project
Safeguarding the lives, livelihoods and rights of environmental defenders who act peacefully to protect the planet.
Philippines
blog post
by Talia Chorover and Jessica Arriens - January 06, 2020After Typhoon Ondoy struck an informal settlement in Pasig City, the government wanted to relocate residents up to 60 miles away. Instead, they built their own apartment complex designed to withstand floods and storms.
blog post
by Mathilde Bouyé, Delfina Grinspan and Alexander Tankou - December 20, 2019Badly designed climate action can leave people behind. Here are five ways governments can create fair policies and ensure climate justice.
blog post
by Mansi Konar and U. Rashid Sumaila - December 16, 2019The financial losses from illegal trade in fish are huge, and even bigger if you factor in the economic activity and tax revenue that would have followed from fish entering the formal economy.
news item
Un nuevo informe del World Resources Institute (WRI) muestra que en muchos países, el proceso para formalizar los derechos de la tierra es extremadamente complejo, costoso y lento, y tarda hasta 30 años o más, pero las compañías normalmente pueden asegurarse derechos a largo plazo sobre la tierra desde un plazo de tan solo 30 días a cinco años.
data visualization
This infographic allows you to navigate the process for a community seeking formal land rights in Indonesia, versus for a company securing an oil palm concession.
blog post
by Rebecca Carter - March 22, 2017The Trump administration’s budget proposal for the State Department and USAID would eliminate funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative, which supports hundreds of climate change programs and advances U.S. interests around the world. As a former USAID Foreign Service Officer, WRI's Rebecca Carter draws on her experience to show these programs are great investments.
blog post
by Celine Salcedo-La Viña - July 28, 2016Laws alone can't give women a voice in decision-making. New WRI research explores how gender equity policies can be better implemented in Mozambique, Tanzania and the Philippines.
publication
by Pieter Terpstra, Annaka Peterson Carvalho and Emily Wilkinson - December 2015 publication
by Pieter Terpstra, Emily Wilkinson (ODI), Alice Caravani (ODI), Nella Canales Trujillo (ODI), Smita Nakhooda (ODI) and Annaka Peterson-Carvalho (Oxfam America) - December 2014The Adaptation Finance Accountability Initiative (AFAI) project seeks to improve accountability around adaptation finance.
publication
by Tim Searchinger, Tapan K. Adhya, Bruce Linquist, Reiner Wassmann and Xiaoyuan Yan - December 2014A sustainable food future will require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture even as the world produces substantially more food. The production of rice, the staple crop for the majority of the world’s population, emits large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
blog post
by Pieter Terpstra and Annaka Peterson Carvalho - November 07, 2013The amount of adaptation finance has increased in recent years, at least in part as a result of agreements reached at the U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009. In the past year, Oxfam, WRI, Overseas Development Institute, and civil society networks in Nepal, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia have been working together to figure out just how much adaptation finance has been flowing to these four countries and where it’s going. It’s a bit like trying to figure out the tangle of plumbing and pipes in an old house. There is money for climate change adaptation coming from different sources, flowing through different channels, and being used for different purposes.
publication
by Pieter Terpstra, Annaka Peterson Carvalho and Emily Wilkinson - November 2013The amount of international climate finance approved to help developing countries address the impacts of climate change increased considerably between 2008 and 2012.
project
project
A unique network of civil society organizations dedicated to promoting transparent, inclusive and accountable decision-making in the electricity sector.
project
Raising awareness of threats to coral reefs and providing information and tools to manage coastal habitats more effectively.
project
Advancing effective, equitable adaptation finance systems to build resilience in a changing climate
blog post
by Athena Ballesteros and Sarah Martin - June 25, 2013Rabayah Akhter, an intern with WRI's Electricity Governance Initiative, also contributed to this post.
When it comes to renewable energy, the Philippines is one of the world’s more ambitious countries. The country set out to triple its share of renewable energy by 2030 based on 2010 levels. The Philippines has one of Asia’s highest electricity rates, in part due to high costs of importing fossil fuels. Enhancing the country’s energy security and keeping power costs down have been the main drivers for setting renewable energy goals.
While the Philippines has demonstrated commitment to renewable energy, the process of achieving its goals has proven to be challenging. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in collaboration with WRI released a new report today, Meeting Renewable Energy Targets: Global Lessons From The Road To Implementation. The report documents the challenges and solutions to scaling up renewable energy in the Philippines and six other countries - China, India, Germany, Morocco, South Africa and Spain.
Successes and Delays
The Philippines’ experience--the strides and the delays--exemplifies the importance of good governance, including transparency, accountability, and participation. Without it, policies are unlikely to receive public acceptance or support. While it’s important to choose which policies to initiate in the energy sector, equally as important is fortifying the regulatory and institutional structures that back them.
blog post
by Carole Excell - May 09, 2013Increased industrialization in Asia has created countless hurdles for communities to protect themselves from pollution. Important government information—such as the amount of pollutants being discharged by nearby factories or results from local air and water quality monitoring—still isn’t readily accessible in user-friendly formats. This practice often leaves the public entirely out of decision-making processes on issues like regulating pollution or expanding industrial factories. In many cases, the public lack the information they need to understand and shield themselves from harmful environmental, social, and health impacts.
This state of affairs recently prompted a group of government officials, NGOs, local community representatives, and academics to demand government action to change the status quo. Last week, representatives from China, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand released the Jakarta Declaration for Strengthening the Right to Environmental Information for People and the Environment. The Declaration urges governments to improve access to information on air and water quality pollution in Asia—and offers a detailed road map on how to do so.
The Declaration stemmed from a meeting organized by WRI’s the Access Initiative and the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, held last week in Jakarta. Representatives will now bring the list of findings and recommendations to government officials in their home countries and ask for commitments on increasing transparency.
publication
by Bharath Jairaj - January 2013Since the 1990’s, international financial institutions have urged developing countries to liberalize the electricity sector in their countries to bring financial solvency to the sector.