Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia. Photo by Pedro Szekely/Wikimedia Commons
WRI worked with officials in Bogotá, Colombia, and Mérida, Mexico, to adapt and adopt national-level guidance on energy-efficient buildings, creating effective local regulations that now serve as models for other cities.
The Challenge
Buildings are a prime candidate for improving energy efficiency: buildings account for one-third of global energy use and a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions—and improving efficiency of buildings saves money. Yet the lack of appropriate policies, regulations and enforcement pose significant challenges, even when cities have access to technology and funding. In Colombia and Mexico, for example, national guidelines on building efficiency were ineffective because cities and towns lacked the means to translate these into practical regulations.
In Mexico, WRI trained officials in Mérida on how to use the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and conducted an analysis that showed potential savings from building efficiency regulations. WRI also convened working groups and established a high-level steering committee to oversee the process of adapting and adopting national building efficiency guidance into local regulations, bringing together key actors from government, industry, civil society and academia.
In Colombia, through the BEA and in collaboration with the Colombia Green Building Council, WRI advocated for the adoption of an energy-efficient building code in Bogotá and brought in additional expertise to advise on adapting the national guidelines into city policy. WRI and partners worked with Bogotá and the national government to improve the national guidance on sustainable buildings, which city officials had found difficult to translate into local regulation.
The Outcome
In 2018, Bogotá and Mérida became the first cities in their countries to adapt and adopt national guidance into mandatory regulations, providing financial benefits to building owners and operators by reducing energy and water consumption. City residents will benefit from reduced air pollution and the creation of new green jobs. Colombia and Mexico will be able to report additional progress on their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As Bogotá and Mérida are both rapidly-growing cities, the use of energy-efficient building practices will also avoid locking in long-lived, carbon intensive infrastructure. This precedent shows the way for other cities to do the same. City participation in the BEA has grown rapidly in both countries, and in both countries local BEA partners are now working to replicate this process and outcome for other cities.
A man in Ilanga Village, DRC, holds a map showing commercial concessions on community lands. The community hopes that official recognition of the community’s traditional rights will help prevent outsiders from exploiting their forests. Photo by Molly Bergen/WCS, WWF, WRI
WRI and partners developed tools to implement and monitor community-based natural resource management programs in Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These initiatives support sustainable forestry, agriculture and ecological land management in vulnerable areas, improving livelihoods.
The Challenge
Research from WRI and others has highlighted the importance of community and social forestry. In 2015, Indonesia launched an ambitious program to allocate 12.7 million hectares (31 million acres) of land to be managed by families and communities through social forestry schemes. In 2016, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) completed the legal framework allowing forest-dependent communities to obtain land rights. These initiatives have the potential to conserve and restore forests while improving livelihoods and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, implementing and monitoring such programs across vast, diverse countries is complex and challenging.
WRI’s Role
Preliminary results from WRI Indonesia's research demonstrated positive impacts of the social forestry program, such as decreased tree cover loss, higher income among farmers and fewer conflicts over land tenure. Building on these findings, WRI and partners supported the Indonesian government’s web-based social forestry monitoring tool and helped build capacity for working groups in 10 provinces, including South Sumatra.
In DRC, WRI helped draft the national community forestry strategy, finalized in 2018, which set up a five-year pilot phase for community forests. The Institute worked with the Ministry of Environment to establish a monitoring committee with representation from government, civil society, indigenous peoples’ groups and technical partners to assess progress against the national strategy. Because many DRC groups seeking community forest status have limited resources, WRI worked with local partner CODELT and the forest administration to develop templates, tools, and training to help with the application process.
The Outcome
In 2018, 9,710 households in South Sumatra received social forestry licenses covering more than 56,000 hectares (138,000 acres), bringing the total amount of land covered by these licenses to nearly 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres). This included the first forest to be managed under customary land rights in South Sumatra, for the indigenous community of Tebat Benawa.
In DRC, more than 40 community forests have been allocated and at least 250,000 hectares (617,000 acres) are now under legally-recognized community management for the first time due to the legislation passed in 2016. The work of WRI and partners on standardized templates and a national strategy helped drive the implementation of the legislation.
