Reports
This technical report examines how World Vision's Strengthen PSNP Institutions and Resilience (SPIR) program restored degraded watersheds across Ethiopia while…
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Environmental Stewardship
World Vision’s commitment to environmental stewardship supports our mission of addressing the root causes and interconnected challenges of environmental degradation, poverty, and injustice. As weather-related impacts intensify, we work with communities to implement locally driven, nature-based solutions that restore ecosystems, strengthen resilience, and help vulnerable children and families thrive.
Growing inequality in a changing climate
Extreme weather-related events — such as droughts, floods, and storms — are intensifying across all sectors and regions, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable. Between 1970 and 2019, weather, climate, and water hazards accounted for 50% of all disasters, 45% of all reported deaths, and 74% of reported economic losses. More than 91% of these deaths occurred in developing countries.
A predicted strong El Niño event in late 2026 through early 2027 could bring extreme heat, droughts, heavy rain, floods, and storms in different parts of the world, with the greatest impact on the most vulnerable. The local effects of unpredictable precipitation and weather patterns are among the foremost challenges affecting the livelihoods, food security, and nutrition of smallholder farmers living in the world’s most vulnerable and fragile communities. The underlying causes of extreme poverty, combined with weather-related shocks and risks, exacerbate the fragile state of children’s and communities’ health, education, and long-term development outcomes. Nearly 1 billion children globally live in countries at extremely high risk of weather and environmental hazards, shocks, and stresses.
Our commitment to environmental stewardship
World Vision is committed to leveraging more than 75 years of program experience to address the degradation of natural resources — including land, water, and forests — as well as weather extremes and environmental shocks that drive extreme poverty, malnutrition, inequality, and child vulnerability. We work alongside our donors and partners to deliver positive results for vulnerable communities and natural environments.
The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events observed over the past 40 years places additional stress on children, women, and communities living in poverty. We are committed to providing wide-ranging support to small-scale and subsistence farmers who bear the brunt of weather extremes and natural resource degradation affecting food security, livelihoods, and well-being. We acknowledge that effectively addressing these challenges requires communities to participate in decision-making for development and the protection of the natural resources they rely on for their livelihoods. We promote a gender-responsive approach to natural resource management and environmental action, recognizing that structural inequalities can limit the participation of women and youth in decision-making.
To address these challenges, World Vision is prioritizing the following key areas of environmental stewardship and natural resource management (NRM):
- Strengthening local capacity for disaster risk reduction — including preparedness, response, recovery and building back better
- Supporting existing national and local early warning systems for timely and accurate messaging to reach local communities
- Strengthening capacity for community led-watershed management
- Supporting ecosystem restoration through nature-based solutions that enhance land, water, and tree management to improve productivity and livelihoods
In March 2021, World Vision issued our first Environmental Stewardship Management Policy to guide the organization’s commitment to environmental sustainability. The policy ensures that all field programs, operations, facilities, and advocacy efforts contribute to healthier natural environments and minimize potential harm to the children and communities we serve. It also stipulates that our field programing be based on appropriate and inclusive environmental assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation — considering all contextual realties and sector interventions.
World Vision’s global portfolio now includes more than 1,100 projects across various thematic areas such as environment and natural resources management, agroforestry and Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), community-based disaster management, climate-smart agriculture, WASH, waste management, and energy-efficient technologies.
Environmental Stewardship FAQs
Environmental Stewardship Research & Resources
Stories & Perspectives
Promoting gender equality in natural resource management leads to sustainable benefits for communities and the environment. World Vision’s gender-responsive ap…
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GEDSI
Reports
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a low-cost, sustainable land restoration technique that empowers poor farming communities to combat poverty and h…
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