WRI Insights

Like many coffee-growing regions, Costa Rica is already dealing with the impacts of climate change. But farmers in the Coto Brus region are finding ways to adapt.

When climate-related natural disasters -- like wildfires and hurricanes -- strike in the United States, state and local governments need to consider new tools to raise cash. International experience with parametric insurance products offers some innovative options.  

Coastal areas are at risk as rising populations and growing urbanization prompt significant losses and damages to coastal habitats, impacting coastal and climate resilience. A new paper by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy explores four opportunities to ensure sustainable and resilient coastal zones.

Identifying partnerships on a transformative pathway and accelerating their progress offers the best opportunity to effectively meet the world's most pressing challenges. WRI’s new report explores transformative partnerships and how to best set them on a pathway for change.

Forest products are already a staple of Ethiopia's economy, adding more than $2.6 billion to Ethiopia’s GDP. Almost three-fourths of Ethiopia's land could benefit from more trees, offering a massive opportunity for Ethiopia's economic wellbeing.

Cities are stuck with a lot of dead trees every year, which often go to waste. Reforestation hubs are a new model that can help cities find new uses from urban wood, which can save cities money, create new jobs, address long-term public health goals and mitigate climate change.

Around the world, communities of color and marginalized groups disproportionately feel the effects of pollution and other environmental impacts. And yet, groups around the world treat environmental injustice and racial injustice as separate issues, when environmental injustices often spring from systemic racism.

Capital of all types must go toward building ocean resilience and minimizing ocean risks, yet investment into the ocean economy is drastically low. Transforming economic models and market systems is a critical step in slowing the decline in ocean health, stopping biodiversity loss and realizing the full economic potential of the ocean.

Even in the face of COVID-19, we cannot lose sight of another urgent and looming challenge: climate change. That’s why leading businesses are in support of enacting policies in the short term in order to lay a foundation for bolder action in the long term.