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2026 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship Awarded for Research on Port Decarbonization, Electrifying Last-Mile Logistics, Heat-Responsive Urban Mobility, Informal Supply Chain Inefficiencies and Community Street Transformations

shannon.paton@wri.org — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:10:33 +0000

2026 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship Awarded for Research on Port Decarbonization, Electrifying Last-Mile Logistics, Heat-Responsive Urban Mobility, Informal Supply Chain Inefficiencies and Community Street Transformations shannon.paton@… Tue, 09/08/2026 - 12:10

Five new researchers have been awarded the prestigious Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency for transformative research proposals that challenge conventional wisdom.

Since 2013, the Scholarship has continued the legacy of Lee Schipper’s enrichment of international policy dialogue in sustainable transport and energy efficiency. Schipper, a physicist, researcher, musician and co-founder of EMBARQ (today, the Urban Mobility program of WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities), inspired and shaped the thinking of a generation of students and professionals. Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) and Kuehne Climate Center support the scholarship, which provides funding and mentoring advice to promising young researchers.

The 2026 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship awardees are:

Ayodeji Stephen Adekanbi for his research proposal “Decarbonizing Port Operational Equipment: Vessel Operations and Ship-to-Shore Energy Systems at Lagos Port.” He is a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical and manufacturing engineering at Dublin City University. He holds a Master of Science in renewable energy economics from the University of Ibadan and a bachelor's in physics from the University of Ilorin, both in Nigeria. His research will examine the technical feasibility of three decarbonization pathways for Lagos’ Apapa Port Complex: shore-to-ship power and grid electrification, low-carbon fuels and hydrogen fuel cells. Adekanbi will collect original data through a quantitative survey and interviews with port stakeholders. He will estimate baseline port emissions, model emission reduction scenarios and assess the impact of different decarbonization pathways on smaller firms. The research will include a comparative case study of the Port of Rotterdam and a roadmap for staged decarbonization responsive to International Maritime Organization targets.

Alicia Fortuin-Brown for her research proposal “Electrifying Cape Town’s Last-Mile Logistics: Risk, Labor and Just Transitions.” Fortuin-Brown is a researcher at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities. She holds a Ph.D. in architecture and planning, a Master of City and Regional Planning, and a Bachelor of Science in environmental and geographical sciences and sociology from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Her research examines how the electrification of Cape Town’s platform-based delivery services redistributes who is responsible for providing and maintaining vehicles, charging infrastructure and mobility itself. Fortuin-Brown evaluates the success of electrified logistics not only on a technical basis, but also on how equitably the costs, risks, responsibilities and opportunities of a transition are distributed. She will conduct interviews with actors across the electrified delivery ecosystem to document their experiences of vehicle ownership, financing, maintenance and charging. The research will identify pathways toward a just transition in last-mile logistics, outlining recommendations for policymakers, urban planners and industry actors on how the transition can be governed more equitably.

Cheng-Kai Hsu for his proposal “Thermal Elasticity of Urban Mobility Across Four Latin American Countries.” Hsu is an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. He holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Science in transport from Imperial College London and a bachelor’s degree in urban planning from National Cheng Kung University. His research examines how extreme heat can suppress, postpone or reconfigure urban mobility in Latin America. The project will draw on location-based services data from major cities in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, paired with high-resolution, gridded temperature data from the ERA5-Land climate reanalysis. Hsu will also conduct neighborhood-level analyses in selected Brazilian cities and develop practical recommendations for heat-resilient mobility planning.

Adejumo John Olukorede for his proposal “Fuel, Food, and Friction: Measuring Last-Mile Freight Inefficiency in Lagos' Informal Markets.” Olukorede is a Master of Science in transport and logistics candidate at Lagos State University, where he also completed a bachelor’s in transport technology and infrastructure. His research identifies ways to reduce energy use, costs and food waste in Lagos’ informal food markets, using Mile 12 International Market, one of West Africa’s largest perishable food hubs, as a primary case study. Through field observations, GPS trip tracking, and a survey of transporters and traders at Mile 12 Market, Olukorede will measure and map the accumulated inefficiencies along the last mile of the informal freight supply chain. Based on his findings, his research will recommend low-cost interventions to reduce inefficiencies in the informal market.

Yufei Wang for her proposal “Community-based Street Transformation in London, San Francisco and Singapore.” Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore. She also holds a Master of Philosophy in urban governance and design from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), a master's degree in urban research from the University of Glasgow, and a bachelor’s degree in urban and rural planning from South China University of Technology. Wang’s research will examine real-world neighborhood-scale street transformation projects across London, San Francisco and Singapore as case studies. Through document analysis and semi-structured, walk-along interviews with community members and public-sector staff, Wang will identify mechanisms through which community involvement shapes substantive planning outcomes under different political and institutional contexts. She will produce a practical guide for planners, policymakers, elected officials and community groups on how to design meaningful community engagement that enables local knowledge to influence street transformations.

With the support of WRI and the World Bank, several of the scholars will present their work at the Transforming Transportation conference in March 2027 to recognize and inspire future researchers to shape the future of the transport sector.

On behalf of the Scholarship Board and the Schipper Family, co-founders Holger Dalkmann and Ramon Munoz-Raskin congratulate the new scholars and thank VREF, the Kuehne Climate Center and other partners for their support.

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Powering Progress: How Community Benefits Agreements Can Drive Responsible Data Center Development

shannon.paton@wri.org — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Powering Progress: How Community Benefits Agreements Can Drive Responsible Data Center Development shannon.paton@… Tue, 09/08/2026 - 09:00

Data centers are poised to consume land, water and power across the United States at an unprecedented rate. Driven by artificial intelligence, cloud computing and supportive government policies, U.S. data centers’ power capacity could reach 194 gigawatts by 2035, more than three times the current 58-64 GW. They could also consume 20% of the nation’s electricity, up from 5.9% today.

The unprecedented scale and rapid pace of hyperscale data center development have overwhelmed traditional policy playbooks. As developers race to build increasingly expensive facilities, they are frequently engaging in opaque negotiations and rapid, behind-closed-doors dealmaking with local authorities.

Data centers can strain local water supplies, cause noise and air pollution, increase competition for land and compound environmental and economic challenges, especially in marginalized communities. As development accelerates, community resistance is growing, and state and local governments are struggling to keep up with an industry evolving faster than municipal zoning laws.

All this raises the critical question: how can these massive facilities minimize harm and deliver long-term benefits to the communities that host them?

Community benefits agreements (CBAs) are emerging as an essential governance tool. These legally binding contracts between developers and local community coalitions or municipalities can guarantee specific benefits to communities in exchange for their support. While CBAs were originally used in urban commercial real estate, they have a long history of being adapted for large-scale projects in mining, manufacturing and utility-scale clean energy sectors. Now, a growing number of local governments and communities are leveraging these tools as part of the data center development process, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Rio Grande, Texas.

But signing a CBA is not enough. It must be strategically designed to be effective rather than performative. Most importantly, CBAs aren’t silver bullets. For some communities, no agreement can make a massive data center welcome. For others, the calculation is different, with residents viewing the potential economic benefits as a fair trade for the local costs. CBAs also shouldn’t be seen as a substitute for robust governance. Rather, they should complement state and local policies that manage the impacts of data center growth.

Drawing from existing research (including Brookings Institution, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law) and lessons learned from several WRI case studies of benefits-sharing agreements, we propose concrete guidelines to help local governments and communities negotiate with data center developers in ways that protect communities and advance long-term prosperity.

Private and Public CBAs Have Different Implications for Communities

Private agreements are signed between developers and community coalitions, which can include local residents, community-based organizations (CBOs), labor unions and environmental groups. Government agencies are generally not parties to these agreements, though they can support negotiations by providing resources to community groups or expediting project approvals once an agreement is signed. Public agreements, by contrast, are negotiated between developers and a local government body, which can leverage regulatory powers such as land-use approvals and zoning amendments to secure community benefits. WRI’s database of Community Benefits Frameworks catalogs dozens of public and private agreements, with details about framework type, project sectors, location and specific benefits provided.

The two frameworks each address different structural vulnerabilities. Private agreements become necessary when the standard political and regulatory system fails to protect communities. They allow community groups to directly negotiate with developers, but also depend on well-organized, well-resourced coalitions to succeed. So far, they remain rare in the context of data center projects. Civil rights organizations like the NAACP have released standardized CBA templates to help grassroots coalitions in managing data center buildouts.

Public agreements address the financial and infrastructural risks faced by municipalities. These agreements are becoming more common in the data center context, with local governments stepping in as the primary negotiator and conditioning essential project approvals — such as parcel rezoning or utility hookups — on the developer signing an agreement to provide public benefits. The agreement between Lancaster, PA, and three developers is, to our knowledge, the first public CBA for a data center project. It requires the developers to provide $20 million in funding for sustainability and local economic initiatives, use 100% clean energy, comply with strict water-use caps and meet noise restrictions. The city administration is responsible for enforcing the agreement. Public agreements use the full weight of the government to require community investments, though the benefits secured and the agreement’s enforcement may be limited by local political will and zoning laws.

Public agreements offer another advantage: scalability. When a municipality passes a Community Benefits Ordinance — similar to the model pioneered by Detroit — it replaces project-by-project organizing with a clear, law-mandated framework. Specific CBAs can still be negotiated based on individual project context and neighborhood needs, while the ordinance makes it easier for communities to participate and gives developers clear, consistent expectations. In 2025, Memphis passed an ordinance capturing 25% of AI data center property taxes to fund public projects within a five-mile radius.

In cases where state laws limit local governments' authority, community groups may be left to negotiate directly with developers to secure benefits. Tennessee, for instance, prohibits local governments from requiring CBAs as a condition for receiving state economic incentives or tax breaks. Texas prevents local governments from enforcing or requiring CBAs through broad state preemption. The state law also limits their authority to mandate labor standards, impose broad impact conditions or regulate areas not explicitly granted by state statutes.

Effective CBAs Demand Early, Transparent and Continuous Engagement Across All Stages of Data Center Development and Operations

CBAs direct benefits to local communities, so their terms should be shaped by community priorities. In both private and public agreements, developers should engage communities as active co-creators from the start.

Public and private CBAs present different transparency and engagement challenges because of who controls the information and who holds legal standing.

Public CBAs face transparency failures through the misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and exclusion of communities from negotiations. Public agreements are generally subject to municipal sunshine laws and freedom of information statutes, but developers routinely bypass this by signing sweeping NDAs that shield the entire economic development package from view. In Virginia, for example, 25 of the 31 localities with data centers have signed NDAs. As a result, public CBA negotiations are frequently reduced to backroom exercises where residents get as little as a few weeks’ notice before a project is greenlit.

