391 Articles found
World Resources Institute WRI Articles
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Cities Safer by Design - Urban Design Recommendations for Healthier Cities, Fewer Traffic Fatalities
Cities Safer by Design is a global reference guide to help cities save lives from traffic fatalities through improved street design and smart urban development. Over 1.2 million people die in traffic crashes globally, mostly pedestrians, and that ...
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New Small Grants Fund Can Help Civil Society Groups Combat Deforestation
With the launch of Global Forest Watch (GFW), anyone with an internet connection can now access troves of timely, high-quality information about where, when, and why forests are changing worldwide. The free, online monitoring system provides the ...
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Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data, Now Available by Smart Phone
“Big data” has never been bigger. New tools—such as satellites, cloud computing, and other technological upgrades—are fueling a “data revolution,” allowing researchers to analyze the world in ways they’ve ...
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3 Challenges Facing India’s Growing Cities
Population growth and rapid urbanization are combining to create huge challenges for Indian cities. According to McKinsey, the country’s cities are expected to grow from 340 million people in 2008 to a whopping 590 million in 2030. Meeting ...
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Indonesian Fires Bring More Haze to Southeast Asia
The governor of Indonesia’s Riau province issued a state of emergency last week as thick haze blanketed large areas of the region, closing down schools and airports. According to local officials, more than 22,000 people have been impacted by ...
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Benefits of and Challenges to Energy Access in the 21st Century: Fuel Supply and Infrastructure - Testimony of Michael Obeiter before the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy & Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy & Power
The U.S. currently finds itself in the midst of an energy boom, driven by technological advances in the extraction of oil and natural gas. Our domestic energy resources, and the self-sufficiency they can bring, are the envy of much of the world. Yet ...
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Making Economic Valuation Count for Coastal Ecosystems in the Caribbean
People and economies across the Caribbean are dependent on coastal ecosystems—including coral reefs, mangroves, and beaches. These ecosystems provide critical habitat to commercial fisheries, attract tourists from around the world, and protect ...
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Lessons from the C40 Mayors Summit: Scaling Up Solutions for Resilient, Livable Cities
More than 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. So cities represent the single-greatest opportunity for targeted, meaningful actions that create impact on the ground, improve the quality of life for billions of ...
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4 Ways the Green Climate Fund Can Make Its Investments Count
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has big ambitions: It aspires to become the main global fund for providing climate change finance, contributing to activities like the design of resilient cities and the expansion of low-emission power generation. ...
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2 Messages for the Green Climate Fund on supporting “readiness”
Last year, we spent time in several countries—Colombia, the Philippines, Fiji, Namibia, Ghana, Zambia and Benin—trying to understand how they can better position themselves to access funding to mitigate and adapt to climate change (See ...
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Amidst California’s drought, an opportunity for action
News of California’s epic drought continues to reverberate around the nation. Not only have millions of Californians been cut off from their usual water supply, but the drought is threatening the state’s multi-billion-dollar ...
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Improving Food Security in the Sahel is difficult, but achievable
Africa’s Sahel suffers from degraded soils, erratic rainfall, and an exploding population—all of which hold huge implications for the region’s food security. A recent speech quantified just how dire the situation is this year. ...
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A Climate Change Reality Check
The world spent $50 billion dollars per year on weather-related disasters in the 1980s, according to the World Bank. Today, we spend roughly $200 billion annually. Twenty-five extreme weather and climate events in 2011 and 2012 caused more than $188 ...
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Sustainable Cities: From a Vision to Reality
The C40 Cities Mayors Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa kicks off today (Feb. 4). It’s the fifth biennial meeting of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a collection of mayors from cities around the world committed to advancing urban ...
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New Global Campaign Aims to Deliver Sustainable Transport to World`s Cities
Human society has a lot riding on the safety and efficiency of the transport sector. Transport not only has the potential to enhance or degrade the public spaces, health, and economic dynamism of where the majority of humanity lives—in ...
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Coastal Capital: Ecosystem Valuation for Decision Making in the Caribbean
Executive Summary Tropical coastal ecosystems—including coral reefs, mangroves, beaches, and seagrasses—provide a range of valuable goods and services to people and economies across the Caribbean. These ecosystems contribute to tourism, ...
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Building National Forest and Land-Use Information Systems: Lessons from Cameroon, Indonesia, and Peru
This working paper examines the institutional, human resources, and financial capacities of three countries that have developed a forest and land-use information system, and highlights common enabling factors and challenges. Key Findings ...
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Capacity Needs for Greenhouse Gas Measurement and Performance Tracking - A Report on Scoping Activities in Six Countries
This working paper summarizes the results of scoping research conducted by WRI and its partners to assess capacity needs in six countries—Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, South Africa, and Thailand—related to greenhouse gas (GHG) ...
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After State of the Union Address, U.S. Should Pursue Ambitious Power Plant Emissions Standards
In the State of the Union address last night, President Obama called to make this “a year of action.” Addressing climate change will require his administration to make that call a reality. The President noted that “the debate is ...
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Watching for Signs of Climate Action in the State of the Union Address
When President Obama addresses the nation on Tuesday, climate change is expected to be featured. The president recently said that one of his personal passions is “leaving a planet that is as spectacular as the one we inherited from our parents ...