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House Budget Cuts Threaten People and Places Worldwide

For a breakdown of the specifc international conservation programs threatened by this long list of dramatic cuts, and what they’re working to acheive around the world click the infogaphic above or visit The Nature Conservancy’s Planet Change website. Here’s just a tiny bit of what you can find there:

Latin America’s Conservation Water Funds.

Climate change, deforestation, pollution and other environmental pressures are shrinking the planet’s clean water supply, making people look at fresh water as they never have before—as a valuable good that is produced, sold and consumed and deserves our investment. Many cities draw their water from surface watersheds. A watershed is an area of land where the precipitation it receives drains to a common water body such as a river or lake. The degradation of these land areas, exacerbated by climate impacts, can reduce water quality and quantity for people.

Funding from USAID supported the development of an innovative self-sustaining fund for watershed conservation in Quito, Ecuador, which now attracts in-region funding to safeguard the landscape and people’s water. Since the start of this program, seven more funds have been established in Ecuador and Colombia, protecting roughly 4 million acres of natural lands and sources of water for more than 11 million people.

Southeast Asia’s Responsible Asia Forestry and Trade Program.

This USAID-funded program enhances biodiversity and community livelihoods while reducing carbon pollution by improving forest management and bringing transparency to the international timber trade.

The program has brought improved management practices to 7.5 million acres of forest. One example is testing of a simple logging system, called the monocable winch system, that extracts timber with minimal damage to the surrounding environment – making it a far more sustainable and environmentally sound system than logs pulled by bulldozers, for example. This program also creates alternative employment for local people previously engaged in illegal logging. It is estimated that programs like this can reduce carbon pollution from forest management by up to 50 percent compared to “business as usual” logging activities.

Bill Millan, a senior policy advisor at The Nature Conservancy says, “It’s been estimated that competition from illegally harvested foreign timber and forest products costs U.S. business over $1 billion annually, so anything that discourages illegal logging and promotes sustainable forestry is not only good for those countries longer-term, it is good for U.S. business right now too.”

Fighting Hunger in Niger.

In Niger, the country is in a battle against drought events exacerbated by climate change. Most of the agriculture is rain-fed, and with lack of rain, crop yields are poor. Niger has had seven droughts in the last 40 years, and this year’s drought has brought famine to several regions of the country. The PPCR is supporting projects to improve climate resilience and food security. The strategy calls for including climate resilience throughout the country’s development strategies, expanding sustainable land management initiatives, updating the quality of weather and climate information and making it publicly available, and improving weather monitoring and evaluation

Protecting Brazil, the “Thermostat of the Planet.”

The Amazon Basin is one of the key thermostats of the planet. It helps to regulate temperature, rainfall and other weather patterns thousands of miles away. The Global Environment Facility (GEF)-funded Amazon Region Protected Area program has helped turn an area the size of Poland into legally protected forestland. These protected areas could prevent 105,019 square miles of deforestation through 2050. The first phase of the program protected roughly 77 million acres (exceeding the goal of 44 million acres by 75 percent). A second phase is underway that is looking at 25 additional land areas in the basin for future protection. Continued GEF funding is critical to keep this program moving toward remarkable and meaningful reductions in carbon pollution.