WRI Insights

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.

Governments around the world legally recognize at least 513 million hectares of community forests, land held collectively by either rural populations or Indigenous Peoples. **This area stores about 37 billion tonnes of carbon—29 times the annual carbon footprint of all the passenger vehicles in the world.** *[Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change](http://www.wri.org/securingrights)*, a new report from WRI and the [Rights and Resources Initiative](http://www.rightsandresources.org/), shows that by protecting and expanding the amount of officially recognized community forests, national governments can meet their climate goals while also improving citizens’ livelihoods.

Mumbai, India can be a commuter’s nightmare. Downtown sits a full 10 miles from the residential core, and the two areas are poorly linked by public transport.

Where do U.S. power sector emissions come from? And how have they changed over time? Today, WRI released an update of its [U.S. state GHG emissions data](http://cait.wri.org/wri/US%20State%20GHG%20Emissions?indicator[]=Total%20GHG%20Emissions%20Excluding%20Land-Use%20Change%20and%20Forestry&indicator[]=Total%20GHG%20Emissions%20Including%20Land-Use%20Change%20and%20Forestry&year[]=2011&chartType=geo) via CAIT 2.0, our climate data explorer. These and other data provide valuable context in light of the EPA's [newly proposed emissions standards](http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/06/epa%E2%80%99s-new-clean-power-plan-both-achievable-and-economically-beneficial) for U.S. power plants.

Forest and bush fires, often associated with agricultural expansion and land conflict, can release a toxic haze that shuts down schools and airports, and sickens tens of thousands of people. Efforts to stop the fires have been hampered by a lack of high-quality evidence on where exactly the fires are and who could be responsible.