Even in the absence of NDAs, community groups have accused local governments of freezing them out of CBA negotiations. Local groups like Lancaster Stands Up stated the public was excluded from negotiations and details were hidden until the last minute when the Lancaster CBA was signed. Local government willingness to meaningfully engage communities can be constrained by capacity deficits where understaffed municipal offices may lack time and resources to meaningfully engage the public. In some cases, local officials may view public participation as a “box-checking” exercise, holding one-off, poorly publicized town halls at inconvenient times to satisfy minimum legal requirements while actively blocking grassroots coalitions from the negotiating table.

Private CBAs, according to advocates, can offer true grassroots democratic representation by allowing communities to organize outside of formal government channels and put bargaining power directly in residents’ hands. However, private CBAs can also face transparency criticisms when representation is unclear, making it hard to determine whether a coalition speaks for the broader community or a select group. Negotiations in such cases can happen behind closed doors, and the final agreement is often private unless the parties choose to publish it.

Community groups can also face resource gaps: they may lack the capital to hire independent grid engineers, hydrologists or contract attorneys to fully assess the impacts of a data center project.

Here are some approaches that local governments and communities can take to ensure transparency and representation in data center CBAs:

Targeted NDA restrictions: Pass local ordinances, such as Big Rapids Township, Michigan, that prohibit elected officials, municipal staff and economic development authorities from signing blanket NDAs with developers. To preserve municipal competitiveness, these frameworks can allow narrow, temporary protections for proprietary intellectual property, brand identity and early-stage land pricing agreements. Because local governments can be pitted against one another, states can also step in to create a uniform playing field (legislation has been introduced in 10 states to ban state and municipal employees from signing NDAs). Going further, regulatory frameworks should clarify that data on public resource use — including water, energy and infrastructure — is strictly public information. This would prevent developers from using confidentiality clauses in private CBAs to conceal a facility’s true environmental footprint.
Three-party negotiation framework: Require all public development projects to establish a three-party negotiation framework, making a CBA a mandatory precondition for project approval, public funding or zoning changes. For large-scale, high-impact projects, an independently elected and demographically representative community advisory board (CAB) could serve as a coequal negotiating voice alongside the developer and local government. For private agreements, the CAB could serve as the core steering committee empowered to negotiate, execute and monitor the private contract.
Independent technical and legal funds: Eliminate the capacity and technical knowledge imbalances by requiring developers to pay into a municipal fund that gives local government staff and grassroots community coalitions the capital to hire independent legal, hydrological and grid experts during negotiations.
Periodic performance reviews: Transform the contract from a static document into an adaptive framework by incorporating periodic reviews over the life of a project. The Stillwater Good Neighbor Agreement has been amended multiple times to address changing commercial operations and emerging community interests. Data center CBAs can follow this model by including automatic renegotiation triggers for unforeseen grid congestion, changes to municipal water baselines and rapid technological shifts, holding the developer accountable to the local community over time.

Effective Agreements Pair Strict Harm Mitigation and Robust Benefit Delivery

Data centers present both challenges and opportunities to local communities and regions. CBA negotiations should begin by understanding potential project impacts and identifying areas where community and developer priorities align to secure tangible community benefits, setting the stage for a successful, collaborative partnership.

Local governments should first enshrine harm mitigation and community protections in zoning and nuisance laws, establishing a strict regulatory floor for responsible data center development. Where these public protections are weak or absent, CBAs become the community’s primary regulatory defense. In these jurisdictions, CBAs should be structured to address the environmental, economic and infrastructure strains caused by data centers, building on existing local or state baselines to guarantee stricter enforcement, close regulatory loopholes and protect against future rollbacks. The Lancaster CBA serves as a good model. It caps municipal water consumption at 20,000 gallons per day per campus, requires 100% clean energy use and imposes financial penalties for noncompliance, and restricts noise levels to pre-construction ambient baselines.

Data Center Harm Mitigation Through Community Benefits Agreement

Impact Category	Baseline Requirement	Additional Mitigation Measures
Water conservation	Mandate comprehensive early assessments of local water availability	Require site-specific analyses before approving technologies like reclaimed water or closed-loop cooling, ensuring they do not stress downstream ecosystems or the regional energy grid
Clean energy	Source power through solar or wind contracts	Deploy on-site battery storage to displace diesel backup generators
Energy affordability and ratepayer protections	Require developers to contribute to a dedicated energy assistance fund for residential rate relief, home weatherization and rooftop solar installations	Mandate load shedding or a switch to on-site battery storage during peak residential demand
Noise mitigation	Prioritize project siting exclusively within designated industrial corridors far from residential zones	Mandate a combination of generous property-line setbacks, acoustic metal walls and sound shielding around cooling towers
Light and visual screening	Implement property-line setbacks to push operations away from public view	Plant dense, native landscaped buffers to screen security lighting, cooling blocks and electrical substations
Air quality and emissions	Require the installation of advanced technologies that limit emissions	Limit the frequency of routine backup diesel generator testing

Historically, CBAs across sectors have prioritized defensive harm reduction over long-term community wealth building. Even when benefits are included, they are typically described in ambiguous and aspirational terms (“strive to create local jobs” or “strive to hire 30% of workers locally”), without clear metrics, timelines or enforcement mechanisms.

Because data center developers receive significant public incentives and access to shared community infrastructure — such as local water supplies and electrical grids — agreements should secure meaningful community and regional benefits. Public agreements are more likely to secure macro-level benefits, such as regional infrastructure funds and grid modernization, while private agreements are vital for securing hyperlocal benefits that directly compensate the neighborhoods bearing the facility's daily disruptions.

Careful negotiation can bridge the gap between these macro-level and hyperlocal priorities. Workforce development is a prime example. While data centers generate high capital value, they create relatively few permanent operational jobs. To ensure meaningful economic returns, negotiators can ask the developer to invest in regional workforce development, including advanced AI academies to prepare workers for the digital economy and unionized skilled-trade training centers that serve the workforce needs of clean energy industries and other local sectors. These regional investments can be anchored in the host community through project labor agreements that mandate union apprentice programs, local hiring preferences and dedicated training opportunities for residents living closest to the data center facilities. Workforce strategies can extend beyond jobs to build community wealth through local and diverse business development, contracting opportunities and community-owned assets.

Mapping Benefits: Regional vs. Hyperlocal

Benefit Category	Macro-Level Benefits (Regional Impact)	Hyperlocal Benefits (Local Community)
Economic and Financial	Tax revenue that can fund regional infrastructure and public schools across a city or county	Direct community fund managed by neighborhood residents for local parks, libraries, community centers, cultural institutions and targeted workforce development programs for people living near the development
Jobs and Workforce	Provisions that advance inclusive regional labor pipelines, such as investments in K-12 STEM pipelines, technical academies and digital inclusion grants	Union-approved apprenticeship programs in neighborhood high schools and capacity grants to local community colleges to expand STEM and career and technical education tracks, with tuition waivers for nearby residents.
Utilities and Energy	Grid modernization provisions, such as high-voltage substation upgrades and regional utility investments that stabilize the broader electrical grid	Microgrids and utility subsidies, such as developer-funded solar or microgrid installations for local civic buildings or direct utility bill credits to offset neighborhood rate increases
Digital Infrastructure	Regional fiber networks, such as expansion of high-speed fiber-optic backbones connecting major local hubs and business parks	“Last-mile” broadband, such as free or heavily discounted high-speed internet access and public Wi-Fi zones for adjacent neighborhoods
Governance and Accountability	Regional governance, such as standardized reporting requirements, coordinated planning and utility oversight across jurisdictions	Community oversight, such as community advisory boards, accessible public reporting, local monitoring and grievance processes

Data Center Agreements Demand Strict Monitoring and Enforcement Tools to Protect Communities

Monitoring and accountability mechanisms are essential in both public and private data center CBAs. They help ensure that promised benefits are delivered, harms are mitigated and commitments are enforceable. Many past agreements have failed to deliver results because they relied on vague language, lacked independent monitoring or had weak enforcement mechanisms.

Possible mechanisms for robust monitoring and accountability include:

Independent third-party monitoring: Use neutral entities, such as universities or trusted nonprofits, to regularly audit water use, energy consumption and emissions and verify compliance with the baselines and thresholds established in the CBA. In public agreements, independent CABs, with dedicated seats for residents and environmental justice advocates, can foster trust and transparency, provided they have the legal authority to commission independent audits and trigger penalties.
Data transparency portals: Create public online dashboards showing real-time or periodic metrics, such as water withdrawals, grid load, emissions and air and water quality. To maximize their utility, these portals could be paired with statutory requirements for public disclosure of whether a project is meeting its targets. Understaffed local government agencies and capacity-constrained CBOs may need technical assistance to interpret complex data. A technical and legal fund, as discussed earlier, could support hiring of independent data analysts, hydrologists or energy engineers to review dashboard data on behalf of communities and local government. Portals could also be designed to generate non-technical summaries alongside the raw data.
Parent company guarantee: Standalone limited liability companies (LLCs) are sometimes created for specific data center developments, even when the ultimate backer is a major hyperscaler such as Google, Meta or Microsoft. If an agreement is signed with the LLC alone, the community risks being left with a worthless contract if the LLC is dissolved, goes bankrupt or transfers the asset. The parent company should be required to sign as a co-party and explicitly state that all obligations, penalties and monitoring requirements automatically transfer to any future buyer, operator or tenant if the data center or LLC is sold, leased or restructured.
Enforcement clauses: Agreements should include penalties for noncompliance, such as fines, reduced subsidies, tax incentive clawbacks or legal action. For instance, public and private agreements can define precise, escalating per-day financial penalties for specific infractions, such as exceeding nighttime decibel limits or water caps. They can also require developers to place funds in escrow before construction begins, ensuring money is available to cover penalties or remediation. Public agreements can tie local property tax abatements or infrastructure subsidies to strict performance milestones, with proportional clawbacks for missed targets. Enforcement presents practical challenges, especially for private agreements, where local communities are up against well-resourced corporations. Agreements should therefore mandate a structured dispute resolution process with a neutral third-party arbiter before escalating to costly court battles. As an example of the enforcement clause, the City of St. Louis has added strict financial accountability mechanisms to its agreement with the developers of the Armory Innovation District data center to protect the city and the school system if economic projections fall short. The city projects that the data center will generate $432.3 million in local taxes over 10 years, including more than $206 million for public schools. Beginning in 2029, the city will compare the actual local tax revenue generated by the data center against the year-by-year projections in the agreement. In case of a deficit, the developer will pay the city $15,000 in liquidated damages for every $100,000 shortfall – effectively guaranteeing 15% of the projected tax revenue.

