Pollution threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world, particularly low-income communities and communities of color. Working with civil society organizations across six countries, WRI created new toolkit to support locally led efforts to secure the basic human right to a clean, healthy and safe environment.
The 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.
Southeast Asia's Mekong region has lost much of its forests. A new satellite imagery technique reveals countries like Thailand are reversing the trend, not just in forests but on farms and villages too.
More than 60 percent of workers are members of the informal economy. Instead of ignoring the informal economy, cities should plan for it; doing so will increase sustainability and productivity while protecting some of the world's least-advantaged.
Communities near a toxic hot spot in Thailand want the government to tell them what's in their water. Despite the country's strong "right to know" laws, they aren't getting the answers they need.
A new report from World Resources Institute’s (WRI) The Access Initiative reveals that Asian countries are not effectively telling people if the water they use for drinking, farming and fishing is polluted or dangerously toxic.
Industrial facilities release upwards of 400 million tons of toxic pollutants into the world’s waters each year. For many of Asia’s poorest communities who depend on local waterways for drinking, bathing, farming and fishing, they need to know whether their water is polluted or dangerously toxic.
Ensuring that poor, vulnerable communities everywhere have the voice, power and information to protect their right to a safe, clean and healthy environment
The world needs to add about a billion homes to meet the demand for urban housing. An "incremental" approach, where the urban poor work with the government in constructing their own homes slowly over time, can help.
About one billion people live in slums or informal settlements. Thailand's Bann Mankong program, which improved the living conditions of more than 90,000 households at a cost of just $570 per family, offers lessons on solutions.
The Flint water crisis an example of what can happen in the absence of transparent, inclusive and accountable water quality regulation and public service delivery. And unfortunately, it's just one community out of many throughout the world experiencing this problem.
The World Resources Institute (WRI) is working through the Measurement and Performance Tracking (MAPT) project to help enhance national capacities in developing countries to measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emis
The authors discuss how energy stakeholders from utilities to government officials to consumers can learn from the Thai Solar PV Roadmap Initiative (TSRI), an initiative that aims to provide the Thai government with recommendations on how to both effectively and inclusively pursue greater solar power development.
A unique network of civil society organizations dedicated to promoting transparent, inclusive and accountable decision-making in the electricity sector.
Building the capacity of developing countries to effectively track progress toward meeting domestic climate, energy, and development goals.
Worldwide, one out of every five people lacks access to modern electricity. Affordability, quality of service, and social and environmental impacts pose great challenges in providing people with the power they need for lighting, cooking, and other activities. Good governance involving open and inclusive practices is essential to overcoming these pressing obstacles.
Increased 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.
Developing countries will need about $531 billion of additional investments in clean energy technologies every year in order to limit global temperature rise to 2° C above pre-industrial levels, thus preventing climate change’s worst impacts. To attract investments on the scale required, developing country governments, with support from developed countries, must undertake “readiness” activities that will encourage public and private sector investors to put their money into climate-friendly projects.
Between now and 2050, developing countries need an estimated $531 billion per year of additional investment in energy supply and demand technologies in order to limit global temperature rise to 2° C above pre-industrial levels. To achieve this scale of investment, developing country governments