New Climate Risk Profiles Available to Help Missions Strengthen Resilience

As 2024 comes to a close, countries around the world are experiencing the impacts of climate change. Shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures and sea levels, and receding glaciers are creating cascading impacts on people, food systems, ecosystems, and economic structures. 

In the past year, climate change has intensified extreme weather events like record-breaking floods in southern Brazil and the Sahara. The impacts of these climate stressors are not distributed equally across all populations, geographies, and sectors. As climate variability and change accelerate, the past no longer provides a reliable indication of what the future will bring.

To combat this uncertainty, USAID is updating its country-level climate risk profiles (CRPs) to improve climate risk management and support adaptation and resilience efforts. Climate risk is one of many factors Missions consider when making programming decisions. The Agency’s climate risk management process enables Missions to proceed with programming despite high climate risks by enhancing situational awareness to achieve the best development outcomes.

How can USAID use Climate Risk Profiles?

CRPs are a tool for USAID Missions and operating units to understand how climate stressors may affect countries’ economies, populations, and resources. The profiles help guide strategic planning processes, including by:

• Supporting the development of Country Development Cooperation Strategies by indicating priority areas for addressing climate impacts;
• Serving as a resource for implementing USAID’s climate risk management process during activity design and implementation;
• Helping Missions achieve the Agency’s resilience targets; and, 
• Advancing U.S. Government efforts to help countries and communities adapt to and manage the impacts of climate change. 

CRPs provide an overview of current and projected climate stressors based on an intermediate emissions scenario. The profiles further illustrate climate risks to specific sectors and critical groups, acknowledging local populations’ unique skills and knowledge in addressing climate risks. These considerations can guide program design and shape investments to maximize value by ensuring relevance and impact under a changing climate.

What’s new in the 2024 update? 

The 2024 CRPs recognize that climate impacts disproportionately affect overburdened and underserved communities, which can include women, children, Indigenous Peoples, and persons living with disabilities. Also new to the CRPs is an overview of climate finance, capturing high-level information on adaptation investments to help Missions better understand the finance landscape and identify gaps and opportunities to target investments. Finally, the updated CRPs include visual depictions of projected climate changes and associated impacts overlaid across country maps. 

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Example of a new map from the Uzbekistan Climate Risk Profile.

Photo Credit: USAID Climate Adaptation Support Activity

What’s next?

USAID released the first updated CRP earlier this year: Ethiopia. In addition to the sections outlined above, this CRP explores how climate change is projected to impact key agriculture and crop production, livestock, water resources, and human health. 

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A table summarizing key sector impacts from the Ethiopia Climate Risk Profile.

Photo Credit: USAID Climate Adaptation Support Activity

USAID also published four additional Climate Risk Profiles in 2024: Libya, Uzbekistan, Jamaica, and the Philippines. These profiles explore additional sectors, including tourism, infrastructure, clean energy, urban and coastal zones, One Health, education, and ecosystems. 

These newly released CRPs, which were developed by the USAID Climate Adaptation Support Activity (CASA), will be followed by dozens more over the next few months.