News
A Road Map to Greater Water Security
December 20, 2019
One of the USAID-funded Sustainable Water Partnership’s (SWP) most exciting initiatives is its role facilitating water allocation plans in the Mara River Basin. The Mara, which supports a world-famous ecosystem depended on by some 1.2 million people in Kenya and Tanzania, is losing water due to factors such as population growth, deforestation, and climate change […]
Helping Vietnam Track its PFES Impacts
December 20, 2019
Since 2012, the USAID Vietnam Forests and Deltas program (VFD) has been helping the Government of Vietnam develop and operationalize a national Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) program that has already directed over USD $500 million to forest owners as financial compensation for maintaining forest cover. For example, Vietnam’s hydroelectric power plants now reward […]
Embedded at COP25
December 19, 2019
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 25, held December 2-13 in Madrid, Winrock experts spoke at multiple events on many of the defining topics of COP25: carbon markets, community-led adaptation, and private sector engagement in adaptation. Michael Cote, Meghan Doherty, Mary Grady, Chris Hancock, John Kadyszewski, Jennifer Norfolk and Anmol Vanamali were all […]
Educating girls, changing lives
December 17, 2019
Every weekday morning, 26-year-old teacher Fily Camara drives nearly two hours from her home in Bandiagara along dusty roads to a rural village called Tongnon. Sometimes, she admits, she’s scared. Outside the cities of this hot, arid country just south of the Sahara Desert, armed militants are known to attack or kidnap motorists as an […]
‘You can accomplish a dream — you can jump out there and do it.’
December 13, 2019
“I grew up in a family with 56 women and four men. So essentially, we had a whole lotta moms and not a lot of dads” Winrock’s Chauncey Holloman Pettis told the crowd at The Yarn, an organization that uses the power of storytelling to build understanding and human connection in Little Rock, Arkansas. “This left the […]
Matching Innovation to Need
December 12, 2019
Luis took a break from the virtual welding station and approached a man holding a pen and a reporter’s notebook. Luis, 50, drives a forklift on an early-morning shift, he explained, and welding could be a path to a brighter and more lucrative future. “It’s a good option for when I need a new job,” […]
On the Frontlines of Climate Change
December 9, 2019
Bangladesh regularly tops the list of countries most heavily affected by global climate change. With over half the U.S. population in a country the size of New York state, its vulnerability is compounded by low-lying, flood-plain geography, limited infrastructure and high exposure to natural disasters and extreme weather. The day I landed in Dhaka, the […]
AI Pilot to Address Transboundary Water Challenges in Southern Africa
November 21, 2019
Worldwide, more than 263 watersheds and 300 aquifers are known as transboundary, meaning they cross the political boundaries of two or more countries. The people who rely on these water sources are intrinsically linked locally across borders and regionally with intensive urban and industrial water uses, thus creating a system of hydrological, economic and social […]
SWP’s Gordon Mumbo Appears on Water Stories Podcast
November 21, 2019
“If you live in the developed world or in some urban centers, then the supply of water is guaranteed,” said Gordon Mumbo, team leader for Sustainable Water for the Mara River Basin, a project of Winrock International and USAID’s Sustainable Water Partnership, in this week’s Water Stories podcast. When you wake up, you expect water to flow […]
What’s in a Game?
November 13, 2019
This article was originally published in USAID’s Climatelinks. In Ghana, a changing climate is affecting the production of cocoa, one of the country’s major cash crops and its second leading foreign exchange earner. USAID and Winrock International worked together to produce ECO Game: Northern Ghana to provide communities with a better sense of land use planning […]