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…
The Feed the Future Uganda Enabling Environment for Agriculture Activity (EEA) was a USAID-funded project aimed at reducing regulatory barriers for agribusiness and local farmers in Uganda. This final report summarizes how the activity achieved this through building the capacity of both public and private sectors to assist Ugandan government farmers, traders, producers, and agricultural…
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…
This technical brief shows how poor energy governance damages energy access and efforts to improve the quality and reliability of power. It explains the political reasons why energy governance is so poor in many countries and contrasts this with the current system of procuring technical assistance, which largely ignores the energy governance challenge. It shows…
This paper outlines the size and nature of the energy challenge, with a focus on electricity. It describes the investments that are currently being made to improve the quality of power and access to electricity — and the growing evidence that investments often fail due to poor energy governance. The paper then delves more deeply…
Check back for new chapters! Numeracy—or the ability to use, interpret, and communicate mathematical information—is critical to a child’s education. Children who master mathematical principles are often better able to navigate the world, prepared with strong foundations in science, technology, engineering, and beyond. Dispelling the myth that only select students can succeed in math and…
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…
In this podcast series, GHSC-PSM experts discuss the lessons learned from transportation of critical health commodities in low-resource settings—especially during COVID-19—as they apply to vaccine transportation.