This document provides a summary of ACDI/VOCA's work on climate change resilience and adaptation across multiple countries and programs. It discusses their integrated approach which focuses on climate-smart agriculture, business programs, and communities. Specific examples highlighted include helping farmers in Jamaica plan to avoid storm seasons, a water system project in Bolivia, and a hydroponics program in Lebanon to conserve water and access new markets. The director of training discusses ACDI/VOCA's strategy of addressing climate change through adaptation and building resilience.

1. agriculture
Learning to cope with
change in Jamaica, p. 6
Forestry
Aiding preservation
with livelihoods, p. 8
Risk Reduction
Building resiliency in
Bangladesh, p. 10
Water
Water management by
the people in Mali, p. 4
World ReportVolume 16, Issue 1
Climate
Change
Building Resilience in Changing Environments

2. 2
Volume 16, Issue 1
Managing Editors
Kristin Witting and Anja Tranovich
Graphic Designer
Kate Thomas
50 F Street, NW
Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20001
T: +1 202 469 6000
F: +1 202 469 6257
www.acdivoca.org
A C D I / V O C A
M I S S I O N
To promote economic
opportunities for cooperatives,
enterprises and communities
through the innovative application
of sound business practice.
V I S I O N
A world in which people are
empowered to succeed in the
global economy.
P R A C T I C E
A R E A S
Agribusiness
Community Development
Enterprise Development
Financial Services
Food Security
LetterfromthePresident
ACDI/VOCA works with those who are most affected by global
climate change: farmers, the rural poor, families suffering from food
insecurity and others who lack the resources to cope with economic
and environmental shocks. For the people we work with, small fluctua-
tions—in rainfall, temperature, sea level or soil fertility—can have a
big impact on well-being and can even mean the difference between
life and death.
For this reason, responding to climate change is integral to our work.
We look for practical ways to increase production using fewer resources; diversify farming practices
and sources of income; build community preparedness for disasters; and address opportunities
and challenges of cross-cutting issues like gender and technology.
In the context of the President’s Global Climate Change Initiative, many of our activities fall under
the categories of climate change resilience and adaptation, as illustrated in the articles on our
work in Jamaica, Bangladesh and Mali. We also, however, look for ways to promote sustainable
landscapes, as described in the article on forestland in Liberia. We take our responsibility to our
beneficiaries and funders very seriously, as you will see in the introductory piece by John Leary,
ACDI/VOCA’s training director and an expert in natural resource management and agroforestry,
and in the interview with Stella Siegel, our director of environmental compliance.
For ACDI/VOCA, the key is to find the intersection of sustainable development and careful use of
resources. We are pleased to share in this World Report a few examples of how we address the
very real challenges of climate change to help sustain development gains, build resilience and
empower people to succeed in the global economy.
Published December 2012
Cover photo credit:
Top photo, Richard Lord
Lower left:, ACDI/VOCA staff
Middle right, Leigh Hartless
Lower right, Erin Gamble
Carl H. Leonard
President & CEO
ACDI/VOCA
Current ACDI/VOCA
Program
Program Highlighted in
Report
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5
13
3
10
9
8
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Communities Engaged to Drive Adaptation Responses (CEDAR)
1. Bangladesh, Program for Strengthening Household Access to
Resources (PROSHAR), USAID
2. Bolivia, Integrated Community Development Fund (ICDF), USAID-
funded
3. Cape Verde,Title II Monetization Project, USAID
4. East Timor, Mudcrab and Milkfish Cultivation, USDA
5. Haiti, Title II Single-Year Assistance Program, USAID
6. Jamaica, Jamaica Rural Economy and Ecosystems Adapting to
Climate Change (Ja REEACH), USAID
7. Lebanon Developing Horticulture to Access Impactful Markets
(DHAIM), USAID
8. Liberia, Liberia Forestry Support Program (LFSP), USDA
9. Liberia, Liberia People, Rules and Organizations Supporting the
Protection of Ecosystem Resources (PROSPER),* USAID
10. Mali, Agriculture Development Systems Activity (ADSA), Millen-
nium Challenge Account
11. Mali, Response to Food Insecurity in the Sahel, OFDA
12. Mozambique, Farmer Income Support Project (FISP), Millennium
Challenge Account (MCA)
13. Panama, DECO-Darién activity, USAID
14. Philippines, Sustainable Cocoa Enterprise Solutions for Smallhold-
ers (SUCCESS) Alliance, USAID
15. Tanzania, Tanzania Staples Value Chain (NAFAKA), USAID
16. Uganda, Title II Multi-Year Assistance Program, USAID
17. Vietnam, Vietnam Sustainable Cocoa for Farmers, USAID
18. Zimbabwe, Promoting Recovery in Zimbabwe (PRIZE),* USAID
*ACDI/VOCA is implementing components of this project through a
subcontract
This report features a cross-section—but not all—of ACDI/VOCA’s work in climate change.
The programs we’ve highlighted are below.

3. 3
Helping Vulnerable Communities Adapt
Our Climate Change Approach:
By John Leary
C
limate change is no longer an abstract or controversial concept.
Changing weather patterns are having a direct impact on those most
affected by the elements, especially smallholder farmers who are
among the least prepared to deal with the changes.