Community Benefit Agreements Are One Tool in a Broader Toolbox for Responsible Data Center Development

The effectiveness of CBAs also depends on other public policies and decisions surrounding a data center project. Land-use planning helps determine where facilities may be located. Utility regulation influences how electricity and water infrastructure is financed and who pays for new investments. Public finance governs incentives and tax expenditures. Environmental standards establish baseline operating requirements, while disclosure and reporting systems determine whether communities can evaluate actual project performance. Because these responsibilities sit with different public institutions, no single CBA can perform all of these governance functions across a project’s lifecycle. However, a range of governance tools can address development challenges at different stages of the project lifecycle.

Data Center Lifecycle Governance Framework

Stages of Development	Examples of Representative Governance Tools
Planning	Comprehensive plans, zoning ordinances, moratoria
Project Review	Conditional-use permits, fiscal and ratepayer analyses, development agreements, community benefits agreements
Operations	Performance standards, utility regulation, environmental requirements
Long-term Oversight	Public reporting, monitoring, enforcement
Decommissioning and Closure	Public reporting, monitoring, enforcement

State and local leaders are beginning to use these complementary tools. Kentucky’s Qualified Data Center Incentive Program requires independent impact analyses, information on ratepayer impacts, decommissioning planning and community notification before projects receive final approval and tax relief. Several jurisdictions are using temporary moratoria to pause development and proactively update public policies before large-scale projects can proceed. For example, Aurora, Illinois, enacted a 180-day moratorium to evaluate grid, water and neighborhood impacts and establish data-center-specific zoning.

CBAs reach their full potential within a strong governance ecosystem: They can focus on securing community-defined benefits, while complementary planning, regulatory, transparency and accountability tools establish the consistent public safeguards that every project should meet.

CBAs as a Catalyst to Move Communities from Reactive Bargaining to Proactive Governance

As data center expansion reshapes communities across the U.S., the challenge for local leaders is transitioning from reactive bargaining to proactive governance. Done well, legally binding CBAs transform data center development from a closed-door transaction into an equitable partnership, ensuring local growth delivers durable, shared prosperity.

Yet CBAs are only one tool in a broader governance toolbox. Meaningful accountability requires pairing these agreements with comprehensive state and local actions, including modernized zoning codes, grid and ratepayer protections, utility commission reforms and robust environmental regulations. By deploying these tools in tandem, communities can shape data center development on their own terms and in ways that deliver long-lasting benefits.

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STATEMENT: UK Invests in Tropical Forest Forever Facility, Boosting Momentum

nate.shelter@wri.org — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:29:35 +0000

STATEMENT: UK Invests in Tropical Forest Forever Facility, Boosting Momentum nate.shelter@wri.org Thu, 09/03/2026 - 14:29

LONDON (September 3, 2026) — The UK Government today announced it will make a £400 million investment in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility via a loan, a mechanism launched last year to provide long-term, predictable financing to countries that protect and sustainably manage their tropical forests. The UK has partnered with Brazil in developing the TFFF since its inception. This announcement follows previous pledges from Brazil, Indonesia, France, Germany, Norway and several philanthropic institutions.

Following is a statement from Edward Davey, Head of WRI Europe's UK Office:

"The UK's investment is an important vote of confidence in a new model for protecting the world’s tropical forests. Their fate is not only vital for global biodiversity and climate stability, but also for the UK’s and the world’s economic resilience.

“The wildfires, heatwaves and droughts that have wreaked havoc on Europe's communities this year — and the catastrophic floods in Nepal — are profoundly intertwined with the health of the forests stretching across the Amazon, Congo Basin, Southeast Asia and beyond. If those forests fall, we all feel the impacts — through ever more severe climate-driven disasters and food insecurity. But if those forests thrive, we all feel the benefits too — through a more resilient economy and a more secure global food system.

“Much more support will be needed for the Tropical Forest Forever Facility to fulfill its promise. Now is the moment for other governments to step up — building on this renewed momentum from the UK and earlier pledges from other nations. With more investment and smart governance, this mechanism could provide countries with the long-term incentives they need to keep forests standing, while ensuring Indigenous Peoples and communities have the finance, tenure and rights to the land they have protected for generations.”

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Statement: UNEP Report Warns World is Soon to Exceed 1.5°C ‒ but Return is Possible

darla.vanhoorn@wri.org — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 05:55:48 +0000

Statement: UNEP Report Warns World is Soon to Exceed 1.5°C ‒ but Return is Possible darla.vanhoorn… Wed, 09/02/2026 - 01:55

WASHINGTON (September 2, 2026) — UNEP today published Limiting Overshoot, its first report on the likelihood and consequences of exceeding 1.5°C of global warming. It finds that global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years, pushing climate risks to increasingly dangerous levels.

The report also finds that temperatures can still be brought back down in line with the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. Doing so will require aggressive emissions cuts, a major scale-up of responsible carbon removal — ultimately moving beyond net zero to net-negative emissions — and urgent action on adaptation and resilience to address climate impacts.

Following is a statement from David Waskow, Director of WRI's International Climate Initiative:

“Crossing 1.5°C is no longer a distant possibility. Extreme heat, floods, fires and droughts are already giving us a glimpse of what a hotter world brings: homes under water, harvests wiped out and communities still rebuilding when the next disaster strikes. With a developing Super El Niño, the worst may still be ahead. Every fraction of a degree raises the toll.

“How far temperatures rise, how long they stay there and how much damage is done still depends enormously on what countries do now — and there's a way to do it that's low-carbon and climate-resilient and delivers growth rather than locking in greater risk.

“Moving faster on clean energy, resilient food and water systems, and adaptation is proving that countries can protect people and their economies together — lowering costs, creating jobs and strengthening economies. Getting there will need all hands on deck: mobilizing political will, building inclusive governance and effective policy, and unlocking both public and private finance.

"Getting temperatures back down will require scaling up carbon removal substantially and responsibly, without undermining the land, food and water systems communities depend on. But carbon removal cannot substitute for deep emissions cuts, including rapid reductions in methane. We need both, and much faster.

“We also have to prepare for the warming we can no longer avoid. For communities on the front lines, adaptation can mean the difference between a shock and a catastrophe. Acting early pays off: recent WRI research found that every $1 invested in adaptation can generate more than $10 in benefits.

“At a time when wars, trade tensions and fractured diplomacy are pulling countries apart, climate change is making cooperation more necessary, not less. No country can insulate itself from a world that overshoots 1.5°C. The longer countries delay, the more the costs fall onto those least able to bear them.”

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RELEASE: World Resources Institute Names Dr. Hans Bruyninckx as Europe Regional Director

sophie.brady@wri.org — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:41:03 +0000

RELEASE: World Resources Institute Names Dr. Hans Bruyninckx as Europe Regional Director sophie.brady@wri.org Mon, 08/31/2026 - 18:41

Veteran EU environmental leader to guide WRI Europe at a pivotal moment for the region's climate, nature and economy

THE HAGUE (September 1, 2026) — World Resources Institute (WRI) today announced Dr. Hans Bruyninckx as the new Regional Director of WRI Europe. A longtime leader in European environmental policy, Bruyninckx brings decades of experience spanning science, public policy and academia, including ten years at the helm of the European Environment Agency.

Bruyninckx takes up the role at a pivotal moment for Europe, as governments navigate growing pressures around economic competitiveness and security alongside accelerating climate and nature risks. He will lead WRI Europe's work with governments, businesses and other partners to bring evidence-based solutions into these interconnected debates across food, land, water, cities, energy, as well as climate finance and governance.

Dr. Bruyninckx most recently served as a Commissioner on WHO’s Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health. From 2013 to 2023, he led the European Environment Agency, overseeing its work to provide independent environmental evidence and analysis to policymakers across the European Union. Over the course of his career, he has also taught at the universities of Leuven, Wageningen and Antwerp, worked extensively across the NGO sector and advised institutions shaping climate and environmental policy across Europe.

"I feel privileged to join the WRI Europe team at a time when the region faces fundamental choices about how to build a prosperous and resilient future,” said Hans Bruyninckx. “The natural systems we all depend on are under growing strain from overuse, depletion and pollution — and this summer has shown just how directly those pressures affect our societies. Europe needs solutions grounded in evidence, attuned to policy realities and rooted in society. That is what makes WRI a strong partner for Europe.”

“Hans joins WRI’s leadership at a moment when our work in Europe and across the wider network is more interconnected than ever,” said Adriana Lobo, Managing Director for Global Presence & National Action at WRI. “He brings scientific depth, firsthand experience shaping EU policy and strong relationships across the region and beyond. That combination will be invaluable in expanding WRI Europe's influence and impact."

Dr. Bruyninckx studied political science and international relations at Antwerp University and KU Leuven, followed by a degree in development economics at the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). He earned his PhD in international environmental politics from Colorado State University.

He joins WRI Europe as it marks 10 years in the region and continues to grow, with offices in The Hague and London and joint hubs in Brussels and Bonn.

Dr. Bruyninckx will begin his role on September 28.

About World Resources Institute (WRI):

WRI works to improve people’s lives, protect and restore nature and stabilize the climate. As an independent research organization, we leverage our data, expertise and global reach to influence policy and catalyze change across systems like food, land and water; energy; and cities. Our 2,000+ staff work on the ground in more than a dozen focus countries and with partners in over 50 nations.

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The Truth About Renewable Electricity: Your Questions, Answered

shannon.paton@wri.org — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:09 +0000

The Truth About Renewable Electricity: Your Questions, Answered shannon.paton@… Mon, 08/31/2026 - 08:00

Reliable, affordable electricity is essential for many of the products and services that underpin the modern economy. But the sources of that electricity — and their respective merits and risks — are increasingly the subject of debate and polarization.

A flood of narratives and counternarratives is rising in the media and public conversation about the reliability and affordability of renewables, as well as their impacts on the economy, jobs and communities. These mixed messages can make it hard to get the accurate information people need as they face important decisions about how they live, spend or vote.

Here, we answer some common questions about renewable electricity, using the latest evidence, data and research.

1) What exactly is renewable electricity?

Renewable electricity is power generated from naturally replenishing energy sources, including solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal and biomass.

Solar and wind are considered “variable,” in that their output depends on weather, time of day and season. Hydropower, geothermal and biomass are considered “firm,” in that their output is reliably available on demand (although no power plant, whether it uses fossil fuels or renewables, is always available). Experience and modeling show that electricity grids can be reliable, affordable and clean (low-carbon) by combining high volumes of variable and firm renewables with energy storage and other low-carbon generating sources.

2) How much electricity comes from renewables vs. fossil fuels?

Renewables accounted for around 34% of global electricity generation in 2025, with 15% from hydropower, 8% from wind and 7% from solar. Wind and solar have grown significantly since 2015, when their shares in global electricity generation were only 3.4% and 1%, respectively.

