Environment

• Rapid population growth, industrialization, and urbanization increase demands on finite natural resources for everyone. The demand grows.
  
  
• In the developing world, environmental degradation strikes at those who can least afford it. Those who produce food for daily survival.
  
  
• Poor and miguided natural resource stewardship also severely limits economic growth and prosperity leading to diminished quality of life.
  
  
• Environment degradation often goes unnoticed until major catastrophes grab headlines like El Nino’s devastation in South America, Africa, and our own West Coast and the haze producing forest fires across much of Indonesia and Mexico.

• To stem greenhouse gas emissions, USAID works to increase energy efficiency. In the Philippines for example, USAID helped the government purchase 27,000 megawatts of clean electricity and in Russia USAID helped plant over one million seedlings which serve as a "carbon sink" to buffer the effects of indiscriminate fossil fuel burning.
  
  
• To preserve biodiversity USAID works to improve management of species–rich areas. For example in Ecuador last year, USAID worked closely with the government to pass protective laws for the Galapagos Islands.
  
  
• To promote sustainable urbanization and improve pollution management in fast growing cities, USAID worked in over 40 countries to provide over _ million urban poor with financing for very basic home improvement loans, potable water hookups or sanitary sewer connections.
  
  
• To improve energy efficiently, USAID helped design new policies and regulation to tap private capital and talent. In Russia, for example, USAID worked to help the national utility-Penzagaz-develop an automated payment system saving more than $60 million in just one year.
  
  
• To better manage our soils, forests, and coastal waters USAID works to introduce the latest sustainable agricultural practices. In Senegal, for example, USAID helped train over 2,000 farmers in composting, windbreaks, and seed propagation yielding increased household revenues, better family nutrition, and decreased food insecurity.

Yes…USAID’s long term efforts are paying off. For example, independent study of the Agency’s Parks-in-Peril Program to conserve threatened ecosystems throughout Latin American showed many parks are becoming self-sufficient. Assessment of USAID’s efforts to strengthen watershed management around Lake Baikal-the world’s deepest lake-show how USAID strengthened local organizational capacity, drafted needed regulations, and improved environmental awareness.