Climate Change & Environmental Protection

People around the world are experiencing both the subtle and strong effects of climate change. Shifting weather patterns, rising sea levels, extensive flooding, and more extreme weather events are all clear and devastating evidence of a rapidly changing climate. Climate change threatens our ability to ensure global food security, eradicate poverty, and achieve sustainable development.

U.S. efforts to support other countries’ natural resource management, as well as the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, are critical to ensuring adequate food and access to a safe water supply, sustainable economic growth, and good governance worldwide. These investments help limit warming, promote resilience to environmental shocks and stressors, and enhance local and national economies’ capacity to develop foreign markets for American goods, contributing to U.S. economic objectives.

Fast Facts

• By 2030, the impacts from climate change could pull over 130 million people back into extreme poverty. Furthermore, over the last 20 years, the negative impacts from climate change have caused the most at-risk economies to lose more than half of their economic growth potential.
• Over the last five years, USAID provided over $650 million in direct and indirect climate adaptation assistance programs to help communities better adapt to climate change impacts. These investments resulted in:
  • 127.7 million new beneficiaries gaining access to electricity.
  • More than 23 countries gaining satellite meteorology information and more than 10 million people using weather and climate data to reduce their vulnerability.
  • The development of a drought-tolerant maize variety that has been used by over 6 million smallholder farmers in 13 African countries.
• Between 2010 and 2019, USAID’s energy programs helped install more than 162,000 MW of new renewable energy capacity across 20 focus countries, while mobilizing more than $190 billion in private investment.
• By 2050 up to 216 million people could be forced to migrate, primarily due to drought, water scarcity, and lack of agricultural productivity.
• Since 2016, USAID’s Sustainable Landscapes programs have helped mobilize over $500 million of private investment to protect, manage, and restore globally important forests, wetlands, and agricultural lands, as well as improve local livelihoods.

Key U.S. Strategies & Programs

Strategies:

• USAID Climate Strategy 2022-2030
• USAID Biodiversity Policy
• USAID Climate-Resilient Development
• President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE)
• Millennium Challenge Corporation Climate Change Strategy

Programs:

• USAID’s Sustainable Landscapes
• USAID’s Renewable Energy
• NASA and USAID’s SERVIR Global
• U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC) Climate program
• Millenium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) Climate program