Still, having been in use for more than a century, fossil fuels remain the dominant electricity generation source globally. They account for nearly 60% of the world’s electricity, primarily from coal (35%) and natural gas (22%).

3) How fast is renewable electricity growing?

Renewable electricity is not just growing — it’s skyrocketing. Solar and wind deployment in particular are expanding faster than any other electricity sources.

Renewable capacity

The growth trajectory is most evident in new capacity additions. In 2025, over 85% of new global electricity generation capacity came from renewables. The total global renewable electricity generation capacity has grown nearly 7-fold in the past 25 years, from 764 gigawatts (GW) in 2000 to 5,149 GW by 2025. Growth in 2025 set a record, with renewable capacity growing by 15.5%, adding an additional 629 GW within a single year.

Renewable generation

Beyond installed capacity, it is important to understand how much electricity is actually generated. Electricity generated from solar and wind has increased more than 11-fold and more than 3-fold, respectively, between 2015 and 2025. In comparison, electricity generation from all fossil fuels increased only 14% during the same period.

Notably, 2025 marked the first year in over a century that electricity generated from renewable sources exceeded that from coal, the largest fossil fuel source. This signals a structural shift in the global electricity mix.

Solar has been the fastest-growing electricity source over the past eight years, roughly doubling every three years. In 2025, it posted a record increase of 600 terrawatt-hours (TWh), bringing total solar electricity generation to nearly 2,700 TWh. Together, solar and wind met 90% of global electricity demand growth in 2025, with solar accounting for 75% of that increase. Meanwhile, total electricity generation from fossil fuels declined slightly for the first time in 2025, by 0.2%.

Battery storage

Battery storage capacity has also grown exponentially. New capacity additions in 2025 were more than 150 times higher than they were a decade ago. Batteries allow solar and wind to deliver more value to grids, since they can store and provide energy for times when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining.

Electricity generated from wind turbines has increased 3-fold from 2015-2025. Photo by zhu difeng/Shutterstock

4) What’s behind the growth in renewables, and will it continue?

Solar and wind are likely to continue growing fast and are expected to account for almost all new renewable capacity additions through 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). IEA estimates that solar and wind will account for 30% of global generation in 2030, nearly double their current share.

The three main drivers are cost decreases, enabling government policies and corporate purchasing.

Cost decreases

The cost of electricity from some renewable sources has fallen dramatically over the past decade. One way of assessing energy costs is to look at the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), which, roughly speaking, is the average cost of electricity from a power plant over its lifetime. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the LCOE for utility-scale solar power and onshore wind dropped 90% and 70%, respectively between 2010 and 2024.

This dramatic decline in solar and wind costs has been reinforced by rapid improvements and falling costs in battery storage technologies. Battery storage is a key integration strategy to bring the variable output of solar and wind into the electric grid while maintaining reliability (more on this later). BloombergNEF’s data shows that the global LCOE for four-hour battery storage — meaning the cost of a battery that can hold and discharge four hours of electricity — is $78 per megawatt-hour (MWh), having declined 90% from 2012-2025.

Altogether, the combination of maturing technologies, larger project scales and reduced operating expenses has made renewable electricity a low-cost option for many regions of the world, while offering greater price stability compared to fossil fuel generation since solar and wind have no fuel costs.

Policies

Government policies are another driver of growth in renewable electricity. IEA reports that more than 130 governments have policies that encourage the deployment of solar, wind and other renewables. These range from subsidies and other financial incentives, to purchasing targets (such as Renewable Portfolio Standards), to carbon pricing policies that raise the cost of fossil generation.

These policies help to overcome lock-in by fossil fuels, many of which have benefited from decades of supportive policies. The International Monetary Fund estimated that in 2024, governments provided over $700 billion in explicit subsidies for fossil fuels, or 0.6% of global GDP. While many subsidies are directly for consumers for things like transportation or cooking fuels, governments also subsidize the coal, oil and gas industries directly. For example, the U.S. government has recognized 16 tax measures benefiting upstream fossil fuels, with the largest exceeding $1 billion annually for oil and gas. These have been in the U.S. tax code for over 35 years, with one coal tax benefit dating back to 1918.

Corporate purchasing

Corporations are increasingly motivated by the cost-saving benefits of renewable electricity, as well as their own voluntary commitments to decarbonize. Hundreds of firms have pledged and achieved the goal of using 100% renewable electricity through alliances such as RE100. Large buyers such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft are driving roughly half of corporate purchases of renewables, accounting for about 27 GW of new solar and wind capacity in 2025.

Cost decreases, supportive policies and corporate interest are likely to spur strong growth in renewable generation for years to come. IEA projects that renewable electricity will grow by about 1,000 TWh annually through 2030, or 8% per year.

5) Can renewables provide reliable power even at times when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing?

Solar and wind generation are variable, driven by daily and seasonal weather patterns. However, power systems have successfully integrated large volumes of solar and wind generation into reliable, affordable grids. Grids can incorporate an increasing share of variable generation through "integration strategies” such as:

Transmission lines can aggregate power generated by solar and wind over broad geographic areas, thus balancing variability over the area by extending power from sunnier areas to places with cloud cover.
Storage technologies can save power during periods of ample generation for use during times of low generation. For example, solar generated during the day can be stored in a battery for use in the evening.
Demand management measures can shift electricity use from times of low renewable generation to times of ample generation. This could include scheduling EV charging for times when prices are low because renewable supplies are abundant.
Flexible and back-up generation can step in when solar and wind generation are low. Ideally this generation should be clean (zero- or low-carbon), firm (not weather-dependent) power. Clean, firm power options include geothermal, hydropower, nuclear and fossil generation with carbon capture and storage.

6) Can renewables help make electricity affordable?

Electricity prices in any specific country reflect a wide range of factors, including existing investments in generation, transmission and distribution; the cost and availability of fuels; and a wide array of policies (regulatory, tax, market design, etc.). The affordability of electricity has become a central issue across the globe, especially as energy demand grows for data centers, transport, cooling and other uses.

Renewable electricity can help keep power bills affordable because solar and wind, often paired with storage, are the lowest-cost sources of new supply in many regions of the world. They have much lower operating costs than fossil fuel alternatives because they have no fuel cost and can be deployed quickly. This cost advantage is one of the key drivers behind IEA projections that solar and wind generation will grow faster than conventional generation from now to 2030.

7) Are renewables still cleaner than fossil fuels when you look at greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across their entire lifecycle?

Renewable electricity sources have far lower GHG emissions over their entire lifecycle than fossil fuel power plants. While fossil generators produce most of their climate impact during fuel combustion — and contribute additional emissions through raw material extraction, fuel processing, power plant construction, operation and decommissioning — renewables avoid the vast majority of these carbon‑intensive steps. As a result, sources like wind power carry only a small fraction of the lifecycle carbon footprint associated with coal or natural gas, making them much cleaner options for electricity generation overall.

According to a 2021 assessment by the National Laboratory of the Rockies, the median amount of greenhouse gases emitted per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by wind is 13 grams (g CO2e/kWh) and solar PV is 43 g CO2e/kWh. Meanwhile, coal is about 1,001 g CO2e/kWh and natural gas is 486 g CO2/kWh. The lifecycle emissions of wind and solar are almost entirely attributable to emissions associated with their raw materials and manufacturing, which will likely decline further as industrial processes and transportation decarbonize.

8) Beyond lower costs and emissions, what are some of the other advantages of renewable electricity?

There are lots of ways renewable electricity offers advantages over fossil fuels beyond just costs and climate impact, including:

National security

The current energy crisis spurred by the war on Iran underscores the risks of relying on globally traded and unevenly distributed fossil resources. Fossil fuels are heavily concentrated in a few countries, whereas every nation on Earth has sunlight and wind, and many have hydro and geothermal resources. Expanding renewable electricity deployment can therefore strengthen national energy security and decrease exposure to global fossil fuel price volatility.

Some countries are already realizing this benefit. For example, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the European Union recognized the security risk of its reliance on Russian fossil fuels. Russia supplied 45% of the E.U.’s natural gas, 27% of its crude oil, and 50% of its coal before the Ukraine war. In response, the E.U. launched its REPowerEU plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels by accelerating its renewable energy deployment, energy efficiency and energy supply diversification.

Water conservation

Conventional thermal power plants such as coal, natural gas and nuclear facilities require large volumes of water for cooling. Studies from the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate that coal-fired power plants in the U.S. need to withdraw more than 21,000 gallons of water to generate 1 MWh of electricity, while natural gas-fired generation needs 2,793 gallons per MWh.

Meanwhile, solar panels and wind turbines require little to no water for cooling and maintenance. For example, the Solar Energy Industries Association estimated that solar panels use approximately 20 gallons per MWh for cleaning. Using solar instead of fossil fuels can therefore significantly reduce water use in regions experiencing high levels of water stress.

Public health benefits and improved air quality

Research published in 2023 in the British Medical Journal showed that an estimated 5.13 million excess deaths per year globally are attributable to ambient air pollution from fossil fuel use. Renewable electricity can help reduce air pollutants such as particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) to improve public health.

Quick installation

At a time when electricity demand is skyrocketing from sources such as data centers, cooling and manufacturing, solar and wind can often be deployed faster than fossil fuel power plants. Among all the electricity generation options, solar stands out as the fastest to deploy, often within two years. Even under favorable permitting conditions, non-solar options generally take 3-15 years to get online.

Solar provides about 7% of the world's electricity generation. Photo by anatoliy_gleb/Shutterstock

9) If renewables are cheap, reliable and faster to build, why are new data centers turning to gas and nuclear to supply their power needs?

Meeting new data center-driven electricity demand is a complex and rapidly evolving topic. IEA analysis projects that this demand is likely to be met by more fossil generation than renewables through 2030 in the two largest markets (United States and China), though at the global level, renewables are expected to take the lead. Large users of energy are also turning to nuclear power, pursuing existing and new operations, as well as restarting decommissioned plants.

This regional increase in fossil-based power is being driven by data center developers' and hyperscalers' unique demands. A big one is “speed-to-power”: getting generation online fast, since data centers can be built far faster than new generation can connect to the grid. While a solar or wind farm can actually be built faster than a natural gas plant, in practice, variable renewables can be harder to deploy quickly through the grid, due to poor policy environments, locational constraints, permitting delays, and extensive grid study and building timelines.

Even large-scale gas plants are coming online slower than data center demand — a problem compounded by a natural gas turbine shortage — so building on-site is often the fastest option. Here, fossil generation has an advantage: Though solar has more siting flexibility than wind, it still needs large land areas that major data center hubs often lack. The siting flexibility and lower land needs of fossil-based generation often make it the preferred choice for “behind-the-meter” or co-located generation.