In the Philippines, more frequent storms are affecting the
timing and quality of cocoa yields;1
in 2012 late and unpre-
dictable rains throughout the Sahel stunted cereal harvests,
threatening millions with food
insecurity;2
and late-season hurri-
canes destroyed 40 percent of Haiti’s
harvest.3
ACDI/VOCA has helped smallholder
farmers break out of poverty for near-
ly half a century by fostering resilien-
cy, cooperative action and a market
mindset. We apply similarly sustain-
able and results-oriented approaches
to our climate change work, helping
farmers—and markets—evolve in the
changing environment.
At ACDI/VOCA we address devel-
opment in the context of climate
change and focus on adaptation to
help communities and countries build
resilience to climate change impacts.
In recent years we’ve concentrated our climate change work on
a collection of adaptation solutions particularly suited to
ACDI/VOCA’s core strengths, and we’ve developed capacity in
new areas to better serve the smallholder farmers of the world.
ACDI/VOCA encourages climate-smart agriculture. We ana-
lyze the threats to food production and take steps to ensure
that farmers can thrive in the face of weather extremes and
pest prevalence. ACDI/VOCA helps producers adjust with
1 Mark Stevens and Pamela Katz, “Climate Change, Practical
Responses to a Real Challenge” (ACDI/VOCA, 2009).
2. “Joint Agency Issue Briefing: Food Crisis in the Sahel,”
Oxfam, last modified May 31, 2012, http://www.oxfam.org/
sites/www.oxfam.org/files/ib-food-crisis-sahel-31052012-en.pdf.
3 Tran, Mark, “Haiti faces hunger catastrophe after hurricane
Sandy destroys harvests” (The Guardian, November 12, 2012).
better planning, new seed varieties, improved water manage-
ment, integrated pest management and new technology, such
as hydroponics.
We implement climate-smart busi-
ness programs. By recognizing new
financial risks and new niche markets,
ACDI/VOCA identifies how some
markets might improve while others
might fail with increased costs of pro-
duction and irrigation. In Lebanon, for
example, we’re clarifying the business
case for hydroponic investment in arid
zones. In Jamaica we help farmers
plan to avoid harvesting in the peak
of shifting storm seasons.
Climate-smart communities have
the leadership capacity to implement
adaptations that save lives and liveli-
hoods. ACDI/VOCA is improving its
approach to community-based adap-
tation with a program called CEDAR (Communities Engaged
to Drive Adaptation Responses), which engages community
stakeholders in participatory activities that identify, prioritize
and lead sustainable responses to climate change.
The disasters and suffering caused by climate change make
the challenges seem overwhelming. But through innovation
and preparedness, our integrated approach yields success.
We are helping communities worldwide see their risks and
opportunities through a new lens. We can point to many suc-
cessful interventions, but challenges continue and the daunt-
ing scale of global climate change demands a redoubled
effort. ACDI/VOCA is committed to climate-smart approaches
to reduce this threat to rural livelihoods and to avoid losing
ground in the struggle for food security.
John Leary is ACDI/VOCA’s director of training.
Adaptation is more than just
adjusting to new risks and
coping with new dangers; it
involves helping communities
use planning, creativity, new
skills and technology to take
advantage of opportunities
created by the effects of
climate change.

4. Bolivia
“We are all happy with the water system;
the water is clean and not dirty like the
river water. Now we use clean water to
cook and to shower; we use it for every-
thing,” said Shirley Argandoña of the water
system created by ACDI/VOCA in Inicua
Bajo, Bolivia. The program implemented
64 similar potable water systems across
eight municipalities of the Yungas Region,
helping 10,700 people access clean, safe
water. ACDI/VOCA also protects these
water supplies from evaporation due to cli-
mate change or contamination by planting
trees around the watersheds and building
fencing systems.
Lebanon
Hydroponics is a method of growing fruits
and vegetables that uses far less water,
land and soil than conventional agricul-
ture. In Lebanon, we are helping to build
a high-value fruit, vegetable and flower
hydroponic and greenhouse sector so that
rural producers can earn more for their
crops—Lebanon’s greenhouse sector has
the potential to access lucrative markets
in Central Asia, the European Union and
Gulf states—and conserve water and other
resources. In the 2012 fall season, our
USAID-funded program is helping grantee
farmers develop harvest schedules for hy-
droponically grown bell peppers to access
higher-value markets—all while reducing
water, soil and pesticide usage.
In 2011 low rainfall had particularly disastrous
consequences for Mali. Total grain production
was two-thirds lower than average in parts of the
country, and the poor harvest led to food insecurity
and famine in the greater Sahel region, leaving 19
million people without enough food.1
Some families are learning new ways to cope. In
the Segou region of central Mali, for example,
10,000 seminomadic herders of the Fulani ethnic
group have moved from a subsistence lifestyle
into commercial agriculture through ACDI/VOCA’s
Agriculture Development Systems Activity (ADSA).
Funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation
(MCC) through the Millennium Challenge Account
(MCA)-Mali, this project has brought a measure of
food security to this fragile area—and it has given
farmers greater control over how water in the re-
gion is used and managed.
Under ADSA, ACDI/VOCA collaborated with local
partners G-Force and Nyeta Conseils to foster self-
government and establish nearly 500 km of water
canals to sustain the former herders’ farms—part
of an overarching MCA-Mali initiative called the
Alatona Irrigation Project.
