WRI Insights

Recent [reports](http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed that the impacts of climate change are already “[widespread and consequential](http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/03/4-takeaways-ipcc-report-reveal-worsening-impacts-climate-change).” Yet the effects we may see in the future [still largely depend](http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/04/analyzing-ipcc-report-6-things-you-need-know-about-reducing-emissions) on the actions countries take to reduce their emissions today. Our new [infographic](http://www.wri.org/ipcc-infographics-emissions), based on IPCC data, depicts the likely consequences of various emissions pathways ranging from a low-carbon future to a fossil fuel-intensive one.

The World Resources Institute’s Sustainability Initiative seeks to align the Institute’s business practices with its mission. Walking the talk on sustainability, a new [report](http://www.wri.org/2012-greenhouse-gas-inventory-sustainability-report) discloses our 2012 GHG inventory results and discusses GHG reduction projects and other sustainability projects completed in the last year.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, recently launched the latest book in a series on what good fiscal policy should look like in a world of environmental externalities. The message was clear: Ministers of finance and economics should design their tax systems skillfully so as to tax bad things, like pollution and congestion, rather than good things like work and profit. Not to do so is plain, bad economics.

A U.N. working group of 70 member states [recently adopted](http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html) a proposed set of [Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)](http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300) to succeed the U.N.’s [Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)](http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) set to expire in 2015. The “post-2015” SDGs will aim to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 [while also supporting](http://www.wri.org/blog/2013/09/global-efforts-tackle-poverty-and-climate-change-must-come-together) inclusive economic development and environmental sustainability. While the proposal puts forward a plethora of targets for the international community to pursue between 2015 and 2030, it leaves out a critical component of improving rural livelihoods—securing community land rights.

In an op-ed written for [LiveScience](http://www.livescience.com/47105-local-governance-protects-endangered-forests.html), Andrew Steer discusses how strengthening forest rights for indigenous communities can protect forests and combat climate change.

A new report from the [International Monetary Fund](http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm) (IMF), *[Getting Energy Prices Right: From Principle to Practice](http://www.imf.org/external/np/fad/environ/pdf/c1.pdf)*, argues that the costs of coal, natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fail to account for these fuels’ environmental and social impacts—such as greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and traffic deaths. **Setting prices that reflect these side effects—through taxes, licensing, or cap-and-trade systems—could reduce deaths from fossil fuel-related air pollution by 63 percent, decrease global carbon dioxide emissions by 23 percent, and generate revenues totaling about 2.6 percent of global GDP.**

The rainforests of Africa’s Congo Basin are the world’s [second largest](http://www.worldwildlife.org/places/congo-basin), and are increasingly one of the [most threatened](http://blog.cifor.org/11433/under-threat-deforestation-pressure-on-congo-basin-forests-increasing#.U8QgfvldV_4). Agriculture, mining, logging, and climate change are already chipping away and thinning out the forests’ edge and interior. The Congo Basin forests’ biggest threat, however, is unseen: a lack of good information. With poor infrastructure, government capacity challenges, and hard-to-detect patterns of change, the forests of the Congo Basin are among the most difficult in the world to monitor and manage.

At its core, environmental democracy involves three mutually reinforcing rights: the ability for people to freely access information on environmental quality and problems, to participate meaningfully in decision-making, and to seek enforcement of environmental laws or compensation for damages

In an article originally published for [Devex](https://www.devex.com/news/it-s-time-for-a-global-landscape-restoration-revolution-83931), Tim Searchinger and Craig Hanson discuss a new World Resources Report [publication](http://www.wri.org/publication/crop-breeding-renewing-global-commitment), which finds that using the modern advances of genetics—such as DNA mapping—offers a great opportunity to increase crop yields while also protecting the environment.

Andrew Steer, CEO of WRI, and Monique Barbut of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification discuss the urgent need for a global commitment to restoring degraded land and how it may remedy deforestation, desertification and food scarcity. The expected rise in world population to 9 billion by 2050, and the need for a 70 percent increase in food production from 2006 levels, makes the need for a solution particularly urgent. This challenge will be even more difficult in the face of a changing climate.