Isabel Zuleta, leader of Movimiento Rios Vivos, speaks to residents of a Colombian town about the community’s right to water. Photo by Alejandra Lopez Rodriguez/WRI
Sixteen governments in Latin America and the Caribbean adopted the region’s first legally binding treaty on environmental rights after years of effort by WRI and The Access Initiative (TAI), a global civil society network for which WRI is the secretariat. The agreement commits the signatories to enforce environmental rights—access to information, justice and public participation—and to protect environmental defenders in a region where many routinely face violence.
The Challenge
The deadliest region for environmental defenders continues to be Latin America, where conflict over land and natural resources can turn violent: in 2018 alone, over 170 defenders were killed. Lacking access to information about how extractive industries, agribusiness and timber companies plan to use land, forests and other resources, and safe forums to discuss these plans, it is difficult and dangerous for local communities to hold those in power to account. National governments committed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to guarantee these rights, but they remain largely unenforced.
WRI’s Role
Two decades after the original Rio summit, WRI leveraged the Rio+20 process to persuade Latin American governments to make their commitments to environmental rights more concrete. For six years, WRI and TAI partners attended negotiations with 24 countries to push for a strong agreement, building public awareness throughout the process. They also held side events at the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and at the UN Environment Assembly. WRI’s Environmental Democracy Index, developed with TAI, supported civil society negotiations. WRI and TAI partners, and now a growing coalition of groups including Namati, Amnesty International, CIVICUS and Human Rights Watch, continue to campaign to encourage additional countries to sign and ratify the agreement.
The Outcome
The Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice on Environmental Issues, known as the Escazú Agreement, was adopted in March 2018 in Costa Rica; 16 governments signed the agreement when it opened for signature in September 2018. Guyana has now ratified the agreement. The agreement requires governments to prevent, investigate and punish threats and attacks against environmental human rights defenders. Governments are also required to provide free legal assistance to support the most vulnerable groups in accessing environmental justice and create transparent, reliable communication channels between affected communities and officials to ensure fair and equitable decision-making. Once ratified and implemented, the agreement will make it easier for millions of people to protect their environment, their health, and their lives.
A Tesco grocery store in South West England. Tesco is one of the largest of more than a dozen food companies that are measuring food loss and waste using a WRI protocol. Photo by Roger A Smith/Geograph
With help from Champions 12.3 and WRI-led Food Loss and Waste Protocol, 32 of the world’s 50 largest food companies set ambitious targets to reduce food loss and waste. In addition, more than 100 companies – including a third of Fortune 2000 companies – are measuring food loss and waste for the first time.
The Challenge
More than 10 percent of the world’s population is undernourished even as one-third of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted along the supply chain—from farm to table. Food loss and waste results in $940 billion per year in economic losses and produces a level of greenhouse gas emissions that put it in league China and the United States, the world’s two biggest emitters. Recognizing the scale and urgency of the problem, Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for halving per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reducing food losses along production and supply chains by 2030. Achieving this ambitious target requires companies to do their part.
WRI’s Role
The Champions 12.3 coalition—a group of public and private sector leaders dedicated to achieving SDG Target 12.3, with WRI as the co-secretariat—works to help companies “Target, Measure and Act” on food loss and waste. Through Champions 12.3, WRI has played a role in persuading companies to set targets and measure how much food is lost or wasted in their operations. WRI also is the secretariat of the Food Loss and Waste Protocol, which sets global guidelines and standards on how to measure food loss and waste.
The Outcome
By the end of 2018, 32 of the world’s 50 largest food companies (by revenue) set specific food loss and waste reduction targets aligned with SDG Target 12.3, up from just one in 2015. More than a dozen of those companies use the Food Loss and Waste Protocol to measure food loss and waste in their operations. Furthermore, over 100 companies — with a third among the Fortune Global 2000 — now measure their food loss and waste for the first time, including Hilton Foods, Kellogg Company, Tesco, Nestlé, Unilever and Walmart. These developments represent the start of a private sector movement to shift towards more efficient and sustainable food supply chains.
Members of a community group in Riau, Indonesia, traveling by boat use WRI’s Forest Watcher app to monitor deforestation. Photo by Jikalihari/WRI
Global Forest Watch, a powerful WRI tool to track and reduce tree cover loss, is now available in the field through a new mobile app called Forest Watcher, helping park rangers, villagers, and civil society groups find and halt illegal deforestation in tropical forest countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Peru, Cameroon and Uganda.
