African countries face some of the highest water risk in the world, now exacerbated by climate change. But management and investment are often bigger challenges. Tackling them can strengthen economies and build countries' resilience to climate change.
Research shows that ambition to tackle big sustainability problems can emerge when the private and public sector recognize and reciprocate one another's efforts. Right now, one such "ambition loop," which aims to reduce deforestation related to your chocolate bars, is in danger of stalling out.
This paper analyzes the three sovereign parametric disaster risk insurance pools serving developing countries: CCRIF SPC, the African Risk Capacity, and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company. It provides detailed recommendations for each of the pools and their stakeholders and broader recommendations to improve the availability of disaster risk finance for developing countries.
Today, WRI and nearly 20 partners launched, Energy Access Explorer, a dynamic open-source platform which will equip energy planners, donors and clean energy entrepreneurs with the information they need to electrify East Africa.
11% of the world's population still lives without reliable electricity, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. New data from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda reveals an untapped solution: high potential for wind, solar and hydropower.
This paper introduces the methods and data used in Energy Access Explorer – an online, open-source, interactive platform that uses satellite imagery and local data to visualize energy supply and demand in East Africa, equipping electricity planners, investors and clean energy entrepreneurs with the data they need to close the electricity gap.
Herders in northern Kenya have raised cattle for generations, but their way of life is threatened by climate change. To adapt to rising temperatures and less predictable rain, those who can are turning to the more resilient camel. It's just one example of the kind of "transformative adaptation" that will be increasingly necessary in communities around the world.
Deforestation rates in the Congo Basin — historically lower than in the Amazon and southeast Asia — are on the rise. It's not just a problem for the 80 million people who rely on the forests for food and livelihoods; research shows the world's second-largest rainforest regulates weather patterns across Africa.
Measuring the impact of local adaptation programs is challenging, especially when decision-makers integrate climate resilience across broader sustainable development initiatives. New research from WRI examines these challenges – from balancing country-specific and portfolio-wide adaptation assessment needs to integrating resilience elements into existing development monitoring and evaluation systems – and offers methodological solutions that adaptation practitioners around the world can implement.
Positive change is happening in cities, but it’s often lost in a sea of bad news about air pollution, rising costs of living and traffic jams. Projects from Dar es Salaam, Medellín, Pune and more provide inspiration.
When palm oil companies forcibly took communities' land in Liberia, lawyer Alfred Brownell tried to stop them. He received threats to his life and had to escape the country — but he's not done fighting.
WRI will host conversations with two of the inspiring 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize winners, days after this year’s winners were revealed today.
Urban transformation award goes to SARSAI for creating safer journeys to school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and across Africa.
More than a dozen students are killed or injured in road crashes every year at some schools in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. One project is helping kids get to school safely simply by making small changes to city street designs.
As climate impacts like drought and extreme rain hit parts of Africa, entrepreneurs are finding ways to climate-proof their land and agricultural businesses. Two companies at the recent Land Accelerator in Nairobi explain what adaptation measures they are taking.
This case study in the World Resources Report, Towards a More Equal City, examines transformative urban change in Johannesburg, South Africa, through transit-oriented development (TOD). The Corridors of Freedom program aims to help reduce spatial inequality in the city by extending bus rapid transit to many new areas and spur new or improved infrastructure for non-motorized transport, social facilities and public infrastructure.
Entrepreneurs from Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and more come for training, networking and to pitch investors their restoration business plans.
This case study in the World Resources Report, Towards a More Equal City, examines transformative urban change in Kampala, Uganda, by following its sanitation reforms. The research follows the political process that created favorable conditions for the implementation of innovative solutions to sanitation service provision. The unfolding change remains vulnerable to shifting fiscal priorities and local political instabilities, however, with continued support from all stakeholders, it seems likely that the urban change in Kampala will be sustained.
Twenty-seven nations across the continent have now committed to restore 111 million hectares of degraded land as part of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) and the Bonn Challenge.
More than a quarter of global tree cover loss between 2001 and 2015 was associated with commodity-driven deforestation, not likely to be forested again, finds a new study published in Science.