2021 Climate Readiness Plan
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) recognizes the urgency of leveraging our expertise, experience, and partnerships to confront the climate crisis, which threatens to reverse years if not decades of hard-won development gains by exacerbating global inequities, increasing food and water scarcity, threatening lives and livelihoods, and contributing to conflict. With this new Climate Readiness Plan (CRP), USAID is revitalizing its approach to climate change adaptation, resilience, and risk mitigation across the Agency’s programs and operations and is also committing to ambitious mitigation targets and new adaptation actions in alignment with Biden-Harris Administration priorities, multilateral climate objectives, and the newest climate science. USAID’s approach to climate action includes both mitigation and adaptation.
Since 2015 and continuing today, in response to Executive Order (E.O.) 13677, Climate-Resilient International Development, USAID has systematically assessed, addressed, and adaptively managed climate risk in all new strategies and development programming. Over the coming years, USAID will further elevate and integrate climate variability and change considerations and implications in our Agency-wide policies, priorities, programming, partnerships, and operations. USAID will drive this work through a new and ambitious Climate Strategy, a draft of which USAID will release for public comment in November 2021 at the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26). We will engage Missions and key sectors to ramp up our support immediately so that our partner countries— and USAID investments—are resilient to climate shocks and stresses, ensuring the necessary personnel and capacities are in place to position USAID to securely, effectively, and equitably advance development progress into the future and enable the transformations required to achieve shared climate goals. USAID is committed to increasing the resilience of our operations and helping countries achieve a prosperous, net-zero, and resilient future.
USAID has identified four priority adaptation actions in this plan. USAID will seek to implement these adaptation actions on the specified timeframes and based on the specific variables detailed below. Some of these actions are ongoing, while some will require USAID to conduct additional research and explore new, more innovative approaches by collaborating with partners across the U.S. government (USG) and in the private and nongovernmental sectors. USAID will report its progress against these actions annually, as required by E.O. 14008. The four priority actions are:
USAID Climate Strategy and Mainstreaming
Climate Risk Management
Ensuring a Climate-Ready Workforce
Procurement and Supply Chains
Source: USAID
Year: 2021