“The problem of water is very serious
during the dry season,” said Boury Bar-
rie, a farmer in Beldinadji village, “but
for the first time this year, people are
staying where they are for the harvest.”
1 “Situation Update: The Sahel Crisis,” Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
last modified October 31, 2012, http://www.fao.
org/fileadmin/user_upload/sahel/docs/SITUA-
TION%20UPDATE%2031%20October.pdf.
Former Herders See Production
and Profits Rise
For centuries the herders of the Segou region de-
pended on rainfall to sustain grazing grounds, leaving
them and their livestock vulnerable to changing
weather patterns.
The ADSA project trained the former herders to
grow irrigated rice through careful water manage-
ment and best practices in soil conservation and
fertility, helping first-time farmers like Hama Cisse
grow rice for food and for profit: Despite the low
harvest in the region, Cisse had a bumper crop in
2011. Farmers in the Alatona zone grew and sold
an estimated $7,744,000 worth of rice over the 2010
and 2011 seasons. They cultivated an additional
6,000 hectares in the 2012-2013 season and expect
to more than double their yield.
Alatona rice producers are making an average of
$1,000 per hectare in a country where the average
annual income is $700 per year. Cisse was the big-
gest rice producer in the ADSA project’s first rice
harvest. He had no prior knowledge of rice cultiva-
tion or irrigation but now speaks to the project’s
success in building local capacity and managing
the most important component of the program:
water. “The team is teaching us about water man-
agement,” Cisse said. “I have gained knowledge in
hydraulic systems, irrigation and drainage tech-
niques. I’m also learning about best practices in
terms of management of the irrigation system.”
Staying for the Harvest:
Better Water Management in Mali
By Leigh Hartless and David Benafel
S
evere drought is common in Mali’s long stretches of desert
plains: Three droughts have hit in the last 10 years, and global
warming is expected to make rainfall patterns less predictable.
Water
4

5. Tanzania
Increasingly sparse and unpredictable
rainfall causes recurring food shortages in
Tanzania, so many farmers rely on irrigation
to keep their crops alive. Through a USAID-
funded program, we work with a 954-mem-
ber water users’ association in the Dakawa
district, a low-rainfall area some 150 miles
outside of Dar es Salaam. These farmers
all use the Dakawa pump station to irrigate
their maize and rice. But the pump still
relies on technology—and components—
that are more than 50 years old.
We help the association build capacity
to become a more efficient and transpar-
ent business-oriented cooperative. Our
program trains the farmers in improved
production practices, complementing a
Feed the Future infrastructure project that
expects to break ground on a new pump
soon. On a visit to the initiative, the U.S.
ambassador to Tanzania, Alfonso Lenhardt,
remarked, “The important work you do
here has the potential to feed not just Tan-
zania, but all of Africa; Tanzania has more
than enough land and water to become a
breadbasket for the region.”
Self-Managed Water Systems
Through the MCC and MCA-Mali collaboration,
484 km of new canals were constructed. The water,
sourced from the Niger River, was woven between
fields to irrigate crops in the semi-arid region, and
ADSA project field agents provided technical as-
sistance and guidance to the farmers to ensure that
they know how to provide the right volume and
flow of water to their crops.
The ADSA project’s core objective was to facilitate
autonomous and democratic farmer management
of a modern irrigation system, putting control and
management of water in the hands of the farmers
and equipping them with skills to maintain it.
Lead farmers coordinate a water rotation system
among organized water users who take respon-
sibility for maintaining the intricate system. They
clear canals of vegetation and debris and pay fees
toward any needed repairs.
Land Ownership Fosters
Responsibility
Breaking from standard practices of other initiatives
in the area that lease land to farmers, the Alatona
Irrigation Project offered permanent land title
rights on 5-hectare plots of irrigated land to the
950 farmer heads of household.
For the first time in the history of the Office du Ni-
ger, the state-run entity tasked with improving food
security in Mali, farmers decide what to grow, when
to grow it, whom to sell it to and at what price. The
model is strengthened by the holistic approach
of the Alatona Irrigation Project, which provided
permanent housing for the farmers, including
household water sources, new primary schools and
health centers.
There was some doubt when ACDI/VOCA started the
project in 2009 as to whether the Fulani herders would
take to the rice fields and carry out ACDI/VOCA’s
recommendations on plowing, oxen training, plant
propagation, fertilizer application and threshing.
Doubt was erased as female and male farmers came
out in force, season after season, in all weather con-
ditions, to master farming techniques and ultimately
achieve an average of 4.9 tons of rice per hectare,
well above national standards.
Challenges still exist for farmers in the Alatona region.
Maintaining long-term soil fertility, sustaining the canal in-
frastructure and transferring know-how to younger gen-
erations will be key to the initiative’s ongoing success.
But for now, there is momentum. “I have never
seen a transformation so complete, so deep, so
extensive and so rapid of a poor area,” said Jon
Anderson, director of the MCC Mali Resident Mis-
sion, at the project’s culmination.
“Everybody thought herders were incapable of
successfully developing the land that the project
has given us,” Demba Diallo, a chief of one of the
resettled villages remarked. “With all the positive
impacts we are seeing, we are organizing ourselves
to better overcome defeats.”