The Challenge
Tropical tree cover loss has risen steadily over the past two decades as the demand for agricultural and pasture land increases. It is hard to prevent because it often happens in remote areas where officials and other forest protectors can’t see it. Often people working to stop forest clearing lack the internet connection they need to access satellite forest data. Forest managers may need days, weeks or even months to discover where illegal deforestation is occurring—too late to catch the perpetrators and hold them accountable.
WRI’s Role
Created in 2016 as the pilot of WRI, the Jane Goodall Institute, Google and the National Forestry Authority in Uganda, Forest Watcher is a mobile application that allows easy, offline access to information about forest change based on annual tree cover loss data from Global Forest Watch. Now, with the incorporation of WRI’s GLAD (Global Land Analysis & Discovery) alerts developed with the University of Maryland, forest managers in the field have access to high-resolution, quickly available data to pinpoint where deforestation is happening. WRI and local partner organizations trained forest managers, including law enforcement officers and members of indigenous communities, to use these powerful tools. This latest version of Forest Watcher has been downloaded over 6,000 times as of 2018. Many users are in important tropical forest countries including Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Paraguay, Peru and Uganda.
The Outcome
In 2018, Forest Watcher and GLAD alerts resulted in interdictions and arrests for illegal deforestation. In Indonesia, more than 2,400 instances of illegal logging were documented, and government authorities successfully prosecuted 50 cases of illegal logging. In the Brazilian Amazon, where just a dozen police patrol a forest the size of Nepal, officers used WRI tools and worked with local communities to identify priority areas and arrest people illegally clearing forests. In Peru, a Quechua community used Forest Watcher and GLAD alerts to discover a clandestine coca plantation on their land. They used WRI tools featuring satellite evidence of the deforestation to confront the perpetrators, who ultimately ceased their activity.
US Forest Service, partners and local community members visit a restoration site in the North Yuba River Watershed in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Photo by Leah Schleifer/WRI
WRI partnered with Blue Forest Conservation and Encourage Capital to help secure $4.6 million to restore 15,000 acres in California’s Tahoe National Forest. To raise the money, partners used an innovative financial tool called the Forest Resilience Bond which provides up-front private capital to reduce the risk of severe wildfires and associated environmental and human costs.
The Challenge
In 2018, wildfires in the United States caused an estimated $24 billion in economic losses—a record-high—claiming human lives, damaging property, releasing greenhouse gases, contaminating water supplies and harming the forest products and tourism industries. This could be a sign of things to come, as climate change raises temperatures and exacerbates drought conditions and forest degradation in the American West. The U.S. Forest Service has responded by increasing its firefighting budget at the expense of activities that lower the risk of catastrophic fires, such as forest thinning and prescribed burns.
WRI’s Role
The Institute’s report Protecting Drinking Water at the Source showed how investing in natural infrastructure such as forests can help reduce wildfire risks, protect water quality and make communities more resilient if disaster strikes. WRI collaborated with Blue Forest Conservation and Encourage Capital, two environmentally-minded investment firms, to develop a way to proactively finance forest restoration. To help make the financial case for the first Forest Resilience Bond transaction, WRI provided economic analysis to beneficiaries, investors and partners including the U.S. Forest Service, the state of California, Yuba Water Agency, and the National Forest Foundation. Communities in the area were consulted to make sure stakeholders understood the bond’s benefits, including the protection of recreational resources, less exposure to smoke and more forest-related job opportunities.
The Outcome
In 2018, the first Forest Resilience Bond secured $4.6 million in blended private finance for the upfront costs of forest restoration and to provide flexibility to accelerate restoration as needed. The bond will fund the restoration of 15,000 acres of forest in the North Yuba River Watershed in the Sierra Nevada. WRI and Blue Forest Conservation are preparing for future Forest Resilience Bond transactions to benefit other at-risk landscapes across the American West. WRI is also working with development agencies, investors and conservation partners to explore similar finance mechanisms for flood risk reduction and community resiliency in the developing world. This financing solution breaks new ground by making the link between forests, climate, water, and engaging new partners, private and public, in landscape restoration and disaster risk mitigation efforts.