The second pressure data centers face is reliability. These gigawatt-scale loads demand highly reliable, dispatchable power around the clock. The grid itself, drawing on many balanced sources of generation, is typically the most reliable option. But where grid capacity is unavailable or can’t keep up yet, developers are turning to fossil generation to fill the gap. While on-site solar and wind paired with storage can technically serve the same load at a similar reliability, meeting those demands would require significantly more land than is typically available near many data center sites. Even when grid connection is possible, fossil power, including diesel generators, still typically serves as backup power.

Making renewables and storage the default for data centers will require faster grid modernization, along with solutions tailored to data centers' unique characteristics. Critically, much of the disadvantage faced by renewables is policy-driven rather than inherent in the technology itself. Streamlining permitting and interconnection processes would let solar and wind deploy far faster, making them a more competitive option for meeting new data center demand.

Renewables account for 34% of global electricity generation; 15% comes from hydropower. Photo by Evgeny_V/Shutterstock

10) What will happen to jobs and livelihoods currently relying on fossil fuels?

Jobs in electricity generation from solar and wind are already outpacing many other generation sources, particularly fossil fuels. In 2024, around 14 million people worked in the electricity generation sector globally, with solar and wind generation accounting for 48% of the entire electricity workforce. Fossil fuel-based jobs comprised only 26%. Solar energy is the largest electricity subsector for creating new jobs. According to the IEA, solar PV created nearly 4 times more jobs than power generation from oil and gas worldwide in 2024. Jobs in coal power generation declined in the same year.

If we zoom in on the United States, the same trends apply. According to the 2025 U.S. Energy & Employment Report from the U.S. Department of Energy, solar and wind comprised 54% of all jobs in the electricity generation sector in 2024; fossil fuels accounted for 21%. Solar not only leads in employment but is also projected to grow faster than other sectors — at approximately 9.8%, vs. 6.8% for natural gas and 4.1% for coal.

Locally, however, the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy can be a source of worry for employees and local businesses. In the U.S., jobs in oil and gas tend to pay higher than those in renewables, although both are higher-than-average wages. These are legitimate concerns that require proactive, thoughtful engagement to create economic opportunities in impacted communities. Some governments and businesses are using workforce strategies to ease the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, including training and reskilling for fossil fuel workers. In Grimsby, England, for example, an offshore wind boom has revived its economy, which had suffered from a decline in the fishing and oil and gas sectors. Spain’s national Just Transition Plan is retraining workers from the coal industry for new jobs in the wind sector.

11) Are wind turbines dangerous for birds?

The impact on birds from wind energy is extremely small compared to other causes, such as buildings and vehicles. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, onshore wind turbines are responsible for 0.007% of human-caused bird deaths annually.

The impact is also low compared to other sources of electricity. For example, one study on the U.S. and Europe showed that fossil-fueled power stations pose a much greater threat to birds than wind and nuclear technologies, due to associated air and water pollution. Another study from the University of Geneva in Switzerland concluded that the onset of shale oil and gas production reduces bird population counts by approximately 15% in the U.S., while wind turbines do not have any measurable impact on bird counts.

There are also several effective ways for wind farms to reduce the risk to birds. For example, new technologies allow blades to turn more slowly, while wind farms can prioritize siting away from bird habitats and migratory pathways.

12) What are some of the major barriers to renewable electricity that still need to be overcome?

Modernizing electric grids, building energy storage capacity, and simplifying permitting are challenges many countries face as they try to scale up clean electricity.

Regardless of the source of electricity, grids need to expand quickly to increase reliability. Driving higher performance by modernizing and optimizing existing grid infrastructure is as important as building more. Investment in electricity grids is growing worldwide, but even more is needed, especially for high-voltage transmission. More reliable grids can support integrating higher volumes of renewable electricity.

When it comes to where that infrastructure should be placed, siting and permitting need to improve to speed the transition to the new energy economy while safeguarding local communities and nature. Streamlined administrative processes, such as setting adequate timelines for approvals and improving coordination within and between agencies, are essential. So are community benefits agreements, which can address stakeholder concerns and ensure clean energy projects produce local benefits such as jobs and infrastructure improvements.

Adequate supply of critical minerals is also a challenge for expanding clean electricity supplies. While necessary to meet surging energy demand, mining and processing these minerals can produce emissions, pollute the environment and bring risks to nearby communities, such as water contamination from mine tailings. Mining and processing are also concentrated in a small handful of countries, which can lead to geopolitical risk. Reusing critical minerals discarded technology can help minimize demand, while responsible mining can reduce risks related to environmental, social, supply chain and other concerns.

As governments scale up clean electricity technologies, they should work with businesses and industries as implementation partners and align markets to help those businesses compete in global markets. Public and private large buyers can play a major role in scaling electric vehicle fleets, increasing home and building efficiency, and boosting low-carbon industrial products, while helping to expand clean electricity to power these end-uses. Large buyers, as well as groups of smaller buyers pooling their demand together, can drive widespread adoption of clean electricity and low-carbon products through their procurement decisions.

13) What electricity mix is needed to reach net-zero emissions?

Research shows that keeping some of the worst climate change impacts at bay requires global greenhouse gas emissions to drop to “net-zero” by mid-century. At the global level, credible modeling by organizations including IEA, IRENA and BloombergNEF show that reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is feasible and affordable by:

Doubling or tripling total electricity generation to enable widespread electrification of transportation, industry and heating; with
A global generation mix that is ~70-75% solar and wind and ~25-30% clean, firm power (geothermal, nuclear, hydropower, and/or fossil generation with carbon capture and storage).

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached a similar conclusion.

Moving Toward a Clean Energy Future

In a world facing numerous geopolitical risks, the security and affordability of energy supplies are top-of-mind for countries, businesses and households. An economy dependent on fossil fuels is a structural economic vulnerability, leaving countries exposed to price and supply shocks whenever the next conflict hits. An economy built on home-grown clean energy protects against future shocks, provides economic resilience and ensures lower bills for consumers. Renewable electricity puts countries in control: it provides energy price stability, independence and long-term security.

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An engineer checks rooftop solar panels in Rajasthan, India.

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STATEMENT: COP17 Advances Finance but Falls Short on Global Drought Action

darla.vanhoorn@wri.org — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 15:24:17 +0000

STATEMENT: COP17 Advances Finance but Falls Short on Global Drought Action darla.vanhoorn… Sat, 08/29/2026 - 11:24

ULAANBAATAR (August 29, 2026) — The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) COP17 in Ulaanbaatar concluded with the announcement of a $1.3 billion finance portfolio for land restoration and drought resilience, including $644.5 million identified as new finance.

Countries did not reach agreement on a global drought framework, with negotiations set to continue at COP18.

Held during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, COP17 also placed a major focus on rangelands and pastoralist communities.

Following is a statement from Susan Chomba, Director of Vital Landscapes, WRI Africa:

“COP17 opened as disaster after disaster unfolded around the world. Drought is drying up water supplies, fueling wildfires and leaving families with failed harvests and fewer ways to make ends meet. The test in Ulaanbaatar was whether countries could get ahead of these crises, rather than keep scrambling to respond after the damage is done.

“Drought was one of the defining issues, but countries still stopped short of a stronger global framework to address it. Drought may hit locally, but its impacts on food, water and economies can quickly cross borders. Stronger preparedness and cooperation will be essential – and increasingly urgent.

“Pastoralists finally received overdue recognition as essential stewards of the world’s rangelands, drawing on generations of knowledge about changing seasons and scarce water. Research shows that rangelands are far less likely to be converted where Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure land rights. Any credible plan to protect and restore rangelands must recognize their rights and put their knowledge at its core.

“The $1.3 billion portfolio for land restoration and drought resilience is welcome, but it is still a fraction of an estimated $278 billion annual financing gap. And too much of that finance has yet to reach the ground. Now the focus has to be on getting money into the communities and landscapes that need it most.

“The true measure of COP17 will be whether families are safer when the next shock comes, with water to rely on, food on the table and land that can keep sustaining them. With El Niño intensifying, every delay leaves people more exposed.”

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How Might a ‘Super El Niño’ Affect Food, Forests and Water?

shannon.paton@wri.org — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How Might a ‘Super El Niño’ Affect Food, Forests and Water? shannon.paton@… Fri, 08/28/2026 - 04:00

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), or El Niño, weather pattern occurs naturally every two to seven years, making some parts of the world drier and others wetter. But this year’s El Niño is shaping up to be a different beast.

In August 2026, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that El Niño had returned and was getting stronger, with a greater than 90% chance of a very strong event during the Northern Hemisphere fall and winter of 2026-2027. That would make a “Super El Niño,” where ocean temperatures in the Pacific rise higher than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above average and alter atmospheric conditions more than usual. The result could be more persistent impacts around the world — including droughts, floods, altered food production, cyclones, extreme heat and more.

While Super El Niños occur roughly every 10-15 years, the effects of this year’s event could be amplified by current conditions. For one, warmer, drier and more erratic conditions fueled by ongoing climate change could exacerbate El Niño’s impacts. The last 11 years have been the warmest on record. And two, food systems around the world already face strains from the U.S.-Iran war and its resulting fuel and fertilizer shortages.

Here, WRI experts answer questions on what a Super El Niño could mean for water, food and forests — as well as how communities can prepare for the impacts.

Water Woes May Intensify

Featured Experts:

Tom Pickerell,
Global Director, Ocean Program

Liz Saccoccia,
Researcher

How might a Super El Niño impact the ocean?

El Niño begins in the ocean, but its impacts quickly ripple through marine ecosystems, coastal livelihoods and the wider ocean economy. Warmer-than-average waters can weaken the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that sustains some of the world’s most productive fisheries. The classic example is Peru’s anchoveta fishery, the world’s largest fishery, where strong El Niño events can reduce and shift populations and disrupt catches impacting seafood supply chains, the global fishmeal markets and ultimately livelihoods. Similar shifts can affect tuna and other commercially important species and the communities that depend on them.

El Niño can also intensify marine heat waves, particularly dangerous in an ocean already warmed by climate change. These heat spikes can damage seagrass meadows and kelp forests, increase stress and disease risks in aquaculture, and alter the timing and distribution of plankton and fish populations. Coral reefs are especially vulnerable and past strong El Niño events, including 1997-1998 and 2015-2016, were associated with major global bleaching episodes, undermining ecosystems that support fisheries, tourism and coastal protection.

For ocean-dependent communities, these ecological shocks affect incomes, nutrition, government revenues and coastal resilience, particularly in developing coastal and island states. A Super El Niño would therefore destabilize the ocean systems that millions of people depend on for food, work, culture and protection from climate impacts.