Leigh Hartless is an ACDI/VOCA project coordina-
tor. David Benafel was the team leader of ACDI/
VOCA’s ADSA project in Mali.
5

6. Philippines
ACDI/VOCA’s SUCCESS Alliance program
distributed 250,000 cocoa seedlings from
2009 to 2012. The project promotes the
intercropping of cocoa with rice and co-
conut, which reduces water and land use.
Intercropping also gives farmers greater
security by diversifying their sources of
income and reducing their dependence on
any single crop.
Haiti
Haiti sits in the middle of hurricane alley.
The country’s second agricultural season
coincides with hurricane season, making
the livelihoods of Haitian farmers particu-
larly vulnerable to extreme weather. To
help mitigate the impacts of hurricanes
on agricultural production, ACDI/VOCA
helped farmers in Haiti plant a new form
of sweet potato. Since sweet potato is
planted underground, it is less vulnerable
to the effects of gusty hurricane winds.
The new variety also has a short growing
season and can be harvested as early as 2
1/2 months after planting, a vast improve-
ment to the six months required for the
traditional variety. ACDI/VOCA has intro-
duced improved crop and seed varieties to
over 10,000 Haitian farmers. The program
also distributes seedlings in Haiti to help
protect hillsides from erosion damage and
promote production; in 2012 we provided
farmers with 82,966 coffee, shade-tree,
forestry and fruit-tree seedlings.
Jamaica has the rich soil and tropical climate for
lush, plentiful crops, yet it imported nearly $1 bil-
lion worth of food in 2011. The government esti-
mates that number could be cut greatly—by 30-40
percent—with increased agricultural production.1
An increase in production, however, must be
handled carefully, since agriculture itself is part of
the growing climate change problem, accounting
for about 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions
worldwide.2
Climate-smart agriculture—addressing
market opportunities with careful cultivation tech-
niques and preservation of natural resources—must
be part of Jamaica’s plan to grow more.
Farmers Face Increased Risk
Climate trends in Jamaica show the days and
nights getting hotter and rainfall decreasing, even
as intense storms are expected to increase. As a
small island nation, Jamaica is especially vulnerable
to the effects of climate change. The sea level is
expected to rise 2-3 mm per year, causing beach
erosion and increased soil salinity.3
High rates of
deforestation add to the risk.
These changes are making farming increasingly risky
in Jamaica, especially for small farms, which make
up over 80 percent of the agriculture in the country.
Farmers are rising to this challenge, and ACDI/VOCA
is helping them grow more, meet local market
demands, and earn more with methods that are
familiar to Jamaicans and compatible with the
changing climate.
Through our USAID-funded project, ACDI/VOCA
1 “Jamaica can slash food imports by US$300m an-
nually,” Jamaica Observer, April 11, 2012.
2 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, “Climate Smart Agriculture for Develop-
ment,” July 9, 2012.
3 Zadie Neufville, “Working to Cope with Climate
Change, Jamaica Calculates Costs,” Inter Press
Service. April 8, 2012.
has worked with Jamaican farmers since 2010 to
support climate-smart production improvements
for crops with lucrative market opportunities, in-
cluding onions, Scotch bonnet peppers and cocoa.
These crops have traditionally yielded good returns
on farmers’ investments, but now, climate change
challenges, such as crop delays and increased pest
incidence, are undermining farmers’ bottom lines
and increasing their risk.
“This is the first year I see this
type of drought. Even cocoa,
which can take the dry time, I
see getting burnt out.”
– Cocoa farmer Courtney “Lindo” Lloyd of
Clarendon Parish, Jamaica
Climate Smart Agriculture in Jamaica:
Farmers Learn to Cope with Change
By Karyll Aitcheson
Agriculture
6

7. 7
Uganda
Between 2007 and 2012, ACDI/VOCA trained over
76,000 Ugandan farmers in conservation agriculture
practices, coined “less labor high yield,” designed
to increase production and reduce the effects of
intensifying droughts and flooding on their soil and
crops. The curriculum promotes minimum tillage,
targeted application of a USAID-approved herbicide
to create soil cover out of weed residues, and rota-
tion of traditional crops (maize, cassava, groundnuts
and sunflower) with legumes.
These practices not only provide the short-term
benefits of lower labor requirements (and therefore
cost) and higher yields, but over the long term they
protect soil health and increase farmers’ resiliency
in the face of weather-related shocks. Instead
of burning their fields after slashing the weeds,
farmers were encouraged to leave residues on the
field’s surface to trap and conserve moisture in the
soil. The residue cover protects the soil from long
spells of dry heat and also helps retain rainfall on
the field and reduce soil erosion. In addition, the
combination of soil cover and minimum tillage pro-
motes growth of soil biota (earthworms and micro-
organisms), slows organic matter decomposition,
and improves soil porosity, thereby increasing
rooting depth. The impact of minimum tillage ex-
tends beyond an individual’s farm—changing from
conventional tillage to minimum tillage practices is
said to both enhance the sequestration of carbon
in agricultural soils and decrease emissions.
Introducing producers to climate-smart agriculture
can help them become more resilient and produc-
tive in the face of disasters while reducing practices
that help cause the problem by contributing to
global warming through greenhouse gas emissions.