Negotiators at COP24 in Katowice, Poland adopted a robust Paris Rulebook to set the agreement in motion. Photo by UNclimatechange/Flickr
WRI expert analysis and recommendations on how to put the Paris Agreement on climate change into action informed the so-called Paris Rulebook adopted at COP24 in Katowice, Poland. Together with WRI research and outreach to help mobilize climate finance and increase ambition on climate commitments by 2020, this work informed the Katowice Package that set the Paris Agreement in motion.
The Challenge
When 195 countries adopted the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, they agreed to accept a detailed framework – the Paris Rulebook — to activate the agreement by 2018. The Rulebook is critical to taking Paris from idea to action, including guidelines for countries to track and report on their climate commitments, mobilize finance and increase ambition. All three components—robust rules, increased finance and strengthened action—are critical to avoiding catastrophic climate change.
WRI’s Role
WRI played an essential role in ensuring that COP24 addressed all three elements. Since 2015, WRI has collaborated with partners in developing and developed countries to conduct targeted research that informed stakeholders on these three key issues. Our analysis offered valuable insights to negotiators, civil society and the media, helping to bolster the chances of reaching a strong outcome in Katowice.
On the Paris Rulebook, WRI convened experts, negotiators, policymakers and other stakeholders through the Project for Advancing Climate Transparency to develop proposals for robust rules on transparency and accountability. In Making Finance Consistent with Climate Goals, WRI and partners offered ways to put financial elements of the Paris Agreement into practice. On ambition, WRI analysis identified options for countries to enhance their climate commitments while improving lives and boosting economic growth, drawing on the research of the WRI-led New Climate Economy. As an implementing partner for the NDC Partnership and through other initiatives, WRI helped countries track their progress and identify opportunities to increase the ambition of their climate commitments. WRI also helped launch the Step Up for Climate Action campaign for increased ambition and coordinated civil society strategy contribution to the Talanoa Dialogue, the 2018 stocktaking process.
The Outcome
COP24 delegates agreed on a Katowice Package that outlined the rules needed to bring the Paris Agreement fully to life, as well as making progress on climate ambition and finance informed by WRI’s proposals and recommendations. This package lays a foundation for countries to implement their climate plans and step up their commitments by 2020, increasing the likelihood that countries can get on a pathway to achieving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).
A street in Bangalore, the largest city in Karnataka state, which is home to some 60 million people. WRI India helped craft the state’s Nava Karnataka 2025 plan, which addresses problems such as sprawl, poverty. Photo by Ryan ruffin_ready/Flickr
With detailed input from WRI India, the south Indian state of Karnataka launched its vision for sustainable, inclusive urban development, known as Nava Karnataka 2025. The vision provides a roadmap to address the urban development needs of the entire state with a focus on Bengaluru, its largest city.
The Challenge
Karnataka is home to over 60 million people, with an estimated 10 million living in Bengaluru. Challenges include sprawl, rising poverty, inadequate and unequal access to basic services and outdated laws—all compounded by a lack of capacity to manage rapid urban growth.
WRI’s Role
In 2015, Bengaluru invited WRI India to provide technical inputs on planning, policy and governance for the city. Over the next two years WRI provided input to an influential Bengaluru Municipal Restructuring Committee. Assistance included helping city departments use a common spatial database, procure land through an area development approach, and establish short-, medium- and long-term planning goals. In 2017, Karnataka invited WRI and the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy to assist in framing chapters on urban development, infrastructure, transport, and energy of the Nava Karnataka 2025, a blueprint for the state. To inform its input, WRI jointly convened workshops with government officials, technical experts, NGOs and the public. WRI’s submission on Urban and Economic Development and Transport and Energy emphasized four essentials: urban and economic development for all, resilient growth strategies, good governance and universal access to basic services.
The Outcome
In March 2018, Karnataka’s chief minister released the final Nava Karnataka 2025, an ambitious development roadmap focused on Bengaluru. The plan proposes reforms and key projects to promote comprehensive regional economic development, resilient growth strategies in harmony with natural resources, good governance and equal access to infrastructure and services. WRI’s input to the Bengaluru Municipal Restructuring Committee resulted in a proposed Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill that would replace outdated urban planning legislation. Building on this work, policy reviews for water pricing and wastewater reuse, and a transit-oriented development and mixed-use focus in the upcoming Bengaluru City Master Plan will go a long way to meeting the dynamic needs of this city of 10 million.