How might a Super El Niño affect the water supply?

El Niño causes shifting atmospheric patterns that can cause floods in some regions and droughts in others. While impacts can be tricky to predict, areas expected to experience drought this year include the Caribbean, Central America, northern Brazil, central and northern India, central and southern Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and Australia. These conditions could reduce water availability, strain agriculture, and increase pressure on reservoirs and groundwater.

At the same time, El Niño can also bring above-average rainfall and flooding to other parts of the world. According to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), areas that may experience wetter conditions this year include the southern United States, parts of Peru, Ecuador, eastern Africa and parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Increased rainfall may temporarily replenish reservoirs and improve water supplies in some places, but it can also overwhelm infrastructure and increase flood risks.

A Super El Niño could intensify extreme weather impacts, leading to more severe storms, flooding and drought than a typical El Niño event. Regions already vulnerable to water stress may experience sharper declines in water availability. Flood-prone areas could see more damaging rain.

How can communities best prepare for El Niño-related water shocks?

Because forecasts can provide advance warning, governments and organizations have opportunities to prepare for droughts and floods.

During the 2023-2024 El Niño, for example, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) supported anticipatory actions such as repairing and constructing irrigation systems, strengthening flood protections, and providing cash transfers so families could evacuate before floods occurred. Additional interventions included distributing drought-resilient and short-cycle crop seeds to help farmers adapt to changing conditions.

These kinds of early actions can help communities protect water supplies, reduce economic losses and improve resilience to future climate shocks.

Featured Expert:

Mike Badzmierowski,

Manager for U.S. Agricultural Policy

Climate Change and War Could Heighten El Niño’s Impacts on Food Systems

How do El Niños affect food production?

We know El Niño affects food production beyond just seafood because it can alter global atmospheric circulation, influencing temperatures, precipitation, drought, flooding and storms around the world. Our understanding of food production linked to El Niño and other major climate patterns is still in its infancy. We know ENSO matters, but there’s a lot of uncertainty, and impacts tend to vary considerably around the globe.

What we can say is that El Niño has historically shifted food-production risk across regions. Some places benefit, some are harmed, and the global average effect can hide severe local impacts.

El Niño-induced droughts can cause food losses in some places — most concerningly, in areas that are rainfed, low-income, import-dependent and already food-insecure. For example, some regions in Southern Africa have generally experienced reduced cereal production during El Niño events due to drier and hotter growing seasons, leading to increased import needs. But the size of the impact depends on local rainfall, heat, crop calendars, starting soil moisture, government response, markets and whether other climate patterns such as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) reinforce or offset the El Niño.

How could the Super El Niño be different?

If a strong to very strong El Niño does occur, it may differ from past events in one very important way: It would be happening in a hotter world. The last 11 years have been the warmest on record. That matters because a warmer baseline can make the same climate shock more damaging. Higher temperatures can make the atmosphere thirstier, pulling more moisture from soils and plants. This can dry out soils and crops faster, worsen heat stress for crops and livestock, and make droughts more damaging even when rainfall deficits are similar to past El Niños.

This overall warming trend also complicates areas that might receive more rain. More precipitation does not always mean more usable or stored water. A recent paper in Nature shows that more concentrated precipitation can actually reduce terrestrial water storage. If rain falls in more intense bursts, more of it may pool on the surface and then evaporate before it replenishes soil and groundwater. So farms in places that receive more intense rain during an El Niño event may not necessarily be any more resilient than drier places.

Given the current shortages of fuel and fertilizer due to the U.S.-Iran conflict, how might the Super El Niño impact food systems?

The Iran-U.S. conflict-related fuel and fertilizer disruptions matter because they reduce resilience. A strong to very strong El Niño would raise the risk of drought, heat, flooding, pasture stress, fisheries disruption and regional crop losses in certain parts of the world. Those risks become more serious when farmers have fewer tools to respond.

Fertilizer has become less available and less affordable as the war on Iran has continued to disrupt energy markets, shipping and fertilizer trade. Fuel is critical across the food system, from nitrogen fertilizer production to farm equipment to refrigeration, shipping and transport of agricultural products. If fuel and fertilizer prices remain high, farmers may plant less, apply less fertilizer, or struggle to move food where it’s needed, exacerbating food insecurity. A potentially historic El Niño would layer drought, heat or flooding risks onto an already fragile system, increasing the likelihood that high costs turn into real food shortages.

Even after El Niño fades, its effects could linger through the food system. Reduced fertilizer use, poor harvests, livestock losses, higher debt and depleted household savings can affect the next planting season. So, if the U.S.-Iran conflict continues to disrupt fuel and fertilizer markets, it could worsen the effects of a likely El Niño by adding food price and input-cost pressures in the places least able to absorb them.

How can you make food systems more resilient to El Niño and other shocks?

Now more than ever, global cooperation is needed to provide food and aid when local and regional shocks occur — be they related to weather, geopolitics or both. There is also a longer-term need to reduce the drivers of climate change that increase risks to the food system in the first place. In agriculture, that means reducing greenhouse gas emissions from food production and deforestation, even while providing more food for a growing population. On the consumption side of the equation, it is essential to reduce food waste and meat consumption (especially beef) in places where it is high and shift toward more plant-centered diets. We also need to use more of our finite cropland, water and fertilizer for food. A significant and growing amount of global agricultural land, water and fertilizer is devoted to producing food crops for fuel, such as corn for ethanol and soybeans for biodiesel. This becomes harder to justify in a world where climate shocks increasingly threaten food security.

A Super El Niño Could Trigger More Damaging Forest Fires

Featured Experts:

James MacCarthy,
GIS Research Associate

Peter Potapov,
Researcher

What is the relationship between El Niños, forests and climate change?

Ongoing human-caused climate change is the most important driver of increased forest fires globally over the last decade. El Niño amplifies the effects of climate change by shifting rainfall patterns and raising global temperatures, bringing hotter, drier conditions and increased fire risk to some regions while exposing others to above average rainfall and flooding.

Of these impacts, fire poses the greatest threat to forests and the carbon they store. In areas where El Niño brings drier, warmer conditions, it lowers ignition thresholds and accelerates the spread of accidental, intentional and naturally ignited forest fires. The resulting fires can cause damage that takes decades to recover from and release enormous amounts of carbon that accelerate climate change, triggering a dangerous cycle that makes forests even more vulnerable to fire. Beyond fires, climate warming amplified by El Niño-related drought degrades forest health and makes trees more vulnerable to insects and pathogens.

El Niño's relationship with forest fires varies considerably by region. The clearest, most consistent pattern is in South America, where El Niño tends to reduce rainfall during the wet season, leaving the subsequent dry season even more arid and fire-prone. This is particularly true in the Amazon, where forests are not well-adapted to fire. The two most recent strong El Niño events, in 2015-2016 and 2023-2024, both produced record-breaking fire seasons in Brazil. In both 2016 and 2024, fires burned more than 2.3 million hectares of forest in Brazil — more than 4 times the annual average from 2001 to 2025, according to data on WRI’s Global Forest Watch platform.

El Niño also tends to bring drier, hotter conditions to Southeast Asia and Australia, elevating fire risk. Impacts in these regions are more variable and influenced by other cyclical climate phenomena like the Indian Ocean Dipole, which can either amplify or dampen the influence of El Niño on forest fires. A strong 2023-2024 El Niño also contributed to Canada’s warmest winters on record, thinned snowpack, and dry weather in the fall, leading to the country’s record wildfire season of 2023.

When it comes to forest fires, what might we expect this year with the potential Super El Niño?

Even before a potential Super El Niño fully develops, we are likely to see elevated fire activity in 2026. The year is on track to be one of the warmest on record. Hotter, drier conditions will increase fire risk even in the absence of a fully established El Niño.

Forest fire activity in South America is likely to be elevated in 2026 as El Niño develops, but the most severe impacts typically lag by about a year. Potentially record-breaking forest fire activity in the Amazon is most likely in the second half of 2027, when reduced wet season rainfall leaves the following dry season even more arid and fire-prone.

Elevated fire risk is also likely in Southeast Asia, Australia and Canada later this year and into 2027. El Niño tends to bring hotter, drier summers and reduced winter snowpack to Canada, as seen during the record 2023 fire season. In Southeast Asia and Australia, impacts will depend in part on how other climate phenomena like the Indian Ocean Dipole interact with El Niño.

Although global climate change and El Niño-related drought facilitate the spread of fires in forests, logging, mining roads and expanding agriculture are often what cause fires to ignite in the first place.

How can we counteract El Niño’s potential impacts on forest fires?

Cutting carbon emissions and reducing deforestation remain the most important long-term solutions to reduce climate change and wildfire danger. Limiting roads, logging and land clearing in intact natural forests may help to reduce fire ignition and prevent wildfires.

Closer collaboration between local governments and Indigenous communities is also critical, with research showing that Indigenous-led land stewardship and community-based fire management can help reduce fuel loads and lower wildfire risk. Finally, national programs for fire management, fire prevention and public education are critical to prevent catastrophic forest fires, but remain underfunded and underdeveloped across much of the world. Early warning systems and satellite-based fire detection technology, such as the fire alerts on Global Forest Watch, can also help enable faster responses in under-resourced regions.

Editor's Note: We updated this story on August 28, 2026 to reflect El Niño's most recent developments.

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As Temperatures Climb, the Ocean Takes the Brunt

sarah.brown@wri.org — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

As Temperatures Climb, the Ocean Takes the Brunt sarah.brown@wri.org Thu, 08/27/2026 - 09:00

From scorching temperatures in South Africa to unprecedented heat waves in Europe, extreme heat is breaking records and transforming people’s lives across the world. While we feel this heat most immediately in our home and workplaces, the reality is that most of it actually ends up in the ocean.

The ocean absorbs about 91% of the excess heat trapped by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. This growing “energy imbalance” explains why ocean temperatures keep breaking records and why sea levels keep climbing. Those same greenhouse gas emissions are also changing the chemistry of seawater.

The effects of these changes are increasingly being felt on land. But for those working in the ocean space, climate change is already here. The ocean is our clearest indicator of climate change — and the effects of these changes are sobering.

The Rate of Ocean Warming Has More Than Doubled

Because of its huge volume and water’s high heat capacity, the ocean acts as a giant heat reservoir for the planet, absorbing 91% of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases emitted over the last century. That’s equivalent to the heat of about 7.6 billion cups of tea being poured into the ocean every second.

As a result, ocean temperatures have steadily risen, with myriad impacts on people and the planet — from more intense storms and climate patterns like El Niño to species migrating in search of cooler, more suitable waters and growing threats to the crucial fisheries we depend on for food security and livelihoods.

