Governments around the world have recognized the potentially devastating consequences of climate variability and change to economic development, livelihood security, and natural resources conservation. A study conducted in 2017 by the USAID-funded Adaptation Thought Leadership and Assessments (ATLAS) project examining official statements and planning and strategy documents found that fifteen countries and five regional organizations…
Along the Limpopo River, USAID is tackling severe water and sanitation challenges in targeted municipalities and protected areas from the river’s source in South Africa to its mouth at the Indian Ocean on the coast of Mozambique. This success story highlights how the Resilient Waters Program’s support to local municipalities living around the river to…
Oro Legal was a bold response to the governance and environmental challenges posed by artisanal and small gold mining (ASGM) in Colombia. Between September 2015 and April 2021, Oro Legal improved the social, economic, and environmental performance of ASGM operators through legalization and formalization and mitigated the environmental liabilities from past illegal mining. This final…
Climate adaptation initiatives are increasing at both the international and national level. At the local level, cities are leading the way, committing to ambitious climate adaptation goals through global city networks or groups. Adaptation monitoring and evaluation (and importantly, learning) of activities can help cities move beyond city- and project-level progress reporting. This reference guide…
Risks associated with climate variability and change are increasingly recognized as drivers of both internal migration and displacement. This study contributes to the growing field exploring adaptation responses to climate-related human movement by firstly examining the role of climate variability and change and climate-induced hazards as risk multipliers in the context of human movement. The…
USAID’s Adaptation Thought Leadership and Assessments (ATLAS) activity launched in 2014 to assist the Agency and its partners in refining approaches and promoting best practices in designing and managing climate-resilient program investments. ATLAS conducted user-tailored climate vulnerability assessments, provided thought leadership on emerging climate adaptation issues, and contributed knowledge and capacity-building to USAID, its partners,…
One major activity within the ATLAS (Adaptation, Thought Leadership and Assessments) project was to provide guidance for integrating climate change risk management and adaptation into USAID design and implementation of sectoral and cross-sectoral programming. The purpose of this document is to summarize approaches taken for a set of CCVAs (climate change vulnerability assessments) completed by…
Small, low-lying islands are on the frontlines of climate change. From Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico, to Tuvalu and Kiribati in the Pacific, these populations not only face existential sea-level rise, but exacerbated economic and social fallout from an ever-warming world. While many states have fostered climate resilience by fortifying…
Farmers who work the rich soil of the Okavango River Basin in the Kavango region of Namibia depend on rainfall to water their crops. In 2018 and 2019, the rain didn’t fall, and the worst drought in 90 years devastated fields, killed thousands of livestock, and left a third of Namibians without adequate food. Some…
One-third of Indonesia’s 75,000 villages, home to 32 million people, lie within or adjacent to land dedicated by the government for forestry or conservation. All Indonesian citizens depend on healthy ecosystems for goods and services, including water, soil, forest products, and others that underpin sustainable development. However, weak governance, a lack of private sector commitment,…