Washington, DC
[Remarks as Prepared]
FEED THE FUTURE DEPUTY COORDINATOR DINA ESPOSITO: Good morning. Thank you, Lauren [Herzer Risi], for that introduction. I’m delighted to be here today representing USAID and to take you on a journey outside the United States to talk about how USAID is working to advance climate action.
I understand it’s the first time this conference is being held here in the heart of Washington. And that’s fitting – given the massive scale of the challenge and the critical role the public sector plays in building climate resilience. That’s true through our domestic policy, where President Biden has spearheaded the most significant climate action in history. And it’s certainly true in our foreign policy and international development agenda, which I’m here to discuss today. My thanks to Batelle and the Wilson Center for your commitment to adding an international lens to this discussion.
Let me start first with a few observations about the problem from USAID’s vantage point: Climate change knows no borders, and its effects spare no one.
You may know that in 2023 the United States experienced 28 separate $1 billion dollar climate and weather related disasters – more than any year on record. Across those 28 disasters, a total of 492 people died. And while that is certainly 492 too many, that number is far lower than the devastation we see from climate change in the countries where USAID works.
Take Cyclone Daniel, which hit Libya in September last year. Torrential rain caused widespread damage and collapsed dams. Entire neighborhoods were swept away. More than 4,300 people were killed. This one storm, in this one country, killed nearly 10 times as many people as all the climate disasters in the United States combined.
In addition to the tragic loss of life, extreme weather events like this also cause economic devastation. Economists estimate, for example, that climate change could reduce Africa’s gross domestic product by an average of about seven percent over the long term. A continent that contributes just four percent of global carbon emissions will suffer its worst effects.
The humanitarian fall out is also growing, especially for slow-onset drought emergencies like the five seasons of failed rains in the Horn of Africa in recent years. I started my career as a disaster relief officer working on the Somalia famine of 1992 that was caused by a devastating combination of drought and conflict. It used to be that droughts hit this part of the world once a decade or so, but the gaps between droughts have become much shorter. We see them roughly every two to three years – they’re not only more frequent, but they’re also more intense and longer in duration. Analysts suggest that climate change made this latest historic drought in the Horn of Africa at least 100 times more likely to occur. Millions were displaced as they moved in search of food and water and the drought, coupled with other factors, left more than 20 million people – or roughly the population of New York State – in need of lifesaving food assistance.
There are, of course, other knock-on effects – hotter and wetter climates are hastening the onset of new crop and livestock disease, increasing the spread of malaria and other vector-borne diseases, destroying habitats and affecting child nutrition and education outcomes. Livelihoods suffer and projections are that climate impacts could push an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030.
All of this matters greatly to our own economic prosperity and national security. Extreme weather can send damaging ripple effects up and down vital supply chains that we count on. It can prompt individuals in vulnerable communities to take desperate action to survive. In Africa’s Sahel region, young men report that it’s not so much ideology that compels them to join extremist groups like Boko Haram, but the loss of their livelihoods as farmers, fishers and herders because of climate change. And we see statistical correlations between drought, hunger and migration in parts of Latin America, which contributes to the results we see at our borders.
While the challenges of the climate crisis are immense, so too are the opportunities to address them and that of course is a central topic of your work here this week.
This morning, we’ve heard about the impressive efforts underway to respond to climate change here in the United States. In the last few years, we’ve witnessed the signing of the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that will strengthen the resilience of the country’s infrastructure and economy. We’ve seen the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act with an investment of over $360 billion dollars in the transition to a clean energy economy. This is the single largest investment in climate and energy ever, that independent experts say could halve America’s emissions this decade.
All of us together – across nations and across the public and private sector – need to bring this same ingenuity, urgency and increased investment abroad if we are to scale solutions and truly address a crisis that knows no borders.
USAID is a key partner in this regard. For those of you who don’t know us well – we’re the world’s largest bilateral relief and development agency, with programs in more than 100 countries and over 13,000 staff worldwide. We pride ourselves on tackling the world’s toughest challenges – poverty, hunger, disease, conflict. And we do this in collaboration with national governments, local communities, farmers, businesses, and everyone in between.
A decade ago, our climate strategy focused on optimizing the programs that worked directly on climate change – things like expanding renewable energy or conserving tropical forests, which remain vital – but are clearly not enough. Today, we’re taking a hard look at managing the risks of climate change across everything we do, from our work in agriculture and nutrition to global health and education to governance and conflict mitigation.