Sea surface temperatures (top 20cm) have risen more than 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) above the preindustrial (1861-1890) average, with the sharpest increases occurring over the past five decades.

Sea surface temperatures have risen steadily over the past five decades, reaching new records in 2026. By the end of June, about 82% of the global ocean was experiencing marine heat wave conditions of varying intensity – the second-largest extent ever recorded. On Aug. 22, the daily average sea surface temperature across the global ocean outside the polar regions reached 21.10 degrees C (69.98 degrees F), the highest daily value ever recorded. The timing is notable: Global ocean temperatures are typically highest in March and April, yet this new daily record was reached in August.

Similarly, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean is storing more heat than ever. 2025 marked the ninth consecutive year of record-breaking heat storage, with the ocean gaining around 23 zettajoules of heat. To put that into perspective, a zettajoule is 1 joule (a standard unit of energy that applies to heat) with 21 zeros behind it; to help picture that, a 60-watt lightbulb uses 60 joules per second.

On top of that, the rate of warming observed between 2005 and 2025 was more than double the rate recorded between 1960 and 2005. Not only is the ocean warming — it’s warming faster.

Europe's seas offer a stark example of how climate change is reshaping the ocean. On Aug. 5, 2026 an oceanographic monitoring buoy off the west coast of Mallorca recorded a sea temperature of 33.02 degrees C (89.6 degrees F) — a single reading, but a revealing one. A 2026 study found that extreme sea temperatures have risen by 2.6 degrees C (4.7 degrees F) in the eastern Mediterranean and 3.1 degrees C (5.6 degrees F) in the western Mediterranean. Temperatures like those observed in 2026 now occur roughly every few years across much of the region, and in about two out of every three years in the eastern Mediterranean. Without human-caused warming, they would have been rare or virtually impossible.

This ocean warming trend is one of the clearest indicators we have of climate change, and one that’s particularly visible at the poles. Arctic sea ice reached its lowest annual maximum extent on record in March 2025 and again in 2026 (about 14.3 million square kilometers in both years). In 2025 Antarctic sea ice recorded its third-lowest annual maximum extent (about 17.8 million square kilometers) and second-lowest summer minimum (about 2 million square kilometers). As reflective white sea ice disappears, it exposes the darker ocean water below, which absorbs more heat, creating a feedback loop that further accelerates warming.

Antarctic sea ice hit its third-lowest annual maximum extent on record in September 2025. Image by Michala Garrison/NASA Earth Observatory, using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Sea-Level Rise Has Almost Doubled

While dwindling sea ice and warming temperatures are alarming, it's just the tip of the (melting) iceberg.

By the end of 2025, the global average sea level was about 11 centimeters higher than it was in January 1993. The rate of this increase has sped up from roughly 2.65 millimeters per year (1993–2011) to about 4.75 millimeters per year (2012–2025). This acceleration is driven by both the thermal expansion of seawater as it warms and the melting of land-based ice from glaciers and ice sheets.

Sea Ice vs. Land Ice: The Impact on Sea Levels

Sea ice forms and floats on the ocean, so when it melts, it does not add a significant amount of water to the ocean in the same way that melting land ice does. However, because sea ice is mostly fresh water and the ocean is salty, the meltwater is slightly less dense than the surrounding seawater. As a result, it occupies a slightly larger volume than the seawater it displaced by the floating ice, causing a small increase in sea level — around 3% of the effect of melting land ice.

These changes are reshaping ecosystems, altering ocean circulation and contributing to rising sea levels worldwide. Higher sea levels increase the frequency of high-tide flooding, worsen storm surges, accelerate coastal erosion and allow saltwater to intrude into freshwater supplies and farmland. The consequences are not only environmental but also social and economic and will be felt for generations.

Low-lying nations and coastal communities are already experiencing many of these impacts. In The Gambia, for example, rising seas are pushing saltwater farther up the Gambia River and into surrounding farmland. In some villages, once-productive rice and vegetable fields have been abandoned because the soil has become too salty for crops. As suitable land becomes scarcer, communities are running out of options to grow food.

In places where relocation is no longer possible, some governments are creating pathways to allow people freedom of movement to move to a new country. One example is Tuvalu in the South Pacific, where an agreement with Australia allows eligible Tuvaluans to migrate as rising seas increasingly flood areas that once remained dry at high tide. Tuvaluans are facing the consequences of a crisis to which their country has contributed very little. Beyond the loss of homes and infrastructure, sea-level rise raises profound questions about identity and sovereignty, such as: what happens to a country if its people are forced to leave?

In Tuvalu, the land and ocean often has little distance apart, making the island nation particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. Photo by Dmitry Malov/iStock

The Ocean’s Chemistry Is Changing

As well as absorbing heat, the ocean is also a major carbon sink, absorbing roughly 25% of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions. However, this service comes at a cost.

As carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater, it alters ocean chemistry. While acidification varies across the ocean, observations show that the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide has increased by around 30% since the preindustrial era. This spells trouble for marine life and those who rely on it.

Coral reefs, shell-forming species and other marine organisms are especially vulnerable because acidification reduces the availability of carbonate ions needed to build calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. These impacts can ripple across the ocean: Ecosystems like coral reefs support around 25% of life in the ocean, as well as crucial food webs. The decline of these ecosystems alone will affect fisheries, food security and other coastal economies that depend on them.

The effects of more acidic ocean environments have been seen before when oyster hatcheries in Oregon and Washington experienced mass larval die-offs. These were later linked to more acidic, low-aragonite seawater entering hatchery tanks and impeding crucial processes for the larvae to make their shells. This proved to be a huge issue for the region that is significant within the shellfish trade and was valued at about $111 million when it came close to collapse, before growers adopted monitoring and water-treatment systems.

Because acidification is progressing faster in some regions than the global average, some places may face ecological impacts sooner and with greater intensity than global averages suggest. Sustained ocean surface warmth also contributes to deoxygenation and lowers nutrient resupply. Layer onto that marine heatwaves and increased acidity and we have compounded pressures on reefs, kelp forests, shellfish, food webs and, ultimately, coastal livelihoods and national economies.

Climate Change Is Accelerating. So Must Our Response

The ocean is sending us an unmistakable message: Climate change is accelerating, and our response must accelerate with it. Limiting every fraction of a degree of warming matters, because it means less heat accumulating in the ocean, less sea-level rise locked in for future generations and greater resilience for the communities and ecosystems that depend upon a healthy ocean.

The science is increasingly clear that some degree of ocean change is now unavoidable. Deep ocean warming and interior ocean acidification are effectively irreversible on our timescales. This does not mean giving up. It means doing everything we can now to reduce near-term risks by protecting natural buffers such as mangroves, reefs, wetlands and seagrasses; planning coastal infrastructure and services so that communities stay safe when floods, storms or heatwaves overwhelm them; and acting earlier, using forecasts and ocean-observation systems to protect people, livelihoods and ecosystems before impacts hit — all while continuing to cut emissions. Achieving that depends on three key actions happening together:

Viewing adaptation as essential. For coasts, the acceleration in sea‑level rise is the metric that should be resetting adaptation timetables. The impacts of a warming, acidifying ocean must be factored into infrastructure investment, urban planning, disaster preparedness and national development strategies today, rather than treated as future challenges.
Investing in healthy ocean ecosystems. Mangroves, saltmarshes, seagrasses, coral reefs and other coastal ecosystems help buffer shorelines, store carbon and sustain livelihoods. Protecting and restoring these systems will not stop ocean warming, but it can help societies absorb its impacts while delivering multiple economic, social and environmental benefits.
Making ocean data visible. Ocean metrics should be presented alongside emissions so leaders have a clearer picture of climate progress and risk, as well as how they directly affect ecosystems, food security and coastal safety.

The encouraging news is that many of the solutions already exist. Sustainable Ocean Plans, ecosystem protection and restoration, climate-resilient fisheries management, resilient coastal infrastructure and accelerated decarbonization can all help reduce risk while supporting long-term prosperity. The challenge is now delivering at the pace and scale that ecosystems and communities demand.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in July 2026. It was last updated in August 2026 to reflect the latest data on ocean temperatures.

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What the Paris Agreement Was Built to Do — and Why It Still Matters

sarah.brown@wri.org — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:48:53 +0000

What the Paris Agreement Was Built to Do — and Why It Still Matters sarah.brown@wri.org Fri, 08/21/2026 - 13:48

The Paris Agreement is now in its second decade — and facing its toughest geopolitical environment yet.

When the accord was adopted in 2015, it was a breakthrough. For the first time, the international community reached a universal agreement to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Over the last ten years, projections of global temperature increases have been revised from more than 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F) to less than 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F). Renewable energy, electric vehicles and battery storage are expanding rapidly and becoming increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Progress is real, even if it is uneven.

But the international cooperation that made this progress possible is under growing strain. Military conflicts, deepening trade and economic tensions, and the United States withdrawing from both the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement have seriously challenged the cooperative spirit on which the Agreement was built.

At the same time, global emissions continue to rise, climate impacts are intensifying and resources for climate action remain insufficient — raising questions about whether existing institutions can drive change at the pace and scale required. Addressing climate change means transforming every sector of the economy to deliver inclusive growth while decarbonizing and building climate resilience. That depends on governments, businesses, financial institutions and civil society working together to drive country transitions. It also requires collaboration beyond UN climate negotiations, including through international forums such as the G7 and G20, multilateral development banks and regional and bilateral partnerships.

As climate action increasingly demands coordination across a wider range of sectors and institutions, it’s worth reflecting on why the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC remain critical to that effort, especially given today’s geopolitical and climate diplomacy landscape. Understanding what the Paris Agreement can — and cannot — achieve is essential to ensuring it continues to spur international climate action and deliver a more just, equitable, climate-resilient and low-carbon future.

What Was the Paris Agreement Designed to Do?

Building on the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement was designed to provide a framework through which countries could strengthen climate commitments, track progress and cooperate to achieve long-term climate goals.

While a catalyst for action, the Paris Agreement cannot directly implement climate policy, mobilize finance itself or force countries to meet their goals. These limitations are not evidence that the Agreement is not working; rather, they reflect a misunderstanding of what it was built to do. Greenhouse gas emissions will not fall and climate resilience will not increase solely because of a UN process. That will happen when governments, businesses and communities take action.

Countries, businesses and financial actors are responsible for turning broad global goals into national action. But that responsibility translates into progress only with the right political and enabling conditions — including supportive trade policies, favorable international financial systems and effective corporate regulations — to make the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient future economically viable.

