World Resources Institute Podcasts Plus

WRI Press Call: Paris Rulebook by WRI's Big Ideas Into Action podcast

Every tenth of a degree matters. That's the message of the IPCC's 1.5 Degrees Report, which summarizes the distinctions between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius of warming for responding to climate change. Limiting warming to 1.5 will require massive transformation, but, as WRI Senior Associate Kelly Levin explains, bending the curve will help avoid huge costs from climate impacts. In this podcast, WRI V...

Maybe sustainable development and climate adaptation are two names for the same thing. In this edition of the WRI Podcast, Christina Chan (WRI Climate Resilience Practice) and Niranjali Amerasinghe (WRI Sustainable Finance Center) discuss why adaptation and development are often handled by different agencies, how they are paid for, and why they should be tackled hand-in-hand. WRI Vice President fo...

To restore a physical landscape, it helps to understand the social landscape. Social network analysis has been used in fields as diverse as epidemiology and counterterrorism. Now, WRI experts have devised a guidebook for applying social network analysis to environmental interventions and sustainable development. Kathleen Buckingham, Sabin Ray, Ruchika Singh and Satrio Wikacsono discuss the guidebo...

In the early days at World Resources Institute, founder Gus Speth charged Rafe Pomerance with outreach on climate change. Pomerance went on to organize high-profile hearings in the U.S. Senate that put climate on the policy radar and introduced Jim Hansen to the world. These hearings are the subject of a new issue-length article in the New York Times Magazine, "Losing Earth." (Link below) In a con...

Fijian diplomat Peter Thomson, UN Special Envoy for the Ocean and former President of the UN General Assembly, joins WRI Vice President for Communications Lawrence MacDonald and WRI Ocean Director Kristian Telecki to talk about global progress on monitoring oceans, setting goals, and delivering results.

At the Oslo Tropical Forest Forum (June 27-28), World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch released brand new 2017 global tree cover loss data, revealing how much forest was lost around the world last year and emerging country hot spots to watch. The new satellite-based data analyzed by the University of Maryland provides a transparent view of how countries are managing this important resourc...

Rangers in Uganda take mobile phones and tablets on their forest patrols. But they aren't bringing them to text friends, scroll Instagram, or play Temple Run during downtime. They're using them to follow deforestation alerts generated by satellites circling the earth, and to upload photos of illegal logging they find. This app, Forest Watcher, was developed by Jane Goodall Institute, World Resourc...

A leading economist, Montek Singh Ahluwalia served for a decade in the Indian government, retiring in 2014 as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission--a cabinet-level post. In this conversation with Lawrence MacDonald, vice president for communications at WRI, Ahluwalia discusses India's prospects for transitioning to a low-carbon, high-efficiency economy, and what the world can learn from thei...

In this episode of the WRI Podcast, Charles Iceland, director, Global and National Water Initiatives with WRI's Food, Forests, and Water Programs, explains what water stress is, how we measure it, and why it matters for understanding geopolitics today.

Country delegates will convene in Bonn, Germany next week for the next round of UN climate negotiations (April 30-May 10). During this session, negotiators need to make considerable progress on designing a robust set of rules to underpin the Paris Agreement (sometimes referred to as the “Paris Rulebook”) so they can be finalized and adopted this December. In addition, the Talanoa Dialogue will pla...

Partnering for Green Growth (P4G) is a new partnership of global leaders that supports real-world solutions for sustainable development. We speak with Ian de Cruz, Global Director of P4G, about how the program is getting off the ground -- and how it will help ground-breaking public-private partnerships for green growth do the same around the world.

The first global stocktaking exercise of the Paris Agreement has officially begun with the opening of a new online portal for the 2018 Talanoa Dialogue. Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, Climate COP23 Chief Negotiator, outlines how you can engage with the Talanoa Dialogue and jumpstart climate action in 2018.

More than a dozen of the world’s leading shared transport and technology companies will come together to announce their joint vision for the future of cities on Thursday February 1 at 9:00 am ET. Despite competing for market share, the companies have a shared vision for making cities more livable by prioritizing people over vehicles, lowering emissions, promoting equity and more. Press call speake...

On Friday, October 27, at 9:30am EDT, World Resources Institute held a press call where WRI’s president and experts on international climate policy, finance, and adaptation shared insights on what to watch at COP23. Speakers include: Andrew Steer, Paula Caballero, Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, and Christina Chan

Energy is fundamental to economic productivity and livelihoods, and cities have a major role to play in how it is provided and consumed. Cities in the global south (India and South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America) face three fundamental energy challenges: the urgent need to increase access to clean, affordable and reliable energy; how to meet increasing electricity demand w...

Sean DeWitt, director of the Global Restoration Initiative, and Miguel Calmon, forests director at WRI Brazil, sit down with us to discuss the VERENA Project, an effort to restore Brazilian forests that focuses on native species and pays dividends for farmers, investors and ecology alike.

This episode of the World Resources Institute Podcast features special guests from both inside and outside WRI. Cy Jones is a Senior Fellow in WRI’s Water Program, Sara Walker is an Associate in WRI’s Water program and Beth McGee is Director of Science and Agricultural Policy at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Together with Lawrence MacDonald, they discussed how nutrient and water quality trading c...

Access to energy can help communities increase the productivity of their labor, earn more income, use household time more efficiently and enhance access to health, education and water. Still, 1.2 billion households today lack access to electricity connections and millions of households, businesses and community institutions receive poor and inadequate supplies of electricity services. In sub-Sahar...

In his first week of office, President Trump has issued orders that would implement sweeping changes to the way the United States deals with a pressing challenge that demands international cooperation: climate change. If the United States pulls out of the Paris Agreement, as many have suggested, it would join Uzbekistan, Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations not party to the landmark Agreement o...

On this episode of the WRI Podcast, Lawrence MacDonald sits down with Ani Dasgupta, global director of WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Dasgupta highlights two recent developments that shed light on how city leaders can tackle these challenges. The recent Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador, brought together leaders from around the world to discuss housing and sustainable urban develop...

On this episode of the World Resources Institute Podcast Stientje van Veldhoven joins Lawrence MacDonald to discuss the revolutionary idea of a circular economy, and its potential to reshape how we think about sustainable consumption. With a growing world population, rethinking how and what we consider waste will be key in securing enough resources to go around.

WRI Podcast #9: Rising Tides with Christina DeConcini and Forbes Tompkins by WRI's Big Ideas Into Action podcast

In this episode of the WRI Podcast, Lawrence MacDonald sits down with Chip Barber and Austin Clowes of the Forest Legality Initiative to talk about their work on sustainability in the guitar industry. The music industry sells millions of guitars a year, and the instrument is integral to musical traditions from blues and rock ‘n roll to flamenco and classical music. These traditions rely on specifi...

WRI Podcast #6 - Preparing for COP 22 with David Waskow and Paula Caballero by WRI's Big Ideas Into Action podcast