Insights: WRI's Blog

The United States used more energy in 2018 than ever before. While clean energy powered some of it, 80% came from fossil fuels.

China's central government has turned to regional integration for the country's next stage of economic development, announcing or strengthening mega-region initiatives like the Yangtze River Delta Integration, Greater Bay Area Development and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Integration. If done right, this strategy can also help shift China onto a low-carbon pathway.

While the Amazon is often in the news, it is not the only rainforest in Brazil, nor the only one worth protecting. Restoring the country's Atlantic Forest could be just as important.

While the number of people without electricity has dropped, experts predict that more than 600 million will still lack power in 2030. Nine out of 10 of them will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nearly half the population in 15 major cities in the global south lacks access to public piped water systems, with access lowest in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. For these households without public piped water, water from other sources is either too expensive or unsafe.

Most of the cars bought in the United States aren't new. That means that, for electric vehicles to reach the necessary scale, we need to start thinking about how to encourage sales of used electric vehicles.

The latest IPCC report confirms a lot we already knew about the relationship between tropical forests and climate change, as well as reveals some relatively new science about how forests interact with the atmosphere. The bottom line? Protecting forests—especially tropical forests—is one of the most important strategies for both climate mitigation and adaptation.

A new IPCC report found there could be significant benefits to land-based carbon removal, such as through afforestation and restoration. But if deployed incorrectly, these strategies could create greater pressures on land and compromise food security and ecosystem health.

Indigenous peoples and other local communities have long argued that they play a central role in safeguarding more than half the world’s land, including much of its forests. The world’s leading climate scientists now agree.

The latest IPCC report finds that while land sequesters almost a third of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, it will be impossible to limit temperature rise to safe levels without fundamentally changing the way the world produces food and manages land.