In past years, ND-GAIN has provided in-kind counsel to Catholic Relief Services (CRS), helping to prioritize the global non-profit’s strategies by developing country analysis. Our shared intent is to find ways to work together, collaborating on projects that leverage CRS decades’ long investment and impact in communities with ND-GAIN’s focus scientifically-based methodologies that evaluate critical adaptation needs andopportunities. To date, our work together includes: 

• ND-GAIN analyzed food, water and health risk in CRS’ 98 countries of operation, along with the countries’ relative ND-GAIN scores. CRS used these analyses to assess their climate vulnerability work in Latin America and Africa.
• ND-GAIN compared vulnerability and readiness indicators for 11 countries that CRS defines as priority. ND-GAIN understands that this analysis provided a tool to inform CRS leaders’ funding allocation decisions. Additionally, the analysis provided baseline data that CRS could use for future program evaluation.
• ND-GAIN analyzed 14 African desert belt countries from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, comparing countries that share similar climatic conditions but differ in adaptive capacity.
• ND-GAIN prepared an analysis of several indicators in the food sector to inform CRS’s Producer Development Initiative in El Salvador, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Uganda, and Madagascar.
• ND-GAIN completed a Burundi country analysis, based on the ND-GAIN Country Index, to inform an element of CRS’ Development Food Assistance Program. The team also created a country analysis of Bangladesh, analyzing the relationship between deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and sertão, shortages of rain and agriculture. These studies illustrate the utilization of ND-GAIN as an assessment tool that highlights areas in dire need of improvement so a nation can adapt and cope with the current and future effects of climate change and other challenges.