WRI Insights

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Relocating the capital city could put immense pressure on new areas and might not remedy the flooding and gridlock affecting Jakarta.

In his first public remarks since resigning his post in protest, Dr. Rod Schoonover spoke about how climate change poses an evolving threat to national security, both through extreme weather and more subtle impacts.