vulnerabilities related to technological and human-related threats. At the time of the assessment, the Lao PDR was experiencing severe flooding related to greater than normal rainfall and tropical storms.

Flooding and other extreme weather events can damage generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure and cause both short- and long-term outages. This photo shows power distribution equipment located within the flood zone in Vientiane, Laos. The vulnerability assessment analyzed risks related to power sector equipment sited in hazard zones.

Learn more about planning a resilient power sector at the Resilient Energy Platform website: http://bit.ly/30LeCqV. Learn more about the Lao PDR power sector vulnerability assessment in this webinar: http://bit.ly/2P3Triy. Photo taken by Sherry Stout, NREL, August 2018.

Typhoon Wutip hit the outer-islands of Chuuk, Yap and Pohnpei located in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in February 2019 and damaged agricultural production across many islands. USAID/OFDA, through its implementing partner the International Organization for Migration (IOM), responded by delivering supplementary food baskets to affected communities.

This picture, taken by Mr. Lee Arkhie Perez on 3 July 2019, depicts local community members working together to transport food from the shore to strategically located distribution points. The OFDA-funded program, titled “Typhoon Wutip Response: Provision of Logistics and Food Assistance”, is addressing climate change by planning a food-secure future in the face of increasingly frequent and devastating natural disasters.

In 2017, an elementary school teacher in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia, utilizes the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (CCA / DRR) curriculum in classroom, educating her students on how to recognize signs of natural disasters common to the region.

The USAID-funded CADRE + program aims to increase climate change awareness and adaptation practices to build the resilience of vulnerable communities in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia. At a school level, the IOM designed (CCA/DRR) curriculum has now been endorsed by the Department of Education at national and state level and is being taught in many schools across the region. Photo credit: Muse Mohhamed, IOM, 2017.

Sea level rise and accompanying coastal flooding is proving to be a major risk to the lives and livelihoods of the people of coastal Sierra Leone, including this Momaya community. Now, community members are using discarded oyster shells, sand, and stakes to build embankments that will protect their property from coastal erosion.

The effects of Climate Change, including coastal flooding, affect everyone in coastal Sierra Leone. These women, recognizing what is at stake, are contributing to the building of an embankment by fortifying these artificial barriers with sand fetched from the shore. In this picture, women in the Momaya community are packing old sacks with sand and sending the sacks over to the men constructing this embankment.

Soko Koryon, Forest Inventory Coordinator for the USAID Forest Incomes for Environmental Sustainability (FIFES) Activity, describes the methodology used to implement a transect of the Barconnie Community Forest in Grand Bassa County, Liberia as a student from the Liberia Forestry Training Institute looks on. The 600 hectare forest, largely made up of carbon-rich mangrove swamp, was conserved in perpetuity by the local Community Forest Management Body after they conducted a forest and biodiversity inventory supported by the FIFES activity in March 2019.

Two agricultural extensionists from the Mam Mayan population of Todos Santos undergoing a field training day for improved post harvest practices. Todos Santos Cuchumatán is a municipality from Huehuetenango, at 12,559ft elevation, a drought or extreme rainfall have serious effects on smallholder farmers crops, therefore the PHLIL helps this farmers improve their resilience to climate change by improving post-harvest practices, reducing contamination of their corn and increasing their yields, ensuring food safety in adverse conditions. Todos Santos Cuchumatán, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. October 25, 2017.

Feed the Future Post Harvest Loss Innovation Lab Guatemala, Asociación Share de Guatemala.

In March of 2017, members of the Nkhombedzi Rice Scheme in Chikwawa District in Malawi take a break from planting seeds purchased at a Catholic Relief Services DiNER fair (Diversification for Nutrition and Enhanced Resilience) to sing and dance. The DiNER program offers agricultural vouchers to beneficiaries to purchase drought-resistant seeds that can withstand Malawi’s changing climate. Many areas in Malawi have battled a long history of food insecurity due to flooding and drought. The DiNER Fair program is part of UBALE (United in Building and Advancing Life Expectations), a USAID Food for Peace-funded project which works to increase the food security of vulnerable households, improve the nutrition of children and mothers, and strengthen the disaster risk management of communities.

For many Mozambican farmers, improving yields is a challenge. Years of practicing traditional farming methods, such as planting the same crops on the same land year-after-year, have depleted the soil’s fertility. On top of this, hot dry spells are becoming more frequent, and rain either comes in a downpour or doesn’t come at all.

The Feed the Future Resilient Agricultural Markets Activity is supporting farmers to increase agricultural productivity by improving farming practices, like proper seed spacing and intercropping maize fields with legumes. Legumes are nitrogen-fixing crops that repel pests and replenish soil health, making the soil more effective at retaining water during periods of drought. The legume beans and dark green leaves also provide Ana’s family with additional sources of nutrition.

IWMI and DSCWM staff inspecting a meteorological station built in Shikharpur Baitadi, Nepal in 2017. The station will provide data to better plan and develop climate change mitigation technologies in the countries most vulnerable regions and communities. Building Climate Resilience of Watersheds in Mountain Eco-Regions (BCRWME) is the first component of Strategic Program for Climate Resilience (SPCR) of Nepal. The project is carried out by IWMI, along with ADB, the Nordic Development Fund, and the Department of DSWCM.