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by - Parts of the United States are experiencing blizzard and frigid temperatures, possibly spurred by climatic changes. It's reminiscent of the types of extreme conditions we witnessed over and over last year.
deforestation
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by Josefhine Chitra and Kenny Cetera - January 03, 2018Despite recent policies, Indonesia is still losing billions from unreported and illegally sourced timber. Tougher law enforcement could help.
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Indigenous Peoples and local communities are the world’s secret weapon to preserve forests and mitigate climate change, and LandMark — the first global platform to provide maps of collectively held indigenous and community lands — helps measure their impact.
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by Katie Reytar and Peter Veit - December 20, 2017New data on the LandMark platform backs up what research already shows: Indigenous Peoples and local communities are some of the best environmental stewards.
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by Helen Ding, Sofia Faruqi, Caroline Gagné and Andrés Anchondo Ortega - December 19, 2017While restoring degraded landscapes yields $7-$30 for every $1 invested, it still isn't receiving the funding it needs. That's where governments come in.
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by Mikaela Weisse and Katie Fletcher - December 13, 2017Deforestation from road building or expanding plantations isn’t typically spotted until a sizable patch of land disappears. But now satellites are watching.
publication
by Mikaela Weisse, Rachael Petersen, Sarah Sargent and Samantha Gibbes - December 2017This paper lays out a methodology for filtering millions of weekly deforestation alerts in order to find the most concerning areas of forest clearing.
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by Hidayah Hamzah, Rizky Firmansyah, Arief Wijaya and Surahman Putra - December 05, 2017Countries considering open data policies have to guard against falsification and misuse, but there are clear ways to avoid these problems.
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by Susan Minnemeyer, Nancy Harris and Octavia Payne - November 27, 2017New research from WRI and others shows that stopping deforestation, restoring forests and improving forestry practices could cost-effectively remove 7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, or as much as eliminating 1.5 billion cars.
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by Frances Seymour and Jonah Busch - November 07, 2017Forests are more important to climate action than most people appreciate, argues Frances Seymour. They're a cheaper way to reduce emissions, and we already have the political frameworks in place to reduce deforestation.
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by Molly Bergen - October 24, 2017A lucrative charcoal trade destroys forests, threatens endangered species and fuels the activities of armed militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo. To avoid further losses, enhanced monitoring and more efficient cookstoves could help.
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by Elizabeth Dow Goldman and Mikaela Weisse - October 23, 2017New data on global tree cover loss shows that Brazil experienced a major spike in tree cover loss in 2016.
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by Rachael Petersen and Lilian Pintea - September 26, 2017Frontlines work against deforestation doesn't always happen where there's good WiFi. So WRI developed a mobile app that works offline, bridging the gap between the eyes of satellites and enforcement by environmental defenders, forest rangers and civil society.
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by Mikaela Weisse and Ruth Nogueron - September 07, 2017Armed with satellite-generated maps, indigenous peoples are successfully fending off unwanted destruction of their traditional forests.
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August 02, 2017Returning to WRI as a Distinguished Senior Fellow on forest and governance issues, Frances Seymour reflects on the impact of technology and international efforts to turn the tide on deforestation.
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by Hidayah Hamzah - July 31, 2017When Jakarta isn't submerged by floods, its residents experience incredible water stress. These twin problems—too much water and too little—are linked by a common solution: restoring the watershed's forests.
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by Katie Fletcher, Tesfay Woldemariam and Fred Stolle - July 27, 2017Computers are invaluable aides to tracking deforestation. But some issues require local expertise to crack—in this case, allowing WRI to map drylands forests that add up to an area equivalent to the Amazon rainforest.
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by Elizabeth Dow Goldman and Molly Bergen - July 26, 2017Artificial neural networks fed data on prior deforestation can be used to project and plan for future forest loss in Central Africa and beyond.
publication
by Elizabeth Dow Goldman, Nancy Harris and Thomas Maschler - July 2017This paper discusses findings from a spatial land use change modeling study on future forest loss in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s forests. Key findings include a historical analysis of forest loss, identification of the influence of drivers on forest loss, the amount and location of future forest loss and associated carbon emissions, and implications for future land-use and climate policy decisions.
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by Katie Reytar - July 25, 2017One of the poorest countries in Africa, Malawi once faced water shortages and power outages as its forests disappeared. Now, it has launched bold new strategies to restore trees to the landscape.