We’re doing this because we know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In fact, every dollar invested in adaptation can yield between $2 to $10 dollars of benefits and save up to $4 dollars of emergency humanitarian assistance down the line.
This shift in strategy includes making organizational changes. I lead a new bureau at USAID – the Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security – that brings together our climate and biodiversity centers with our agriculture, nutrition and water centers, among others. We recognized that we cannot resolve the climate crisis without integrating both climate adaptation and mitigation into our sectoral work. Agriculture and food systems alone are responsible today for roughly 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, yet are also highly vulnerable to climate shocks. And, by the same token, we cannot solve challenges like global hunger and malnutrition, or lack of access to clean water and sanitation, or conserving tropical forests and biodiversity, without catalyzing climate adaptation for all sectors. I suspect many of your organizations are similarly looking at potential synergies spanning sectors that create win-win solutions for the benefit of both people and the planet.
The global agenda I describe is driven not just by our own sense of urgency, but because there is a groundswell of demand from the low- and middle-income countries where we work.
I’d like to highlight three concrete ways USAID is partnering with communities and nations to discern and co-develop locally led and adapted solutions, and deliver on our ambitious climate strategy goals.
The first is access to information.
Consider the power of information to a community facing the arrival of a storm or heat weave. Just a 24-hour warning of an impending weather emergency can cut weather-related damages by 30 percent. And yet one-third of the world’s population and nearly 60 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to these systems.
At USAID, we’re working with our partners to expand early warning systems in places like Bangladesh, where much of the land is barely above sea level and storms and floods are becoming more frequent and severe. With NASA and the Government of Bangladesh, we’re strengthening flash flood early warning systems and helping local governments use satellite data and forecasting systems to better prepare and respond. In 2022, a quarter of a million Bangladeshi farmers gained access to timely and location-specific weather advisories. This saved them an average of $467 dollars a year by avoiding weather-related losses – crucial savings in a country where the average annual income is just under $3,000 dollars.
Our overall goal is to assist 500 million people to adapt to a changing climate over the next decade, and we’re intentionally focused on ensuring information and other services get into the hands of people and communities too often left behind.
Women, for example, are significantly more likely to die from climate-related disasters than men. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization recently issued a report titled The Unjust Climate, which puts a lot of facts and figures to what we know to be true – that climate change is disproportionately impacting the most marginalized – especially women, the extreme poor, and those living in rural areas. When it comes to information access, we need to think about who has access to the cell phone or radio, the timing and language of notices, the location of material distribution events, and who is contributing to key decisions made when it comes to early warning access. A precursor to our success – and I suspect yours as well – is designing with and for the most affected.
A second area of focus for USAID is on research and innovation.
In the food security space – which has been a dedicated area of focus for me over many years – the world has lost ground in the fight against global hunger and malnutrition. After decades of progress, a series of unprecedented shocks, from COVID-19 to Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, have reversed many of our gains and as a result some 120 million more people are hungry today than in 2019. The rising cost of food, including food imports, and the growing climate-related challenges to production have created a new sense of urgency among our partners in the developing world to move more rapidly towards building resilient local and regional food systems.
Central to that agenda is helping farmers adapt to the climate crisis, where in addition to the need for better information, we also need to develop and scale climate-smart technologies and practices.
Through Feed the Future, the United States’ global hunger initiative, we’re investing in research and development through a network of Feed the Future innovation labs. These labs harness the best minds from nearly 70 universities across 42 U.S. states. They work through demand-driven collaborative research partnerships to address food security constraints across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and in so doing, intentionally build local capacity to identify and meet future challenges.
In just four years, using genomic selection and working with public and private sector partners, our investments supported the development of new heat tolerant hybrid seeds that yield more than the best existing seeds across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan.
In eastern and southern Africa, some seven million farm families are growing drought-tolerant maize hybrid seeds on 18 million acres. These seeds yield 40 percent more than regular varieties during times of drought. This is not only helping families feed themselves at a precarious time, but is also injecting more than $1 billion dollars per year into the regional economy and reducing the need for emergency relief.
And in Asia, we’re helping to develop rice varieties that require less water, conserving energy and reducing methane emissions in the process. This is a win-win for both farmers and the planet.
