The Environmental Democracy Index evaluates 70 countries, across 75 legal indicators, based on objective and internationally recognized standards established by the United Nations Environment Programme’s Bali Guidelines.
WRI's new Environmental Democracy Index tracks and scores 70 countries' progress in enacting national laws that promote transparency, accountability and citizen engagement in environmental decision-making.
WASHINGTON— On Wednesday, May 20, World Resources Institute and The Access Initiative will launch the Environmental Democracy Index, the first publicly available, online platform that measures countries’ environmental legal rights and practice.
The launch event will present findings for 70 countries in the index, including rankings, legal and practice indicators, and specific country examples. Speakers will also discuss the state of environmental democracy around the world.
Differences in the ways men and women understand and use forests mean natural resource policies can result in significant gender-differentiated impacts that oftentimes put women at a disadvantage.
Cécile Ndjebet, a partner of WRI’s Governance of Forests Initiative, explains the challenges rural, forest-dependent women face in Cameroon, as well as solutions for overcoming these problems.
WRI's new global director of governance, Mark Robinson, explains why governance is important for sustainable development, and highlights its challenges and opportunities.
WASHINGTON (January 22, 2015) – The World Resources Institute announced that Mark Robinson will be the global director for Governance. In this capacity, Robinson will direct WRI’s Governance Center and provide strategic and intellectual leadership, including around WRI’s analysis, strategy, fundraising and management. He will provide insights and guidance on governance issues across the institute.
Improving environmental democracy initiatives is critical, as decision-makers negotiate the post-2015 sustainable development goals(SDGs) and countries make commitments to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative to improve government transparency.
Strengthening community forest rights can help mitigate climate change in many heavily forested countries.
Globally, communities have legal rights to at least 513 million hectares of forest, making up one-eighth of the world’s forests. These community forests hold about 37.7 billion tonnes of carbon, or 29 times more than the annual carbon footprint of all passenger vehicles in the world.
Jamaicans will have greater access to information about infrastructure developments and their environmental impact in the form of Development Alert!, a new interactive website created by the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), World Resources Institute (WRI), and The Access Initiative with support from software developers Blue Raster
Brazil is a big investor in environmental stewardship, including several government-managed funds meant to protect the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. However, new analysis shows that in many cases, these funds aren’t being properly managed.