Walking the Talk: WRI’s Sustainability Initiative

The objective of WRI’s sustainability initiative is to “learn by doing” and to apply our research to reduce our own environmental footprint.

Learning by Doing

To put our mission into action both internally and externally, WRI has had a long-standing commitment to “learning and leading by doing.”

In 1999, WRI was the first NGO to complete a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory and set a net zero reduction target. From 2000–2009, we met that target through the purchase of offsets. Throughout this time, we also provided guidance for other office-based organizations to measure and manage their own inventories.

However, as our total GHG emissions continued to rise over the years, it became clear that just purchasing offsets was not setting the right example for our partners and colleagues or demonstrating the level of commitment needed to mitigate climate change impacts. Furthermore, we recognized that our operations were contributing to other environmental and social impacts that are core to our mission, but were not being addressed through any formal initiative.

These realizations prompted the launch of the sustainability initiative in 2011.

At WRI, we work hard to put ideas into action, meet our mission and goals, and ultimately protect the earth and promote sustainable development. This hard work leads to many results and outcomes, but it also contributes to our own environmental footprint. Each day, the electricity we use to power our offices, the business travel we take to meet with partners, and the goods and services we purchase to complete our projects have an impact on our environment.

Two Main Focus Areas:

Tracking and reducing environmental and social impacts related to our four programmatic goals: climate protection, governance, markets and enterprise, and people and ecosystems; and
Communicating and sharing knowledge with partners and colleagues.

First Milestone: Emission Reduction Targets

The first milestone of this initiative was to set absolute GHG reduction targets around three main sources of emissions:

business travel
energy use
indirect emissions in our value chain due to purchased goods, services, and sub grants (scope 3).

WRI’s 2010 GHG Inventory Report details how we calculated the 2010 baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventory and used those results to set reduction targets.

Next Steps

Moving forward, the sustainability initiative will identify innovative solutions to meet our GHG reduction targets, as well as identify and implement solutions to achieve goals focused on governance, people and ecosystems, and markets and enterprises.

Communicating our goals and progress will motivate us to succeed. We hope this communication will also inspire others to “walk the talk.”