Governance

Ensuring development benefits people and the planet through transparent and accountable governance.

5 Maps Show How Important Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Are to the Environment

New data on the LandMark platform backs up what research already shows: Indigenous Peoples and local communities are some of the best environmental stewards.

Transparent, effective, accountable governance is critical to ensuring that development benefits people and the planet. The Governance Center of Excellence works with civil society, governments, development agencies, businesses, and other institutions to improve decision-making processes and legal frameworks. Our goal is to empower people and strengthen institutions to foster environmentally sound and socially equitable decision-making.

In many countries, citizens and communities face social and environmental injustices that can leave them without a say in the development decisions that affect their lives and the resources they depend on.

As a global leader on environmental governance, the Governance Center uses data and research to institutionalize fundamental democratic principles - such as transparency, participation, and accountability - into decision-making processes, policies, and legal frameworks. The Governance Center is divided into five practice areas—climate resilience, environmental democracy, energy governance, natural resource governance and urban governance— where our work is concentrated on six priority issues: climate, energy, food, forests, water, and cities.

Top Governance Outcomes

What's a top outcome?

Top outcomes are WRI's biggest success stories. They occur when our analysis, solutions, or partnerships result in significant change in the world.

Featured Expert

Davida Wood

Lead, Energy Access and Governance

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October 16, 2018 News

RELEASE: Global Leaders Call for Urgent Acceleration of Climate Adaptation Solutions

An unprecedented gathering of global leaders today launched the new Global Commission on Adaptation to catalyze a global movement to bring scale and speed to climate adaptation solutions.
October 11, 2018 Blog post

Climate Change is Transforming Agriculture. Adaptation Must Be Transformative, Too.

To manage intensifying climate impacts, we must transform the way we adapt to such changes. Transformative adaptation in agriculture—that is, broad, fundamental, systemic changes in food production—can enhance global food security and reduce the risk of crises and conflict.
October 10, 2018 Blog post

5 Ways to Turn Climate Adaptation Commitments into Action

While many countries have made climate adaptation commitments, few have actually turned them into action. New WRI research details strategies to bridge the implementation gap.
October 10, 2018 Publication

From Planning to Action: Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation Into Development

This paper describes enabling factors in the areas of policy frameworks, leadership, coordination mechanisms, information and tools, and supportive financial processes that can help bridge the mainstreaming implementation gap. Real-world examples demonstrate how they can come together to support implementation.
October 05, 2018 Publication

Transforming Agriculture for Climate Resilience: A Framework for Systemic Change

This paper discusses a framework for transformative adaptation in the agricultural sector, that is, broad, fundamental and systemic changes in food production systems in response to climate change. The paper describes how adaptation planners, funders, policymakers and researchers can incorporate transformative adaptation perspectives into their work on agriculture.
October 04, 2018 Event

Inclusive Approaches to Transformative Adaptation

Join leading resilience experts to brainstorm about the drivers of success, key enabling conditions, and solutions to these challenges, which include longer time horizons, greater uncertainly, and reluctance to acknowledge the implications of the looming severity of climate impacts in some regions.