No matter the research investment, the real proof of their value of course is in their adoption and the impacts they generate. We’ve made significant strides, in part by learning from the private sector, to engage user communities and social scientists right from the start. And we’ve learned that this is as critical as the hard science to scaling innovation.
Women and men, for example, will seek different improvements in different crop types and have interest in different improved traits. Where women may prefer varieties that cook faster, men often look for varieties that grow faster. And they will have different constraints when it comes to applying certain technologies, such as lighter or smaller drying systems for grains or differences in irrigation products.
We’re moving not just to intentionally improve women’s access to information and technology, but also working to advance their leadership roles – including in the laboratory. Over the last ten years, we have helped 10,000 women scientists build their professional skills and assisted 2,000 women with graduate education and training. And we’re investing in women policymakers and entrepreneurs because their voices are essential at decision-making tables if we are to address policies and norms that keep them disproportionately hungrier and impacted by climate change.
This brings me to my last point: what we’re doing to crowd-in investment for climate resilience.
For a long time, when you talked about climate finance for adaptation globally, the words you would hear most often were things like: ‘overlooked’ and ‘underfunded’. But the tide is starting to shift both in terms of public and private sector investments in adaptation.
We’re urging Congress to support the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request to provide $3 billion dollars per year for international adaptation to support the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience. Known as PREPARE, it is dedicated to advancing access to information, expanding climate finance, and mainstreaming adaptation in all policies and programs. That goal is within reach. In 2022, the United States invested $2.3 billion dollars in global climate adaptation – which is already more than quadruple where we were just a few years ago.
Our adaptation investments are intentionally designed to crowd-in additional public and private sector funding and create win-win solutions for both people and the planet. At USAID, we have set an explicit target of mobilizing $150 billion dollars in climate finance over the next decade through public-private partnerships.
In Peru, many urban centers depend on water flow from the mountains, and water scarcity is a growing issue during the dry season. USAID is working with the Peruvian government to scale up investments in natural infrastructure, including watershed restoration often hundreds of miles upstream from urban centers. This program has already leveraged almost $300 million dollars from national budgets, water utilities, and private companies and has generated impressive results. Management of over 20,000 hectares of land has improved and created more than three million days of paid labor and improved access to water for thousands of people in downstream cities despite climate variability.
Advances in technology are also creating new opportunities for public-private partnerships. Remote sensing technology, for example, is opening up access to weather-based index insurance as a key risk mitigation and recovery measure for farmers and herders alike, many of whom have never before had access to such a product.
In Kenya, new partnerships between government, donors and the private sector are spearheading livestock insurance to help mitigate the heavy losses caused by droughts and floods. In Mali and Burkina Faso, USAID-supported insurance programs paid out more than $20 million in disaster relief for farmers hit by drought.
Beyond insurance, businesses across the board are finally starting to recognize the value – and necessity – of investing in adaptation. A landmark report from the Boston Consulting Group released last year notes that every dollar a company invests in implementing adaptation and resilience measures can yield $2 to $15 dollars in financial benefits.
And companies providing adaptation and resilience solutions could be worth nine times their current revenues in the future. While the case for profitability in adaptation investment has lagged far behind mitigation investments, the Boston Consulting Group reports finds that there is a growing pipeline of opportunities that can yield attractive, long-term returns for private investors.
We see our job as both derisking private sector investments as well as working with governments to design resilience projects with openness, transparency and community buy-in – because doing so is both better for communities and, in the end, is going to be far less risky for investors.
We know that real progress is possible – we see it in our own countries and in the places where we work.
But accelerating the pace of change and unleashing the full potential of solutions that benefit both people and planet will mean breaking down our own silos and institutional barriers – between sectors; between research and implementation; between international and local. Sometimes we need to bring very different people and skill sets together to bridge the gap between what’s possible technologically and what’s desirable and achievable locally.
My own journey took me from working directly with affected communities to working on policy reform. It has taken me from famine response to focusing on systems change and addressing the root causes of hunger, which in turn has taken me into the climate space.
I urge you to not just press for innovation and accelerated change within your own fields of endeavor – though it is certainly critical in its own right – but to also move outside your comfort zone and seek new partnerships so that we can more rapidly advance multi-win, integrated solutions. And to ask the question, “who benefits?” and whether together we’re addressing the needs of those who will be most impacted by the changing climate.
This conference is a great place to connect with some of the people and ideas to make that happen. I wish you a productive week here in Washington.
Thank you.