Familiar Practices Reduce Risk
One of ACDI/VOCA’s objectives in Jamaica is to
demonstrate that adaptation—through climate-
smart practices—doesn’t have to mean adopting
new and unfamiliar practices or expensive ​
technology. Instead, it often involves embracing
practices that are familiar but not widespread, such
as drip irrigation, mulching, integrated pest man-
agement and crop diversification.
Drip Irrigation
Agriculture in Jamaica is heavily dependent on
seasonal rainfall and only 10 percent of its culti-
vated lands are irrigated. As a result, the planting
and harvesting cycles of most small farmers revolve
around the wet and dry seasons, leaving them vul-
nerable to changes in rainfall patterns.
Michael Doneghan, from St. Catherine, for exam-
ple, found it difficult to produce a crop of any kind,
as rainfall has become sporadic and water less
available. However, with the assistance of
ACDI/VOCA, Doneghan successfully grew Scotch
bonnet peppers using drip irrigation, expending
limited water resources more efficiently. He also
now applies his fertilizer through his drip irrigation
system in a more targeted and efficient way.
Plastic Mulch
Using techniques he learned through ACDI/VOCA,
Franklin Douglas, a farmer in Trelawny, introduced
plastic mulch to help retain soil moisture and
decrease nitrogen evaporation. The plastic mulch
reduced his overall water demand. He previously
needed to water his crops daily—he now irrigates
two or three times a week. Dry times used to
cause serious wilting, retardation and even death
in his pepper field, but now it remains healthy and
vigorous even when water is scarce. Douglas also
discovered that his plastic mulch-grown crop still
produces marketable produce one year later, more
than twice as long as average for Scotch bonnet
pepper.
Integrated Pest Management and Crop
Diversification
ACDI/VOCA’s trainings have helped farmers
address growing pest problems brought on by
climate change patterns without relying solely on
pesticide usage by employing barrier crops, sticky
traps and highly reflective plastic mulch as an insect
repellant. Farmers also are learning how to keep
their fields clean, how to identify pests and under-
stand their life cycle, how to remove them manually
and how to apply chemicals safely and correctly.
Learning by Doing
In Jamaica, ACDI/VOCA uses farmer field schools,
or learn-by-doing training sessions, to help farmers
increase their production as well as their adaptive
capacity—i.e., their ability to cope with climate
changes. A climate-smart Jamaican farmer can
identify her greatest risks and take measures to
reduce her vulnerability.
Farmer field schools have built farmers’ aware-
ness about climate change impacts, piloted more
efficient irrigation systems and improved farmers’
crop production knowledge, thus helping them to
produce hardier crops.
In its first 2 1/2 years of work in Jamaica,
ACDI/VOCA, in collaboration with its partners,
trained over 2,000 farmers and technical specialists:
Over 900 of them have adopted best practices and
seen more than a 50 percent increase in productiv-
ity and income.
By tying economic incentives to climate-smart agri-
culture, farmers in farmer field schools see a win-win
outcome. They learn techniques that not only make
them more resilient in the face of rainfall and tem-
perature changes, but allow them to conserve water,
reduce agrochemical use and grow hardier crops.
Karyll Aitcheson is chief of party for ACDI/VOCA’s
Ja REEACH program in Jamaica.

8. 8
Rampant deforestation in the developing
world greatly lowers our ability to mitigate
escalating CO2 emissions. In order to cre-
ate more sustainable landscapes,
ACDI/VOCA works to promote eco-agro-
forestry, help communities earn money
from sustainable nontimber forest products
and curb slash-and-burn agriculture. The
following are a few examples of ways we
slow or reverse deforestation:
Panama
ACDI/VOCA worked with local organiza-
tions, indigenous groups and communi-
ties in the in the buffer zones of protected
areas in Panama, such as Darién National
Park, biological corridors and forest re-
serves, to strengthen local governance and
economic development and to foster good
environmental stewardship. We provided
training and technical assistance in vari-
ous aspects of agroforestry, including farm
technologies and crops that minimize
environmental impact and management of
forest and water resources. We also helped
develop medicinal plant microenterprises.
ACDI/VOCA partnered with the World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) to promote a certified
wood business in the Emberá and Wou-
naan areas of Darién.
I
n early 2012, members of Liberia’s Bleih
community discovered a group of strangers
in their forestland. Concerned about the
motives of the outsiders, they convened a
meeting of their Joint Community Forest Manage-
ment Body (JCFMB) to question them and found
that they were representatives of a Liberian mining
company that had received an exploratory conces-
sion from the Ministry of Lands and Mines and had
begun work without approaching the community.
Although concession rights granted by the govern-
ment trump user or ownership rights in Liberia,
mining companies must cooperate with land own-
ers or users and compensate them for damage
caused by extraction or use of the land.
Fortunately, the citizens of Bleih were well-informed
and prepared to defend their interests. The mining
company and the JCFMB were able to resolve the
issue with mediation from the Liberian Forestry
Development Authority (FDA) and support from
ACDI/VOCA’s Liberia Forestry Support Program,
one of a series of forestry programs we have
worked on in Liberia that emphasize community
management of forestland.
