WRI Insights

WRI Water Program Director Betsy Otto knows the world should be worried about water: Her team's research showed this year that one-quarter of the world's population lives in extreme water stress. In this conversation, though, she talks about the solutions—technological, political, and managerial—that can alleviate the strain.

This week began with the Trump administration formally withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. But amidst the gloom, signs of hope: corporate leaders with the CEO Climate Dialogue went to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to enact legislation aligned with the Paris goals.

Rainy season arrives at the same time in the lowlands of central Uganda and the country’s eastern highlands. Both regions grow coffee. Yet the climate risks Uganda's coffee farmers face vary considerably depending on where they're located.

Forests help stabilize the climate and generate income, food and energy. We have plenty of evidence about what works to conserve and restore them. So why haven’t such measures been adopted at scale?

Los Angeles Air Force Base, the first federal facility with a plug-in electric fleet of vehicles on the ground, has gone a step further. Now these EVs are the first in California to provide vehicle-to-grid services, with batteries that can send energy back to the grid, enabling cleaner, more efficient, more reliable power.

Leaving the Paris Agreement will hamper America’s economic competitiveness and put people at greater risk, write Kathleen McLaughlin, EVP for Walmart, and Andrew Steer, WRI’s President & CEO, in a New York Times op-ed.

Zero carbon buildings aren't a thing of the future. They're viable and affordable right now, and present a massive opportunity to fight climate change cheaply.

Chile's protests are the result of years of worsening socioeconomic inequalities. Transportation is one area where they're felt most acutely.

When Cape Town and Chennai nearly ran out of water, these two cities managed to avert Day Zero, while revealing broad social inequity in both places. World Cities Day is a good moment to consider the lessons to be learned about equitable responses to water crises.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals set targets that can only be described as lofty — ending poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, providing clean and affordable energy for all. The question of how to achieve these ambitions has yet to be fully answered, but partnerships will be key.