WRI Insights

How can the world feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050 while also advancing economic development, protecting forests and stabilizing the climate? Technological innovations like plant-based "beef" and low-emissions rice can help.

Climate experts have long considered heavy transportation one of the hardest parts of the economy to clean up. But new research shows that trucking, shipping and aviation can in fact become carbon-neutral, at very low cost.

Forests are essential for lives and livelihoods. As these benefits become better understood and valued, investors in sustainable forestry are seeing financial returns that outperform investments in conventional timber.

Indonesia is one of the only countries actually reducing its deforestation rates. But with the annual fires season beginning and El Niño promising fire-prone conditions, the country’s forest protection policies will be put to the test.

In too many countries, decision-making on climate change rests solely in the hands of a limited set of policymakers and planners. This is a lost opportunity to build awareness, political commitment and accountability for the kind of transformational change needed to get the world on a more sustainable path.

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.

Climate negotiators in Bonn, Germany left with only mixed progress in maintaining the spirit and strengthening the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Here are the highs and lows.

Fewer than a dozen national climate plans include measures to reduce food loss and waste. That's a problem—if food loss and waste were its own country, it would be world's third-largest emitter.

Nicholas Walton gets on the phone with Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, an expert in cities and water for WRI India, to understand why Chennai ran out of water—and what can be done to prevent residents from going thirsty.