WRI Insights

As 2013 comes to a close, it’s a good time to look back on [the impact](http://www.wri.org/our-work/outcomes) we’ve made in the world this year. We made progress on tackling key sustainability challenges, including [addressing climate change](http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/climate), promoting [clean energy](http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/energy), ensuring [food security](http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/food) and stable [water supplies](http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/water), reducing [forest degradation](http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/forests), and creating [sustainable cities](http://www.wri.org/our-work/topics/cities-transport). Take a look at our [nine top outcomes](http://www.wri.org/our-work/outcomes):

Negotiators during the 2013 COP 19 in Warsaw, Poland made big advances on a program called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), which helps countries preserve forests and climate-altering carbon stored inside. As the world moves toward establishing a new international climate action agreement in 2015, the progress on REDD+ deserves a closer look.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation investment needs are [urgent, significant, and growing](http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/climate-finance). The world will need to devote trillions of dollars into clean energy, sustainable transport, and other green infrastructure to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees C and prevent the worsening effects of climate change. Private sector investment will be critical to achieving the type of low-carbon, climate-resilient growth necessary to secure a sustainable future.

India struggles with water scarcity, a problem that poses especially huge implications for the country’s food security and rural livelihoods. The country has long-battled its scarcity issues through [Watershed Development](http://wotr.org/wotr-projects/watershed-development/), a participatory approach to improve water management through afforestation and reforestation, sustainable land management, soil and water conservation, water-harvesting infrastructure, and social interventions. But while watershed development has been employed in communities throughout India, its potential long-term costs and benefits have not been well-understood or studied--until now. A [new working paper](http://www.wri.org/publication/watershed-development-india-economic-valuation-adaptation-considerations) from WRI and WOTR finds that watershed development has provided more than $9 million dollars’ worth of food security and water management benefits to the water-stressed community, Kumbharwadi.

This is the fourth installment of WRI’s blog series, [Adaptation and the Private Sector](/tags/adaptation-and-private-sector). Each post explores ways to engage the private sector in helping vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. See [past posts](/tags/adaptation-and-private-sector).

Energy efficiency programs in world's major developing countries could save 1,500 Terawatt hours of energy and save consumers US$ 1.5 trillion by 2030. But despite their “win-win” nature, the purchase of energy efficient appliances remains low in some countries—including in India. This is in part due to low levels of involvement by local civil society organizations (CSOs) in the energy efficiency standards and labeling (S&L) process.

It is not possible to effectively address climate change without substantive [greenhouse gas] GHG emission reductions by the transport sector. But putting the pieces together – especially in developing countries – will require fine-tuning transportation climate finance readiness to match growing demand. A [new report](http://www.transport2020.org/publicationitem/2052/new-giz-btg-transport-readiness-for-climate-finance) for the German International Cooperation [(Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)](http://www.giz.de/en/)) outlines seven routes governments in the developing world can take to accelerate investment in low-carbon transport.

This week in Washington, D.C., members of the [Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR)](http://www.forestlandscaperestoration.org/) met to advance strategies to [restore degraded forest landscapes](http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/forest-and-landscape-restoration) around the world. Such restoration has the potential to bring millions of hectares of land back to life—a move that could help protect watersheds, ensure food security, improve the livelihoods of rural communities, tackle climate change, and conserve biodiversity.

WRI’s Aqueduct project recently [evaluated, mapped, and scored](http://www.wri.org/resources/maps/aqueduct-country-and-river-basin-rankings) water risks like these in 100 river basins, ranked by area and population, and 180 nations—the first such country-level water assessment of its kind. [We found](http://www.wri.org/resources/maps/aqueduct-country-and-river-basin-rankings) that 36 countries face “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress (see list at bottom). This means that more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic, and industrial users is withdrawn annually—leaving businesses, farms, and communities vulnerable to scarcity.