Liberia’s forestland is a crucial resource for many
rural residents: It provides food, shelter, fuel,
medicine and money from timber and non-timber
products, and it has invaluable spiritual, cultural
and traditional significance in the region. It also
improves the environment by regulating moisture,
air temperature and soil fertility.
As the Bleih incident shows, the rural communities
that most rely on Liberia’s rich forestland are often
its first line of defense against exploitation by ex-
tractive industries, commercial loggers and others.
Liberia’s Forestland:
Balancing Preservation with Survival
By Brandie Maxwell
Forestry

9. But when the need for food and income is urgent,
which is not unusual in food-insecure Liberia, they
can also be among its main exploiters: Worldwide,
agriculture is the main cause of deforestation.
Since 2008, ACDI/VOCA and its partners have col-
laborated with communities and the government of
Liberia to protect forestland while increasing Liberi-
ans’ incomes and food security. Our main focus has
been on eliminating the trade-off between short-
term income generation through forest extraction
and the longer-term benefits of preservation by
helping communities increase their incomes and
value the full income-earning and environmental
potential of intact forests.
Through a series of programs funded by USAID
and the U.S. Forest Service, ACDI/VOCA has
worked to increase sustainable income from the
collection, marketing and sales of nontimber forest
products, including Griffonia simplicifolia (a natu-
ral appetite suppressant and mood enhancer that
is sold in the United States). ACDI/VOCA helped
establish a local buyer for Griffonia and provided
training to gatherers in quality and moisture control
to ensure it could be bulked and exported. Nearly
5,000 kg of Griffonia was sold with aid from the
project in 2011.
In addition, ACDI/VOCA has used farmer field
schools to make agriculture more productive and
to reduce the temptation to use forest resources
or clear land for crops. The farmers chose to focus
on improving production of four traditional staple
crops—rice, cassava, plantain, and peppers—in the
field schools. By increasing productivity through
improved land use, the farmers reduced the prac-
tice of shifting cultivation (slash-and-burn agricul-
ture), thus protecting forests and improving their
livelihoods.
As the rate of global warming accelerates, preser-
vation of climate- and moisture-regulating tracts of
forest will become more urgent—and the potential
for conflict with the interests of vulnerable lo-
cal communities will also grow. But thoughtfully
designed programs that increase the efficiency of
productivity can bring preservation of forests into
alliance with community needs.
Brandie Maxwell is a deputy director at ACDI/VOCA.
Mozambique
Coconut lethal yellowing disease (CLYD)
threatens a large percentage of coconut
trees in Mozambique. The best way to
thwart the disease is to cut down infected
trees and cull them before they infect oth-
ers with CLYD or pests, but simply burning
the diseased trees releases large amounts
of CO2 into the atmosphere. Through a
program to strengthen coconut enterprises,
ACDI/VOCA is providing an opportunity
for local entrepreneurs to sell the culled
trees as timber and artisanal coconut wood
products in local and national markets.
To encourage utilization of the wood and
sustainable felling of CLYD-affected trees,
our program staff has provided training
to carpenters and community groups and
assistance in acquiring basic equipment to
add value to felled coconut trees and
remove coconut wood stumps. The car-
penters have learned how to rough cut
beams and timber and use the root to
make basins and bowls, and have started
selling beams to local builders.
Vietnam
The marginalized ethnic minority com-
munities of Vietnam’s Central Highlands
rely largely on forest resources to survive,
but they are increasingly vulnerable as
forestland is cleared for monoculture crops
such as rubber and cashews. ACDI/VOCA
has helped introduce cocoa, an under-
story crop that thrives in forestland, in the
Central Highlands to reduce poverty and
diversify farmer income while preserving
biodiversity and preventing deforestation.
Trees help return water vapor back into the
atmosphere. Otherwise, the land would
become an empty
desert.
Forests provide food, fuel and livelihoods to
1.6 billion people
who live in poverty.
Deforestation
contributes to soil erosion, poor
water quality, reduced food secu-
rity and impaired flood protection.
If current deforestation rates continue,
forests would no longer exist in
Above statistics are from National Geographic, the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Bank.
Forests still cover about
30% of the world’s
land area.
Globally,
20% of CO2 emissions are
from deforestation.
100years.
9

10. The country is susceptible to a multiplicity of
natural disasters—slow onset, such as droughts,
and rapid onset, such as cyclones and floods—that
can affect families’ food security and economic
livelihoods. Large shocks, as well as smaller, more
frequent stresses, such as price increases or illness,
can erode food security gains.
In consulting with the communities we work with
in Bangladesh, ACDI/VOCA found that cyclones,
floods and other major hazards pose serious threats
to vulnerable populations. However, the day-to-
day vulnerabilities that disrupt livelihoods are just
as threatening. Rising seawater, for example, can
destroy crops; and riverbank erosion can destabilize
or washout homes or roads.
Moreover, these shocks and stresses are amplified
by poverty and malnutrition. Thirty percent of the
population lives under the national poverty rate1
and
40 percent of the population is food insecure.2
Protecting Development Gains
in Bangladesh
Since 2010, ACDI/VOCA has led the Program for
Strengthening Household Access to Resources
(PROSHAR), working to empower communities
through an integrated approach to food security.
