According to the UN, the planet has warmed faster since the turn of the century than any other period on record. Sea-level rise has also increased pace to 0.12 inches a year – almost double the rate observed during the 20^th century. This “unprecedented” rate of climate change is expected to disproportionally impact developing countries, whose socio-economic, political, and physical landscapes make them particularly vulnerable to the effects. The GAIN Index, an interactive mapping tool recently acquired by the University of Notre Dame, can help policymakers prepare for these changes by comparing the climate change vulnerability and readiness of countries around the world.

The original version of this article, by Margarita Mora, appeared on Conservation International’s Human Nature blog.

I first visited Peru’s Alto Mayo Protected Forest in 2008. At the time, deforestation rates there were among the highest in the country. CI-Peru wanted to find a way to help communities and Peru’s National Service of Natural Protected Areas (SERNANP) keep their trees standing.

USAID’s annual report to Congress on its global health programs breaks down the broad array of initiatives carried out each year “from the American people” to prevent child and maternal deaths, provide safe access to water, combat infectious disease, and deliver HIV/AIDS relief, among other priorities. Maternal and child health are of particular focus, with the agency helping to launch the Child Survival Call to Action, London Summit on Family Planning, and U.S. Government Action Plan on Children in Adversity last year. The authors report significant declines in maternal and newborn mortality rates for priority countries and the establishment of “national contraceptive security strategies” in 36 out of 47 USAID-supported countries since 2003. “All of these efforts align under U.S. goals to end extreme poverty and promote peace and prosperity worldwide, which result in improved security at home and better markets for U.S. businesses abroad,” writes Assistant Administrator Dr. Ariel Pablos-Méndez.

The original version of this article, by Mike Ives, appeared on Yale Environment 360.

Phan Dinh Duc leans against yellow sacks of freshly harvested rice. It’s a warm spring evening in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, and Duc, a local farmer, is waiting for traders to arrive by truck to purchase his produce and sell it on commodities markets. Beyond him lies a vast checkerboard of rice paddies, each filled with water and bordered by a network of canals and roughly 10-foot-high earthen dikes. They enable year-round rice cultivation in an area where, a half century ago, vast floodplains typically lay fallow for half the year and farmers planted one annual rice crop that grew in tandem with seasonal floods.

How can NGOs and civil society promote environmental protection and improve people’s health and livelihoods in remote tropical forests? Two NGOs with innovative programs in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea spoke at the Wilson Center on May 30 about their efforts to simultaneously tackle these issues and highlight their intricate relationship. 

“We did something very special for the community and the resources these farmers live with. We sat down with local leaders and promised to stop spending so much time caring about the elephants, and instead create a company that will try to address community needs,” said Dale Lewis in an interview at the Wilson Center. “The deal was they had to put down their snares and guns.”

“Most of the world’s poor are farmers; they share the same profession and the same challenges,” said One Acre Fund’s Stephanie Hanson at a recent Wilson Center event on small-scale farming, climate change, food security, and migration. They are tasked with growing enough food to support their families with only tenuous access to land and natural resources, the most basic of tools, and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns to deal with. [Video Below]