Once cold, now too hot: Efforts to cut rising temperature in Nigeria's plateau intensifies

Chanja Datti, a social enterprise in Nigeria, turns recyclables into commercially viable products to sell for manufacturing, like pellets and bales. The company collects waste from various organizations and pays locals who collect trash and turn it in.

Alongside clean energy, wind farms built on property leased from locals in Nebraska are generating jobs, income, and local taxes that keep small towns like Petersburg afloat.

A group of women from a fishing village in southern Mexico are restoring mangroves on the Yucatán Peninsula. While the group, known as las chelemeras, is reviving the local ecosystem, the members also find personal empowerment from the work and the pay.

Dig Deep Farms provides sustainable jobs for people coming out of jail, who have a difficult time finding work. The farm employs about 15 people who grow food for county health initiatives, runs a job-training program for formerly incarcerated people, and operates a food hub to distribute fresh produce to people in need and recently increased its acreage to provide even more opportunities and resources.

Women in villages throughout India and Bangladesh are “silent climate warriors” who plant mangrove trees as a way to mitigate the effects of rising waters. While it’s not always easy to convince their family members that they should do this, they have been able to grow an additional 2,000 acres of mangroves that can reduce the speed of waves and capture carbon dioxide. They also earn income, about $430 a year, for growing and planting saplings.

People across Argentina are earning an income during a severe economic crisis by joining recycling cooperatives. Members collect recyclables off the street and are paid by the co-ops by material and weight.

Plant Your Future is working with Peruvian farmers to reforest the Amazon rainforest by helping them earn an income while growing trees instead of doing so by cutting trees down. The charity does outreach, teaches farmers about agroforestry, intercropping, and the carbon market, and then supports them throughout the transition to those practices.

Members of the B’laan ethnic group in a community in the Philippines are improving their livelihoods by foraging for coffee beans excreted by wild palm civets. They can sell the beans at a premium price because they are used to make a luxury coffee brew. And the practice encourages the locals to protect the wild animals, which benefits the ecosystem, too.

In areas of Brazil where land tenure is formalized, indigenous peoples' reforestation projects are increasing forest cover.

The Tropical Research and Conservation Center’s mangrove restoration projects in Nigeria use a community-based, participatory approach to engage locals in the process, educate them on the importance of the trees, and keep them from turning to deforestation as a source of income.