WRI is committed to producing high-quality research, including reports, issue briefs, guidebooks, working papers, technical notes, and practice notes. Our research publications are subject to peer review, and are held to traditional "academic" standards of excellence, such as objectivity and rigor. We also ensure that all of our research publications are timely, fit for audience, and rooted in a strategic plan for achieving positive change in the world. If you notice an error in our research or have concerns about quality, please contact the authors and copy Vice President for Research, Data and Innovation Janet Ranganathan.
All of our research is freely available to download.
The World Resources Report is the flagship publication of World Resources Institute. The inaugural edition, An Assessment of the Resource Base that Supports the Global Economy, was published in 1986. Subsequent editions have been published at regular intervals and have provided in-depth analyses of issues ranging from human health and the environment to climate change, ecosystem services and environmental governance. Every World Resources Report builds on a strong evidence base to develop fresh insights that can help decision-makers evaluate and implement the most effective solutions.
Sustainably feeding nearly 10 billion people by 2050 is possible – but it will require significant innovation and investment by the public and private sector.
The World Resources Report: Towards a More Equal City focuses on helping cities in rapidly urbanizing regions alter their development trajectories as demand for infrastructure and services grow.
Climate change is already affecting crop production, and in some cases is undermining the viability of current crop systems. The paper explains why transformative adaptation is needed in cropping systems, how seeds systems play a key role in these systemic shifts, and what changes are needed in crop research and development to enable climate-resilient transformations.
As climate change increasingly affects agriculture around the world, reliable, timely, and targeted information about weather and climate conditions is becoming an ever more urgent requirement for adaptation decision-making. This paper considers how transformative adaptation – long-term, systemic change to fundamental aspects of systems in response to or anticipation of severe climate change impacts - could be accelerated by enhancing climate services and how they are applied.
Pollution threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world, particularly low-income communities and communities of color. Working with civil society organizations across six countries, WRI created new toolkit to support locally led efforts to secure the basic human right to a clean, healthy and safe environment.
This technical note outlines the methods used by World Resources Institute (WRI) to identify a set of Cool Food Meals on a food provider’s menu.
This paper establishes the collective baseline of Cool Food members’ food purchases and associated GHG emissions, as well as their shared 25 percent GHG emissions reduction target. If members met the target, their actions would reduce emissions by more than 1,071,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by 2030 relative to the baseline, equivalent to avoiding the annual tailpipe emissions from more than 230,000 passenger vehicles.
This new WRI report estimates that legal and illegal mining in the Amazon now cover more than 20% of Indigenous lands – over 450,000 square kilometers. It also finds that Indigenous lands with mining experienced higher incidences of tree cover loss than on those without – at least three times greater in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Yet national laws continue to favor companies over Indigenous communities, the study’s legal analysis reveals. It sheds light on this uneven playing field and offers recommendations for Amazonian governments and mining companies.
Recognizing that addressing climate change in the U.S. will require action at all levels of government, WRI convened thought leaders among current and former U.S. federal, state, and local government officials in a dialogue to explore these topics. This paper sets out the context and findings of the dialogue discussions, and proposes a working federalism framework to delineate roles within a future federal climate policy.
This issue brief provides a synthesis of the papers produced under the Independent Global Stocktake’s (iGST) “Designing a Robust Stocktake” discussion series. It reviews ways to make the GST most effective within the confines of the structure already negotiated.
This issue brief is designed to inform policymakers of the state of storage technologies and how utility-scale storage (including long-duration storage) can support a decarbonized grid. The brief describes the mix, role and current policy drivers of storage technology today, and explores future grid needs and the potential use of long-duration storage to maintain grid reliability in deep-decarbonization scenarios.
This report investigated a comprehensive nationwide impact of dockless bike-share systems (DBS) in 12 Chinese cities found that the DBS systems work as a great last-mile urban mobility solution that can enhance the connectivity to public transit, replacing motorized trips as a zero-emission transport means, and improve public health.
Integrating adaptation across sustainable development initiatives can spur resilient growth, safeguard development gains from climate change impacts and help decision-makers avoid investments that unintentionally increase vulnerability. New research from WRI shines a spotlight on how two counties in Kenya are using innovative, local-level climate funds to move from mainstreaming adaptation planning to action.
This paper discusses the need to prioritize a just transition to reuse business models in the apparel sector by mapping stakeholders and mitigating unintended consequences.
This paper examines case studies from three regions— Bangladesh, Malabon City (Philippines) and Cartegana (Colombia) —that are making progress on integrating climate adaptation into planning and implementing on-the-ground actions to build coastal resilience. The enabling factors and challenges shared by these locations can serve as models and inspiration to policy makers and other stakeholders in other countries that are grappling with similar issues as they work to narrow the “implementation gap” between planning and action.
This report explores some of the thorniest water crises taking place across the developing world. While intensifying water challenges and the threats they pose to security are well documented, relatively few solutions have been presented. In this report, WRI, the Pacific Institute and the Water, Peace and Security Partnership offer potential solution sets to water challenges in key water-insecure hotspots around the world.
This technical note describes the methods and data used to quantify the greenhouse gas mitigation effect of a global network of cities achieving stated climate targets.
This paper aims is a resource for national policymakers that are considering, designing and communicating net-zero targets. It provides recommendations for targets that are in line with the latest climate science and Paris Agreement temperature goals as well as an overview of countries’ targets to date.
This paper proposes a framework with four important areas that we need to focus on to build an enabling ecosystem for a linked energy and development agenda. The paper also details actions that energy and development sector actors—specifically, African governments, the donor community, the private sector, and civil society can take to create better links.
This working paper draws on the latest economic research to demonstrate how climate policy and investments in low-carbon infrastructure can reboot America’s economy and set it up for long-term success. Decarbonization can benefit U.S. economic output, jobs, manufacturing, rural communities, and consumers.
We urgently need to understand how to improve energy access through demand-based approaches. This new study discusses how to implement demand-based approach by examining the results of a pilot project, in which health-care providers in Kenya were able to select renewable energy options to improve the continuity of power supply.
This working paper discusses utility-offered RE tariffs in India, a relatively new and underdeveloped topic in the Indian energy sector. It highlights the key principles that could serve to guide the development of such tariffs in India, based on a study of the literature worldwide, as well as on an analysis of the Indian scenario and interviews conducted.
