Blog Posts: governance

To manage intensifying climate impacts, we must transform the way we adapt to such changes. Transformative adaptation in agriculture—that is, broad, fundamental, systemic changes in food production—can enhance global food security and reduce the risk of crises and conflict.

While many countries have made climate adaptation commitments, few have actually turned them into action. New WRI research details strategies to bridge the implementation gap.

Costa Rican coffee farmers are shifting to citrus trees as climate change and declining coffee prices challenge their profitability. Some prime coffee-growing areas will become unsuitable within a few decades.

In a study of corporate land deals with rural communities in Tanzania and Mozambique, women consistently received less in return for their land, and had a harder time once they were relocated—despite national commitments to gender equality.

India plans to generate 160 gigawatts of wind and solar power by 2022, creating 330,000 new jobs. For the country's rural poor, these clean energy positions offer a lucrative alternative to subsistence farming.

In Costa Rica, Liberia and Brazil advances in transparent, participatory governance are empowering citizens and ensuring better environmental and development outcomes.

With Fiji presiding over this COP, discussions were expected to focus on adaptation—the question of how we deal with climate impacts—even before a summer of storms rocked South Asia and the Caribbean. Climate Resilience Practice director Christina Chan explains what to expect from discussion of adaptation at COP.

Better data on land tenure would help Paraguayan beef exporters reach higher-value markets while protecting Indigenous Peoples from deforestation that threatens their way of living.

Tundu Lissu, a leading opposition member of the Tanzanian parliament and a former colleague who worked on community land rights, was injured in what may have been political violence. Peter Veit, who has known Lissu for decades, writes about his friend and the risks he ran by making a difference.

Irma is the latest in a series of devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean. Though many countries and territories have prioritized disaster risk management, extreme storms like this one can set vulnerable communities back for years.