Environmental Impact Assessment is the process of identifying, evaluating, and mitigating the environmental and social effects of development projects. Through this process, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and its borrowing countries can ensure that environmental considerations are addressed and incorporated into decision-making processes and can anticipate, avoid, minimize or offset adverse effects.
Conservancy NatureNet Science Fellow Shannan Sweet spends most of her time these days thinking about climate change, agriculture and, well, maps. But the maps that interest her most are not about road trips, or hiking adventures. They’re not even as much about a place as they are about a destination.Her destination of choice?
Last Saturday, tens of thousands of people gathered on the Washington D.C. mall for the March for Science alongside hundreds of sister marches around the world to coincide with Earth Day. Climate change and environmental protection were high on the agenda as the planet continues to warm and countries confront an increasing number of extreme weather events.
Sustainable natural resource use lies at the heart of economic and social development and is a critical factor in poverty reduction. However, long term data sets for understanding natural resource availability and monitoring change do not exist, particularly in countries with the most need for this information. In addition, monitoring networks are often sparse and poorly maintained due to the high cost of data collection. To fill this information gap, satellite platforms can help countries more effectively measure and monitor their natural resources.
Three seemingly unrelated events bought thousands of people to a rainy Washington D.C. at the end of April 2017. The Global Infrastructure Forum (GIF) featured the UN and the multilateral development banks and their commitments to infrastructure to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement. The Science March paralleled marches all around the world to draw attention to the role of science in decision making.
Thousands of government officials, ministers, investors, and civil society leaders are descending on Washington D.C. this week for the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund. There is one date that should be central to the discussions: 2020. If the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is to be met and the UN Sustainable Development Goals are to be obtained, greenhouse gas emissions must peak by that year, and then drop steadily.
Earth Day is celebrated annually to demonstrate support to environmental protection. Last year on Earth Day, several countries pledged to ratify the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which entered into force on November 4, 2016.
What if you had to restore a key archaeological site from Pre-Hispanic times but could only use Pre-Incan and Incan construction techniques? How do you find the right people for the job? Well it turns out that together with our counterparts in Salta, Argentina, we found just the right approach to this challenge, and it’s an approach that helps create new employment opportunities and skills while enabling communities to participate in their cultural patrimony. Here is the story. But first, some context.