NGO Community Consultation on Draft USAID Climate Strategy

On November 16, 2021, InterAction hosted Gillian Caldwell, USAID’s new Climate Change Coordinator; Ann Vaughan, the Senior Advisor for Climate Change in USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security; and Kathryn Stratos, the Deputy Director of Climate and Cross-Sectoral Strategy within USAID’s Development, Democracy, and Innovation Bureau to learn more and give feedback on the recently released draft USAID Climate Strategy.

Watch the full recording of the event below.

During the consultation, we heard from NGO speakers from around the globe, including Catholic Relief Services Bangladesh, Islamic Relief Pakistan, Lutheran World Relief Colombia, and World Vision. Each speaker highlighted critical issues for the Strategy to tackle, including locally-led adaptation, climate mainstreaming in programs, land rights and use, and the impact and activism of children and youth. The event also featured questions from the InterAction community and remarks from Noam Unger, InterAction’s Vice President for Development Policy, Advocacy, and Learning, and Claudia Sanchez de Lozada, InterAction’s new Senior Manager for Climate and Environment.

This event follows on from a series of initial consultations InterAction hosted in June 2021. InterAction convened five listening sessions on USAID’s proposed new Climate Strategy, involving 98 Member NGOs and local partners and 58 USAID representatives. Recommendations from those sessions were compiled and shared with USAID ahead of the Strategy drafting process. You can read an executive summary of the NGO community recommendations HERE.

If you are an InterAction Member and would like to get more involved in the collective climate work, please sign up for InterAction’s climate working groups HERE—we have three different groups, each focused on a different aspect of climate action, including climate advocacy, climate mainstreaming, and environmental sustainability.