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Over the past 13 years, I have had the opportunity to work with the poorest communities across Zimbabwe. I have seen families struggling to adapt to the changing climate, as their livelihoods mainly depend on limited and dwindling natural resources. However, through asset creation, I have also seen incredible strength, resilience, and community dedication to improving communal resources and food security.

• 03/24/2020
• Erina Machoko

Since 2012, the USAID Vietnam Forests and Deltas program (VFD) has been helping the Government of Vietnam develop and operationalize a national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program that has already directed over USD $500 million to forest owners as financial compensation for maintaining forest cover. For example, Vietnam’s hydroelectric power plants now reward upstream forest owners whose trees keep soil in place, avoiding the sediment buildup that drives up operating costs.

• 03/19/2020
• Lauren Keller

Located in Indonesia’s East Java Province, Kalikatir Village is prone to flash flooding caused by the Klorak River. The river runs through three villages: Dilem and Begaganlimo in the upstream, and Kalikatir in the downstream. A major flash flood that hit Kalikatir in 2017 was a warning for the 1,500 people that live there. Even though there were no casualties due to the flood, the physical damage was substantial, and had a big impact on people’s lives.

• 03/18/2020
• Yovianus Toni Sakera, Nyoman Prayoga, Stella Yovita Arya Puteri

In this post, the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security (EEFS) project describes how its Water Governance Scorecard can inform policy discussions on water use within the agriculture sector. Water is at the nexus of food security and climate risk management. Smallholder farmers depend on reliable access to water to support production through rainfall and/or irrigation systems. As climate risks mount, variability in water availability and allocation will affect the competitiveness and resilience of the agriculture sector.

• 03/17/2020
• Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security

The wheels are spinning, but the vehicle is going nowhere. It’s rainy season in Vietnam, and dirt roads have become rivers of mud. It’s not uncommon for a vehicle to become mired in the muck. But in this case, the vehicle holds much-needed funds that won’t be delivered to community-based forest owners unless a team of determined forest fund staff rescues it. It’s a sticky situation — but one that may not happen much longer.

• 03/13/2020
• Jennifer Norfolk

The tropical air hangs over the Sierra Leonean coastal village of Gbongboma like a moist towel. Musa Lahai sits in an enclave of thatched huts, surrounded by women and children sitting around two cooking fires. Orange flames lick the sides of several large kettles of fish stew. Each fish was hard to come by. “Before, we were catching good fish. Now, we’re not,” Lahai says. He is deputy chief of the village, where approximately 90 people survive off earth’s bounties, from harvesting oysters, to deep sea fishing, to farming and growing palm fruit.

• 03/12/2020
• David Goodman

The transformative process involved in implementing climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices can be well observed in the villages of Los Cerrillos and El Danubio in the Cauca department of Colombia where a Climate-Smart Village (CSV) site is located. CSV is an initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in conjunction with the Ecohabitats Foundation and these two communities were chosen to be part of the project due to their vulnerability to climate change and high dependence on agricultural activities.

• 03/11/2020
• CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

Resilience—the ability to manage through crisis without compromising future well-being—is increasingly recognized as an essential part of global development. Droughts, flooding, severe price fluctuations, and other shocks and crises threaten hard-won development gains and cost millions of dollars in humanitarian assistance each year. As a changing climate makes extreme weather events more intense and unpredictable, it is more urgent than ever that we understand how to effectively build individual, household, and community resilience.

• 03/10/2020
• Courtney Meyer

Southwest Bangladesh is a watery world. Houses perch on steep river banks. 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.

• 03/05/2020
• Winrock International

More than 80 percent of the world’s coffee is produced by smallholders. Despite their integral role, these farmers face significant challenges that threaten their livelihoods and the long-term viability of the global coffee supply chain. Limited access to financing and training means that farmers are unable to increase their productivity or rebound from fluctuating market prices.

• 03/04/2020
• Agrilinks