World Resources Institute

For many people across the globe, clean energy solutions are neither affordable nor accessible, even with the drop in the cost of renewable energy. And for many countries, there are barriers to deploying clean energy fast enough to change their emissions trajectories.

We are in a window of opportunity in which significant energy investments will be required. Over the coming 15 years, energy is expected to account for nearly 30 percent of total core infrastructure investment, around U.S. $25 trillion. These investments can be shaped to deliver clean, affordable and reliable energy to all people.

Shifting to a low-carbon, inclusive energy future requires (1) accelerating the pace of renewable energy deployment; (2) increasing energy productivity, so that energy use diverges from economic growth; and (3) addressing the gap that is emerging between those who have clean energy and those who lack basic access.

WRI’s Global Energy Program helps build clean energy markets and change institutions. We start with the consumer in mind—what energy services are needed? Which business models are sustainable? How can regulatory frameworks scale solutions? We take public commitments as a starting point and push forward policies, projects and programs that accelerate and deliver change on the ground.

We work with large energy buyers, entrepreneurs, utilities, policy planners, development-oriented institutions and urban leaders to shift energy system investments to clean technologies that support prosperous, healthy communities and protect the climate and ecosystems that sustain us. For highlights of our work to transform global energy systems, subscribe to our newsletter, WRI Energy Insights, and follow us on Twitter @WRIEnergy.

The world runs on water. Clean, reliable water supplies are vital for industry, agriculture, and energy production. Every community and ecosystem on Earth depends on water for sanitation, hygiene, and daily survival.

Yet the world’s water systems face formidable threats. More than a billion people currently live in water-scarce regions, and as many as 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025. Increasing pollution degrades freshwater and coastal aquatic ecosystems. And climate change is poised to shift precipitation patterns and speed glacial melt, altering water supplies and intensifying floods and drought.

WRI works with businesses, governments, and civil society to ensure a water-secure future. We seek to address both water quantity and quality challenges.

Our Aqueduct project uses the most up-to-date data to produce global water risk maps, allowing stakeholders to assess current and future challenges. We conduct economic and other analyses to identify the most cost-effective strategies to reduce water pollution. And we identify solutions—such as restoring ecosystem services—to alleviate stresses on the world’s water supplies.

The world is projected to hold nearly 10 billion people by 2050. Sustainably feeding this exploding population requires meeting three great needs simultaneously.

According to WRI research, the world will have to close a gap of 56 percent between the amount of food available today and that required by 2050. It must reduce agriculture’s impact on climate, ecosystems, and water. And it needs to ensure that agriculture supports inclusive economic and social development.

WRI works to meet these three needs. We develop analyses, partnerships, and strategies to secure a sustainable food future.

WRI’s World Resources Report project has identified a five-course menu of solutions to the world’s food production and consumption problems. We identify ways to reduce food loss and waste. We analyze strategies to sustainably increase food production, such as restoring degraded lands back into productivity, increasing pastureland yields, and improving land and water management. And we advance methods to reduce food production’s impact on the environment, such as climate-smart agriculture.

Human society and the global economy are inextricably linked to forests. More than 1 billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods. And forest ecosystems play a critical role in stabilizing the climate; providing food, water, wood products, and vital medicines; and supporting much of the world’s biodiversity.

Despite decreased deforestation rates in some regions, forest ecosystems are still under great threat. According to WRI research, 30 percent of global forest cover has been cleared, while another 20 percent has been degraded. Most of the rest has been fragmented, leaving only about 15 percent intact.

WRI works with governments, businesses, and civil society to sustain forests for future generations. We aim to curb deforestation worldwide and help to restore and reforest already-cleared land.

WRI’s Global Forest Watch initiative uses the most advanced satellite data and crowd-sourced information to track deforestation throughout the world in near-real-time. Our Global Restoration Initiative identifies ways to restore trees and productivity to deforested and degraded lands. Our Forest Legality Initiative works to reduce illegal logging by supporting the supply and procurement of legal and sustainable forest products. And we develop policy recommendations to ensure effective and inclusive governance of the world’s forest resources.

