The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) supports programs that enable decision makers to apply high-quality climate information to decision making. USAID’s climate-change and development strategy calls for enabling countries to accelerate their transition to climate resilient, low emission sustainable economic development through direct programming and integrating climate-change adaptation and mitigation objectives across the Agency’s development portfolio. USAID is the lead contributor to bilateral assistance, with a focus on capacity building, civil society building, and governance programming, and creating the legal and regulatory environments needed to address climate change. USAID leverages scientific and technical resources from across the U.S. Government (for example, NASA, NOAA, USDA, USGS) as it applies its significant technical expertise to provide leadership in development and implementation of low-emissions development strategies, creating policy frameworks for market-based approaches to emission reduction and energy sector reform, promoting sustainable management of agriculture lands and forests, and mainstreaming adaptation into development activities in countries most at risk. USAID has long-standing relationships with host country governments that enable them to work together to develop shared priorities and implementation plans. USAID’s engagement and expertise in agriculture, biodiversity, infrastructure, and other critical climate sensitive sectors provide an opportunity to implement innovative cross-sectoral climate-change programs. Finally, USAID bilateral programs work in key political and governance areas where multilateral agencies cannot.