The program has three aims: increasing incomes of
poor and ultra-poor households through agricul-
ture; improving the health and nutrition of women
1 “Data: Bangladesh,” World Bank, accessed
December 4, 2012, http://data.worldbank.org/
country/bangladesh.
2 “Bangladesh,” World Food Program, accessed
December 4, 2012, http://www.wfp.org/coun-
tries/bangladesh/overview.
and children; and increasing families’ resilience to
shocks and their long-term impact.
These three components are interconnected in
important ways. Our program supports vulnerable
rural populations in strengthening their agricultural
livelihoods with new crop varieties and improved
techniques. PROSHAR also helps them improve
their health and nutrition status by providing training
in family welfare and improving the skills of birth
attendants. But those development gains can be
significantly set back by a major household shock or
by smaller, yet frequent, stresses. For this reason, the
program’s disaster risk reduction component builds
resilience of communities to be able to handle these
small stresses or major shocks, so that health and
agricultural gains aren’t lost and families don’t have
to start over. This is especially pertinent to PRO-
SHAR’s target areas, which have high malnutrition
rates and are located in cyclone risk areas.
Agriculture and Health
To help communities adapt to rising seas, potential
food insecurity and stronger storms, our program
demonstrates and promotes the use of saline-resis-
tant rice varieties and homestead gardens. PRO-
SHAR helps smallholder farmers get more efficient
access to inputs and achieve economies of scale in
production.
PROSHAR also works to improve the health and
nutrition of women and children. Over the life of
the project, PROSHAR will provide rations to 27,351
households with pregnant and lactating women
and children. ACDI/VOCA enhances the skills of
family welfare assistants and community skilled
birth attendants in Bangladesh, strengthens
Disaster Preparedness and Mitigation
Building Resilience in Bangladesh
By Kara Gaye
Densely populated and low-lying Bangladesh has been called
the most vulnerable nation in the world to climate change.
Global
The greatest barriers to an effective
response to climate change are lack of
awareness of solutions, inability to access
and afford those solutions, and a lack of
capacity and leadership to actualize them.
To build local capacity and to inform the
design of our programs, we developed an
approach called CEDAR—Communities
Engaged to Drive Adaptation Responses—
which incorporates best practices from
our community-driven development work.
CEDAR engages community stakehold-
ers in participatory activities that identify,
prioritize and lead sustainable responses to
climate change.
Zimbabwe
Since 2010, ACDI/VOCA has worked in the
rural Mudzi and Rushinga districts in Zim-
babwe to reduce chronic hunger and food
insecurity. In coordination with local com-
munities, ACDI/VOCA develops disaster
risk reduction plans identifying community
assets that can build resilience to disas-
ters. A food-for-assets component builds
new jobs, employing those from vulner-
able communities to create and rehabili-
tate productive assets that enhance food
security and mitigate risks. Workers are
compensated with food to further alleviate
hunger and malnutrition. The food-for-
asset projects have built irrigation systems,
pasture protections, nutrition gardens,
orchards and household wells.
Risk Reduction
10

11. Mali
Chronic underdevelopment and multiple
recent droughts have left Mali’s Sahel re-
gion increasingly vulnerable, even to small
shocks. ACDI/VOCA works in the Mopti
region, within the Sahel, to help house-
holds achieve and maintain short and long-
term food security. The Office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance-funded program has a
community-based disaster risk reduction
initiative building local capacity to prepare
for, and adapt to, future shocks, such as
droughts and floods. Working in 41 target
villages, the program will train village com-
mittees on participatory risk identification,
vulnerability analysis and resilience plan-
ning. In addition, ACDI/VOCA is strength-
ening early warning systems for disasters
and food crises by linking information from
the villages to the national system and
ensuring that feedback comes back to the
villages.
community-clinic-hospital referral links and pro-
motes proper maternal and newborn practices
among women and other family members.
Community-Based Disaster
Risk Reduction
PROSHAR’s disaster risk reduction helps people
play active roles in identifying their communities’
risks and vulnerabilities. We help them conduct
community risk assessments to find solutions and
prioritize projects that we can help them implement.
The program’s first step in disaster risk reduction is
developing community-based action plans. PRO-
SHAR helps communities map out their risk and
then develop contingency plans, including pre-
paredness and messaging. We train communities
in first aid and search and rescue, and then provide
them with emergency equipment appropriate to
their needs, for example megaphones, flashlights,
boots, or radios and batteries.
Communities are best-suited to be their own first
responders, so PROSHAR builds community mem-
bers’ capacities to help each other. The program
works with all sections of the community from the
most vulnerable, such as pregnant or lactating
women, to the leaders, such as religious leaders
and teachers.
Household- or community-level emergencies can
have the same disastrous effect on food security as
large-scale national disasters, but they do not trig-
ger emergency responses at the local, national or
international level. Helping communities develop
individualized and defined initiatives will make
them more resilient. Where possible, PROSHAR
links these community
activities to local emergency response systems
already in place to deal with disasters.
Once particular risks are analyzed, infrastructure
investments are often needed to rectify the vulner-
abilities of the community. These can include rais-
ing the level of access roads to cyclone shelters so
that they aren’t washed out during a storm.