The decisions that national leaders, local officials, developers and planners make in cities today will determine how billions of people will live over the next century. Already, half the global population resides in cities. That figure is set to increase to 70 percent by 2050.

Traditional models of urban development can lock us into congestion, sprawl and inefficient resource use. However, compact, connected and efficient growth can help ensure more competitive cities and provide a better quality of life for citizens.

WRI aims to ensure that cities drive economic opportunity while sustaining natural resources and improving quality of life. Through our WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, we use technical expertise, cutting-edge research and on-the-ground partnerships to design solutions that enable sustainable city growth.

Our analysis and tools allow cities to effectively manage their natural resources and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while improving quality of life. Working across our network, we develop and support the implementation of research-based solutions in sustainable mobility, urban form, as well as urban efficiency and climate that reduce pollution, improve health, and create safe, accessible public spaces for all people to thrive.

We collaborate with local and national decision-makers in Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Mexico and Turkey to implement projects that overcome the challenges of urbanization and make cities that are better for people and the planet. And we partner with businesses, governments and civil society to scale our successful pilot projects globally.

Communities everywhere grapple with environmental injustices that leave them without a say in the decisions that impact their lives and the natural resources on which they depend. Indigenous Peoples are losing forests that have sustained their way of life for generations. City residents don’t know if their water is safe to drink. And farmers are struggling to protect their crops from an onslaught of climate impacts – droughts, floods, fires and rising seas – that they had little hand in creating.

Governments are trying to tackle these challenges, but many lack the knowledge, capacity or funds to advance just, sustainable solutions. Progress stalls, while the need for effective solutions becomes increasingly urgent in a warming world. That’s where WRI comes in.

WRI’s Governance Center works with governments, the private sector, civil society and citizens to address issues that matter most to poor, vulnerable communities: adaptation to climate change, affordable, reliable access to clean energy, environmental rights, water and air pollution, social equity and open, responsive government. We start with analyses of voice, power and vulnerability in environmental decision-making. Who suffers and who benefits when governments enact or fail to enact an initiative? Who has a seat at the table, and who is left out? What do citizens need to shape policy, and what steps can governments take to become more inclusive, transparent and accountable to their citizens?

But improving decision-making is just the beginning. That’s why our research also concentrates on follow-through and building momentum for change – the critically important steps that officials across all levels of government must take to respond to citizens’ concerns and realize ambitious commitments, like the Paris Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals. What are the political, economic and social dynamics that underpin success? How can governments pass effective laws, strengthen institutions to enforce them, and marshal the financial or technical resources needed implement policy? And what can leaders do to sustain political support for action across election cycles?

Using our analysis, we build citizens’ capacity to engage in the environmental decisions that impact their lives and mobilize civil society networks that drive bottom-up change. Open, accessible data platforms created in partnership with WRI, like PREPdata and LandMark, make it easier for people everywhere to understand the threats facing their communities, track governments’ response to these risks and hold officials to account. These same tools also help policymakers and corporate executives make hard choices in the face of uncertainty and rapid change. WRI supports these leaders in adopting policies that equitably address today’s most pressing environmental challenges, and we help convene high-level partnerships, like the Global Commission on Adaptation, to accelerate action.

Interested in the Center’s latest research, analysis and commentary? Subscribe to our newsletter, Greening Governance, follow us on Twitter @WRIGovernance and check out our Greening Governance Seminar Series.

Why Sustainable Business
Working with companies is essential to our mission because they can innovate and scale solutions to our toughest challenges. Businesses have important influence on governments and their extensive, global value chains complement the reach of governments bound by national borders. Companies inform WRI’s priorities and help kickstart innovative projects.

