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.
This paper discusses a methodology to forecast conflict up to a year in advance. The model is a product of the Water, Peace, and Security partnership, which is pioneering the development of public information tools and approaches that can support evidence-based actions to reduce security risks and promote water cooperation.
This working paper provides the first comprehensive approach that organizations can use to calculate water withdrawals and consumption associated with purchased electricity. It provides international country-level and U.S. subnational-level water use factors detailing grid average water withdrawal and consumption resulting from electricity consumption.
The Sustainability Index for Landscape Restoration introduced in this report is a field-tested tool for measuring the impact of restoration efforts. It offers easy-to-use visual metrics to display biophysical and socioeconomic indicators that measure the health of a landscape. It also describes how these metrics have been used to convene dialogues among diverse stakeholders who must actively collaborate to restore the land.
This paper explores the environmental impact of Shuttl, a demand-responsive bus service, in the National Capital Region of India.
New WRI research finds that the United States needs to make large-scale investments in carbon removal in the coming years if the country is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This working paper identifies a consolidated set of high-priority, near-term, federal policy options for advancing carbon removal pathways.
This practice note captures our experiences from our pilot efforts with aggregating demand for Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (MSME) clusters. By focusing on the end-user demand side and on energy intensive consumers, we expect to multiply the benefits of the supply-side efforts of the Indian government.
This working paper describes WRI India’s experience aggregating demand for clean energy in apartment complexes of Bengaluru India.
This paper proposes a framework to calculate the cost required to deliver sustainable water management to a geography. The paper then applies the framework to estimate the costs of delivering sustainable water management for all countries and major basins around the world.
This playbook details 23 behavior change strategies to help food service companies support diners in choosing more sustainable, plant-rich dishes when shopping or dining out – action that’s important for meeting global emissions goals and achieving the Paris Agreement on climate change.
This paper discusses the methodology used to produce the Places to Watch Palm and Soy layers on the Global Forest Watch platform.
This working paper describes sanitation access challenges in cities of the global south that have been overlooked in global indicators. In analyzing 15 cities, we found that almost two-thirds of urban residents lack access to safely managed sanitation, with access lowest in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. For these households, sanitation services are too expensive or unsafe. This paper highlights four key action areas for cities to improve sanitation access: extend the sewer and simplified sewer networks to household, communal and public toilets; support and regulate on-site sanitation in the absence of sewer systems; support citywide settlement upgrading; and make sanitation services affordable for all.
This paper discusses steps countries can take to incorporate ambitious, relevant, and tangible transportation solutions into enhanced NDCs for communication to UNFCCC by 2020.
This paper discusses practical options for incorporating more ambitious, explicit, and directed actions in the agriculture sector in enhanced NDCs.
This guidance aims to help countries incorporate more ambitious, relevant, and tangible power solutions into enhanced NDCs for communication to the UNFCCC by 2020.
This guide supplements, as a sector module, the overarching guide, Enhancing NDCs: A Guide to Strengthening National Climate Plans by 2020 (Fransen et al. 2019), and will assist countries in enhancing their NDCs with clearer and more tangible forest and land-use sector contents.
This paper discusses the ongoing negotiations about the time frames of nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement, including providing additional reflections and considerations for the ongoing debates.
This working paper provides an overview of the key remaining issues being negotiated under Article 6, which provides for international cooperation through carbon markets. It explains each issue, what Parties disagree on, and what is at stake.
This paper explores the range of approaches and emerging program designs currently used in the United States to match EV loads and renewable energy, with an emphasis on methods that more closely link the timing and location of the EV demand with renewable energy supply.
This issue brief is based on a 2018 working paper and summarizes the REDD+ experience over the past decade, taking stock of lessons learned from REDD+ implementation to inform future forest-based climate mitigation activities.
This case study describes the history of Surabaya, Indonesia’s inclusive housing policy and how the Kampung Improvement Program became a model for in situ slum upgrading efforts both nationwide and internationally. The paper suggests certain actions that the city can take to maintain its legacy of inclusive housing policy, including prioritizing in situ, incremental upgrading of informal settlements; partnering with NGOs and universities to facilitate innovation; and improving the city’s transportation network and limiting high-end development that displaces residents.
