Agriculture, Climate, and Environment

AidData is currently evaluating two sweet potato programs in Ethiopia and Ghana that are being implemented by the International Potato Center (CIP). In Ghana, the Hewlett Foundation and the Commonwealth Center for Energy and the Environment at William and Mary have funded an evaluation of the impact of men and women’s social networks as well as how the selection of men versus women and peer vs leader community based sweet potato educators can impact the adoption of sweet potatoes as well as the uptake of sweet potato technologies such as the Triple S methodology. In Ethiopia, AidData is working with USAID and CIP to retrospectively evaluate a humanitarian assistance project that delivered sweet potato vines and potato seeds to farmers in selected locations across Ethiopia. Researchers are using a mixture of household surveys and remote sensing techniques to evaluate whether or not there were any impacts on households due to this program.  

Mali is exposed to dry, hot conditions and extreme climatic events like droughts, heavy and irregular rains, and heat waves. The agricultural sector of Mali, with 80 percent of its population engaged in agricultural activities, holds great potential for driving economic growth. But rising temperatures and decreasing rainfall mean more water is needed for agriculture—across the Sahel, including in Mali, agriculture is largely rainfed.

AidData, with the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), spent some two years evaluating whether small irrigation projects helped farmers in Mali adapt to future climate change shocks. The researchers incorporated a multitude of diverse datasets as they looked at the impacts in nearly 1,000 distinct locations in rural Mali where small-scale irrigation was introduced over the past two decades. While rigorous impact evaluations of small-scale agriculture have mainly explored the short-term effects of these projects, few have explored more long-lasting effects, and this is critical in assessing whether vulnerabilities have been permanently reduced, and what policies should be adopted. The researchers explored a number of topics including agricultural productivity, childhood mortality, gender issues, conflict and others. Results were published in PNAS Nexus: https://www.aiddata.org/publications/irrigation-strengthens-climate-resilience-long-term-evidence-from-mali-using-satellites-and-surveys

In 2022 researchers leading AidData’s Gender Equity in Development Initiative are working with local partners in Ghana to collect gender-disaggregated geospatial data and better understand measurement error in agricultural impact evaluations. Ghana struggles with widening regional inequality, agricultural decline, and natural resource depletion. Climate change is worsening patterns of inequality. With the  Ghana Center for Democratic Development(CDD-Ghana), evaluated the effectiveness of a rural earthen dam project, and separately as part of another grant identified the measurement error in self-reported agricultural characteristics through the collection of gender-disaggregated geospatial data.https://www.aiddata.org/blog/lab-in-the-field-aiddata-and-cdd-ghana-partner-on-research-to-evaluate-household-impacts-of-dams-in-ghana

The scale and scope of China's overseas infrastructure activities now rival or exceed that the largest traditional donors and lenders. From 2000 to 2014, China provided over $350 billion in official finance for development, with much of that going towards infrastructure, according to AidData's research. Teaming up with the MacArthur Foundation, AidData used a novel dataset to measure the impacts of these Chinese-funded infrastructure projects on forest health in three of the world’s most ecologically sensitive regions: the Tropical Andes, the Great Lakes region of Africa, and the Mekong Delta. The resulting study highlights the crucial role that domestic environmental governance plays in protecting forests: forest loss actually slowed in areas with strong protection regimes in place. But these effects reversed, and forest loss increased, in countries where forests were not adequately protected by host governments.

Over the last two decades, the People's Republic of China has provided record amounts of international development finance and established itself as a financier of first resort for many low- and middle-income countries. China's international development finance commitments now average $85 billion annually, roughly double those of the U.S. Yet very little is known about the environmental risks posed by the infrastructure projects that China has financed. Many have questioned whether China is sufficiently prudent in its design and implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects. There is particular concern about the siting of projects funded by the Chinese government, particularly those that facilitate legal and illegal logging, agricultural frontier expansion, and human settlements in previously remote or pristine areas. We study the siting and impacts of Chinese government-funded road improvements in Cambodia, where over the past two decades China's state-owned banks have supplied more than $4 billion for 30 projects building, rehabilitating or upgrading over 3,000 km of major roadways. Cambodia's forests contain some of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world, and have experienced dramatic deforestation over the past two decades.

Blog: Chinese-funded infrastructure in endangered forests: What is the data telling us?

Blog: Is it possible for infrastructure not to hurt forests?