How We Support Sustainable Business
WRI's research helps integrate environmental sustainability and business strategy. Our practical guidance, tools and initiatives help companies assess and reduce impacts along their entire value chains. Here are some popular ways in which WRI helps companies improve their sustainability performance:

Aqueduct helps companies be responsible stewards of freshwater
Global Forest Watch helps companies reduce deforestation impacts in their supply chains
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol is the world’s most trusted methodology for measuring corporate emissions
The Science Based Targets initiative helps companies align their carbon reduction targets with international climate goals
To learn more about our work with the private sector, view our brochure and contact JP Leous, Director of International Corporate Relations, to learn how to become a program partner.

Our Corporate Consultative Group (CCG)
WRI’s Corporate Consultative Group (CCG) brings together over 30 leading companies to advance business practices that mitigate risks and support sustainable growth. Collaborating with CCG members illuminates corporate needs and the ways we can help guide sustainability strategies in the private sector.

Learn more about WRI’s Corporate Consultative Group or contact Emily Neagle, Manager, Corporate Consultative Group, Corporate Relations and Communications.

The mission of WRI’s Finance Center is to promote the shift of finance away from environmentally unsustainable activities and toward sustainable ones. We do this through the production of data-driven, policy-actionable research and knowledge products and by convening coalitions of key stakeholders that can drive action on the ground.

Our team is multidisciplinary and brings together experience from academia and the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

Helping to Meet Global Challenges
The Finance Center supports the rest of WRI as we seek to tackle WRI’s Global Challenges. We do so through deep, multi-year partnerships with a subset of WRI Programs, through cross-cutting activities designed to influence financial institutions and markets, and through the provision of tailored technical advice to WRI’s programs and international offices.

Our work is structured around five key themes: (1) financing NDC implementation, (2) “greening” private sector finance, (3) strengthening public financial institutions, (4) encouraging the U.S. and China to be sustainable finance champions, and (5) strengthening investment in adaptation and resilience.

Keep up with our work by subscribing for news and updates via email and following us on Twitter @wrifinance.

Once considered vast and inexhaustible, the Ocean is being exploited in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago. Over-fishing, plastic pollution, ocean warming and acidification and more threaten to undermine the ability of the Ocean to underpin human well-being and life on Earth as we know it.

The world cannot afford to continue this current trajectory. A new pathway is needed, one where profitability and sustainability operate together to the benefit and health of people and the Ocean. WRI will help identify this pathway, applying our core approach of Count It, Change It, Scale It.

Count It
What is true for business is true for the Ocean: what gets monitored gets managed. We aim to support the Ocean Community and the multiple Ocean Initiatives and coalitions that have put the ocean on the global agenda, because there is a general recognition that Ocean monitoring is falling short. Likewise, we need to link biophysical changes in the Ocean and the global policy agenda.

We seek to help fill this gap and support the Ocean community by preparing annual State of the Ocean reports that track progress toward SDG 14—to conserve and sustainably use the Ocean. These reports would monitor developments in policies, programs, business practices and finance to determine “how goes the battle”—highlighting successes and what is needed to create system-wide change. Others can then take these findings into action.

Change It
Current practices are based on the misguided assumption that economic development requires over-extracting and polluting the Ocean. That narrative must change. Bringing together the world’s top institutions in Ocean economics, politics and science, we seek to help craft a new narrative, one where transitioning to a new Ocean economy is good for jobs, economic growth, international competitiveness, health and the Ocean.

The evidence-based results would inform and stimulate a new narrative for governments, private-sector leaders and the media. It would showcase the costs of inaction, the benefits of action, real-world examples of success and a roadmap to achieving a new Ocean economy.

Scale It
Change at scale requires moving in the same direction. That means getting the new Ocean narrative on the global political and business agenda and keeping it there. To do this, we will work with ocean partners and research institutions to put our findings into the hands of decision-makers, and Ocean networks such as the Friends of Ocean Action and the UN Special Envoy’s Communities of Action. Such networks and others are playing a critical role in advancing the Ocean agenda.