With WRI Brasil help, city officials and civic groups in Fortaleza, Brazil, turned a parking and traffic lanes into a pedestrian plaza. Strongly positive public feedback has led to similar projects in other areas. Photo by Rodrigo Capote/WRI Brasil
With WRI’s help, people in African, Asian and Latin American cities can get around more safely and sustainably because walking, biking and public transport are now easier and more accessible. Together, these changes contribute to progress on Sustainable Development Goal 11, which aims to improve access to public space and sustainable transport, reduce road deaths and promote active living.
The Challenge
Many cities across the world are built for cars instead of pedestrians, cyclists and public transit users, reducing access to schools, jobs and physical activity. The lack of sound urban infrastructure can be deadly: 1.25 million people die in traffic crashes each year. One key to improving road safety is to support coordination, communication and exchange of perspectives among stakeholders and decision-makers in such areas as transport, planning, education, health and traffic enforcement.
WRI’s Role
WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities helps cities in low- and middle-income countries improve planning, policy and design to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Our support includes reports and guidance documents, as well workshops and training to improve capacity and coordination. For example, WRI and partners have advised Indian cities on India’s first fully-automated public bike-sharing system. WRI also helped expand car-free Raahgiri Days to neighborhoods in 40 cities across India.
The Outcome
With support from WRI, over 10 cities changed street design to enhance walking and cycling and improve access to public transport. For example, there are new bicycle lanes in Fortaleza, Brazil and Bogotá, Colombia; new pedestrian infrastructure in Mumbai, India, and Accra, Ghana, new measures to reduce traffic speeds in Bogotá and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and expanded public spaces in Bandung, Indonesia. Bogotá has adopted a Vision Zero Road Safety Strategy, while in India, WRI supported the expansion of public bike-sharing from one city in 2017 to more than 15 cities in 2018. In Fortaleza, traffic deaths dropped by 40% from 2014 to 2018. In India, the state of Haryana directed all districts to initiate Raahgiri Days in their district capitals, helping to create demand for safer walking and cycling infrastructure. By the end of 2018, 800,000 people in Haryana had taken part in a WRI India-supported Raahgiri Day.
Shared bikes in Beijing. Photo by Kentaro IEMOTO/Flickr
The Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities, developed by WRI and partners and adopted by more than 140 governments and their advisors, companies and NGOs, aim to help guide the use of shared, electric and autonomous vehicles to reap social, environmental and economic benefits.
The Challenge
Electric, shared and autonomous vehicles are part of the emerging three-fold revolution in urban transportation. But they won’t necessarily make cities more sustainable, inclusive, prosperous or resilient. Unmanaged growth of new mobility services—from ride-hailing to bike-sharing and self-driving vehicles—can result in increased traffic congestion, air pollution, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic injuries and social inequality. The policies put in place in the next few years in response to these innovations will have a lasting impact on the way cities and mobility develop in the future.
WRI’s Role
Research by WRI and others suggested a need for a broad dialogue to help foster policies and regulations on electric, shared and autonomous vehicles that bring social, environmental, and economic benefits. With leadership from WRI board member and Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase, WRI worked with transport experts from eight partner NGOs—C40Cities, ICLEI, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Shared-Use Mobility Center, SLoCaT and Transportation for America—and local governments to draft a set of shared principles on new mobility. The principles emphasize the need for safe, efficient and pollution-free movement of people and goods. WRI’s contributions emphasized the need for people-centered and integrated mobility approaches, drawing on years of research and experience working with cities; and using its networks to raise awareness of the Principles and the issues that gave rise to them.
The Outcome
The principles have so far been adopted by more than 90 mobility service providers (including Lyft and Uber) and 50 governments and their advisors, after being launched at the EcoMobility World Festival in late 2017 by WRI and partners. The broad involvement of NGOs and service providers of all sizes, as well as regional and local governments, demonstrates a growing interest on advancing adequate policies to help shape the three revolutions. Adoption of the principles is informing debates and action on issues such as electrification of vehicle fleets; the safety of autonomous vehicles; and fairness in pricing, road use, congestion and use of curb space.