Disaster preparedness is a smart investment. The
World Bank and U.S. Geological Survey calculate
that every $1 spent on disaster preparedness saves
$7 in disaster response. Helping communities plan
and respond to disasters supplements the gains of
the other PROSHAR components, health and agri-
culture. By building resilience, communities will be
better able to protect development gains despite
uncertain climate patterns.
Kara Gaye is ACDI/VOCA’s technical director of
disaster risk reduction and response.
“Disaster preparedness is a smart investment.
$1 spent on disaster preparedness
saves $7 in disaster response.”
11

12. 12
ACDI/VOCA’s Director of Environmental Compliance
Q&A with Stella Siegel
A
cross the globe, climate change and environmental degradation threaten to compound the problems
of the world’s poorest, increasing hunger and eroding income. Yet at the same time, develoment
interventions that aim to help the poor run the risk of causing environmental harm.
Programs helping smallholders increase yield, for
example, can contribute to deforestation, add to
greenhouse gases and diminish biodiversity if they
are not carefully implemented. ACDI/VOCA aims
to increase prosperity in low-income countries,
but how do we know our interventions are not
also contributing to environmental problems that
disproportionately affect the poor?
Director of Environmental Compliance Stella Siegel
is responsible for anticipating potential negative
impacts of our interventions at the program-design
stage and recommending concrete steps to pre-
vent or minimize them.
WR: ACDI/VOCA isn’t an environ-
mental organization. So why do
we need to focus on environmen-
tal issues?
Siegel: Our interest is the health and well-
being of the people we work with, so of course we
want to make sure they live in a safe environment.
As a development organization with holistic inter-
ventions we must consider environmental impacts
alongside social and economic benefits. And
increasingly, donors require this.
As a recipient of federal funding, ACDI/VOCA must
comply with environmental laws and regulations.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
requires all U.S. federal agencies, such as USAID
and USDA , to consider the environmental impacts
of proposed actions. The Foreign Assistance Act
affects all agencies that work overseas and requires
that the impact of USAID’s activities on the environ-
ment be considered and that USAID include envi-
ronmental sustainability as a central consideration
in designing and carrying out its development
programs. Under Title 22, Code of Federal Regula-
tions, Part 216 (22 CFR 216), affectionately known
as Reg 216, USAID articulates its environmental
impact assessment procedures.
All USAID funding subrecipients, including our
partners and grant and loan recipients, must comply
with Reg 216, which requires assessing the impact of
development activities, mitigating adverse impacts
where appropriate, and monitoring mitigation ac-
tions. Most international donors have policies that
ensure compliance with environmental standards
and laws and that require assessment of a project’s
environmental impacts. As a recipient of interna-
tional donor funding, we have to comply with all
relevant policies. Increasingly, environmental assess-
ments are tied with health and safety and social-
impact assessments.
Assessing our projects’ impact on the environment
and on human health and safety—and mitigating
potentially negative impacts—is one of the ways
ACDI/VOCA works to address climate change.
WR: What kinds of environmental
concerns do we have to address
as an organization? And how do
we do so?
Siegel: We implement a wide variety of activi-
ties that can have an impact on the environment.
For example, agricultural projects can contribute to
deforestation, pollution, and soil and water deple-
tion. Also, in the course of shipping and storing
commodities for distribution, our projects often
must use pesticides that can have inherent risks for
humans and the environment. Entrepreneurs and
small businesses, such as mechanic shops or leath-
er-tanning, soap-making or fabric-dying operations
that receive support from our projects may engage
in activities that harm the environment. ACDI/VOCA
projects that help build and rehabilitate infrastruc-
ture, including construction of storage, schools,
bridges, health clinics, wells and other types of
infrastructure, cannot be implemented unless we
have assessed their impact on the environment and
developed mitigation measures. Then we have to
implement and monitor those measures.
Therefore, as a first step each project must have its
activities screened for environmental impact.
WR: When an environmental as-
sessment finds that project activi-
ties have a negative impact, what
can we do about it?
Siegel: Most of our activities that could have
environmentally detrimental impacts can be miti-
gated to some degree by choosing less harmful
practices and adhering to best practices. Therefore
identifying not only potentially negative impacts of
our activities, but also identifying and recommend-
ing mitigation actions is an even more complex
part of environmental compliance. For example,
by using farming techniques such as crop rotation,
conservation tillage, pasture and grazing manage-
ment, and sustainable water management, farmers
can reduce the negative effect on the environment.
Another big component of environmental compli-
ance is monitoring and evaluation to ensure that
recommended mitigation measures are in place
and are properly monitored and evaluated by the
project team. All projects that have activities that
were identified as potentially harmful to the envi-
ronment must report on the status of their mitiga-
tion activities and document their environmental
monitoring and evaluation activities.
WR: You travel to the field to work
with projects. What kind of support
do you provide to the projects?
Siegel: My work with projects varies depending
on the type of the project, but at its core is helping
projects develop environmental compliance plans
and establish systems for their implementation.
WR: How do you weigh environ-
mental impact against other pro-
gram goals?
Siegel: It is often very difficult to reconcile
responding to human needs with the desire to
maintain a pristine environment. More often than
not, despite our best efforts, financial means and
population pressure dictate to what degree we can
maintain that delicate balance. We must, therefore,
do our best to not only avoid contributing to envi-
ronmental degradation but also consider climate
change at key decision points in program planning
and implementation.