The Agreement has increased engagement to tackle the climate crisis globally, including at high political levels with leaders’ summits at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP). It also provides the framework for countries to commit to climate action through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and report on progress through climate transparency reports. Taken together, the developments in Paris and the UN climate regime have helped shape planning and action by establishing overarching climate goals and a framework for nationally-driven implementation on the ground. This provides a critical underpinning for countries to integrate climate plans and policies into sectoral and economic planning and the policies and investment choices to drive implementation at scale.

The Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC retain unique and distinct functions, albeit with real limits. Here are three areas where they remain vital in the years ahead, and where clarity on what they can and cannot deliver matters most:

1. Provide a central global political platform for climate action

Over the last 30 years, the UN climate change process has served as a cornerstone of international climate cooperation, with COPs becoming a powerful platform. As meetings of the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC, COPs give every country a seat at the table — regardless of economic size or geopolitical power. For many smaller and capacity-constrained countries, this UN process is one of the few venues where their voices carry formal weight in shaping the global response to a climate crisis they did little to create. Without the UN climate process, the countries most affected by climate change risk losing their say in a global debate that is otherwise shaped by the wealthiest and most powerful nations.

The COPs have grown into something larger than diplomacy, drawing tens of thousands of people, including heads of state, ministers, negotiators, news media, advocates, scientists and business leaders, who converge on a host city. For example, more than 150 heads of state and government traveled to COP28 in Dubai in 2023. While climate change commands headlines year-round, COP season turns up the volume like nothing else. The COP platform has served as a center stage for pushing political conversations further and positioning the UN climate process as a central hub for climate diplomacy.

In recent years, COPs have also served as launch points for important coalitions and initiatives to drive change. These have included collective efforts to address vital issues, such as the Global Methane Pledge to reduce methane emissions and the UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action. While more needs to be done to ensure such coalitions and initiatives move the needle, COPs deserve credit for fostering a large ecosystem of efforts focused on advancing climate solutions. Future COPs can provide even more opportunities to showcase the impact of the Global Climate Action Agenda, track government participation in cooperative initiatives and demonstrate measurable progress.

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2. Provide a vision for the future of climate action and support through collective ambitions

Formal negotiated outcomes from UN climate negotiations bring nearly 200 countries together, often establishing shared global ambition on key climate and climate-related issues.

At times, these negotiations have set critically important directions for climate action. For example, the Paris Agreement negotiations established 1.5 degrees C as the accepted global temperature benchmark, articulated the vital need to achieve net-zero emissions and defined a framework for a global goal on adaptation involving key sectors such as health and food.

In recent years, the Global Stocktake and other COP outcomes have established joint global objectives on specific issues such as energy and forests. The first Global Stocktake — the Paris Agreement’s process for assessing progress every five years — concluded at COP28 in 2023, when countries agreed to triple renewable energy capacity, double the rate of energy efficiency improvements, transition away from fossil fuels, halt net deforestation and significantly reduce transport emissions.

The negotiation process can be a slog, but it remains valuable even when consensus is just out of reach. The debates themselves help define shared priorities and shape the direction of future climate action.

The ongoing debate over transitioning away from fossil fuels illustrates both the Paris Agreement’s influence and its limits. At COP30 in 2025, for instance, the formal negotiations failed to advance how to transition away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner. Yet the fact that nations were debating whether to further address the terms of that transition — not whether it should happen at all — marks a profound shift from where the world stood a decade ago, when “fossil fuels” was not mentioned once in the Paris Agreement. The debate at COP30 also prompted the COP Presidency to begin developing a roadmap exploring implementation barriers and opportunities, while a group of willing countries, experts and partners gathered in Colombia in early 2026 — and will do so again in 2027 — to advance collaboration on transitioning away from fossil fuels.

A wind farm in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Moving away from fossil fuels requires shifting to clean energy sources, like wind energy. Photo by Aaron Minnick/WRI

Collective ambition also extends to climate finance. Access to climate finance, technology and capacity building is essential for implementing the policies laid out in NDCs, national adaptation plans or long-term strategies. Yet climate finance continues to fall far short of global needs, and previous climate finance commitments were met only after delay. For example, in 2009, developed countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion in climate finance per year by 2020. That goal was finally met in 2022 and extended through to 2025 as agreed in Paris. Now, countries have set a new finance goal for 2035 to deliver at least $300 billion annually and called on all actors to mobilize $1.3 trillion in international climate finance by 2035. At COP30, countries also agreed to at least triple adaptation finance, also by 2035.

Although the Paris Agreement and the UN climate process do not provide direct financing, they play an essential role in setting expectations, monitoring progress, sustaining political pressure and reinforcing developed countries' obligations to take the lead in supporting developing nations. Unlocking the necessary capital requires all components of the financial system—from governments and development banks to private financial institutions—to work together. As demonstrated by the Baku to Belém Roadmap, this system-wide approach is critical to mobilizing $1.3 trillion by 2035, and ultimately meeting the $3.4 trillion in domestic and international finance estimated to be needed by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance.

3. Shape country-level implementation and spotlight national and collective climate progress

“No more promises, more action” has become a rallying cry around the climate negotiations. But there is confusion about how the Paris Agreement actually shapes implementation. The Agreement and UN climate process do not implement climate policy, prescribe specific laws or require countries to adopt particular approaches. So what is the role of the Paris Agreement and UN climate process in implementation?

The UN climate process and the Paris Agreement are intertwined with and supportive of implementation by providing frameworks for national planning, tracking progress and creating opportunities for peer learning and exchange.

Most important, NDCs, NAPs and LTSs sit at the core of the Paris Agreement’s efforts to advance implementation. These are the primary vehicles for each country to lay out its steps on climate action — across multiple sectors — to reduce emissions and build resilience to climate impacts in a way that is consistent with broader economic and sustainable development objectives.

These vehicles are connected to the multilateral process because the Paris Agreement prompts their development, but their value lies in translating global goals into nationally owned climate targets, plans and policies. 2025 was a crucial year in the Paris Agreement’s ambition cycle, when countries were expected to present new NDCs. Among the countries that have communicated new NDCs, their topline targets cut emissions by less than 6% of what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C. But they also include specific goals and policies that have the potential to drive the sectoral and governance changes needed for effective climate action.

For example, the number of NDCs with action-oriented urban content has doubled from previous cycles, while more than 90% of coastal and island nations included ocean-based action in their latest NDCs, up from 62% in 2015. New NDCs increasingly reflected energy transition commitments, including 61 countries with a quantified target for reducing the share of fossil fuels in their electricity mix. Eighty percent of new NDCs highlight a just transition, more than half enhanced their adaptation commitments, nearly 70 reflected transport targets and more than 100 included transport actions.

These climate plans and policies are important for national ownership of global goals. But their greatest value is that they can provide a crucial step toward integrating climate action into mainstream economic and sectoral plans, policies and investments. This, in turn, can help drive country transitions at scale, supported by political will and institutional capacity.

Showcasing national implementation is a central element of the Paris Agreement. Under the Paris Agreement’s enhanced transparency framework, countries report every two years on their greenhouse gas emissions, progress toward their NDCs, climate change impacts and adaptation, and financial, technical and capacity-building support. These national climate progress reports — referred to as biennial transparency reports — create a common body of data on countries’ efforts and progress toward achieving their NDC targets.

This data and information also enable countries to understand the progress made by their peers and allow the media and civil society to hold countries accountable for meeting their targets. The data may not always be perfect — information is self-reported by countries, some of which face capacity constraints — but it remains valuable, especially when complemented by other data and information outside the formal process, including information reported by non-state actors and other progress assessments.

Finally, outside the limelight of politically charged negotiations, the UN climate process allows for unglamorous but important technical and policy exchanges. However, there are justifiable concerns over the growing number of work programs, dialogues, expert committees and other bodies that underpin the Paris Agreement, which have begun to weigh down the process. Brief sessions squeezed into an already packed conference schedule and attended by a mix of negotiators and implementers may not be the ideal format for these exchanges. But, complemented by forums at regional climate weeks and elsewhere, they can play a role in sharing implementation experience and exchanging good practices.

Getting the Most Out of the Paris Agreement’s Next Decade

Addressing climate change requires transformation across every sector of the economy and a whole-of-government approach. Implementing climate action at scale will require moving beyond purely climate-focused institutions and processes to a much wider set of political, economic, financial and security actors and institutions, as well as beyond national governments to subnational governments, the private sector and civil society.

The Paris Agreement is not the only forum for advancing climate action and diplomacy. Coalitions of the willing, bilateral partnerships, regional forums and other global arenas are all essential to advancing climate action and supporting implementation, with each playing unique and valuable roles. The Paris Agreement is just one piece of a multifaceted approach to climate action. It is not a silver bullet. But holding clear and realistic expectations for what the Paris Agreement, COPs and UN climate processes can actually achieve can help us focus our efforts more effectively.

In the years ahead, the Agreement can continue to play a central role in providing a high-profile and inclusive political space for climate issues, establishing collective ambition, spurring national-level commitment and supporting implementation and accountability. The task is to vigorously pursue opportunities to improve and strengthen the Paris Agreement while recognizing what it was and was not designed to do. Complementing it with a broader, multifaceted approach can accelerate global cooperation and the action essential to tackling the climate crisis. We must also increasingly integrate climate action into wider economic and sectoral country transitions.

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The Paris Agreement remains central to global climate cooperation. But understanding what it can and cannot deliver will be key to advancing climate action in a changing geopolitical landscape.

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The Truth About Renewable Electricity: Your Questions, Answered

1) What exactly is renewable electricity?

2) How much electricity comes from renewables vs. fossil fuels?

3) How fast is renewable electricity growing?

Renewable capacity

Renewable generation

Battery storage

4) What’s behind the growth in renewables, and will it continue?

Cost decreases

Policies

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5) Can renewables provide reliable power even at times when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing?

6) Can renewables help make electricity affordable?

7) Are renewables still cleaner than fossil fuels when you look at greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across their entire lifecycle?

8) Beyond lower costs and emissions, what are some of the other advantages of renewable electricity?

National security

Water conservation

Public health benefits and improved air quality

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9) If renewables are cheap, reliable and faster to build, why are new data centers turning to gas and nuclear to supply their power needs?

10) What will happen to jobs and livelihoods currently relying on fossil fuels?

11) Are wind turbines dangerous for birds?

12) What are some of the major barriers to renewable electricity that still need to be overcome?

13) What electricity mix is needed to reach net-zero emissions?

Moving Toward a Clean Energy Future

STATEMENT: COP17 Advances Finance but Falls Short on Global Drought Action

How Might a ‘Super El Niño’ Affect Food, Forests and Water?

Water Woes May Intensify

How might a Super El Niño impact the ocean?

How might a Super El Niño affect the water supply?

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How do El Niños affect food production?

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A Super El Niño Could Trigger More Damaging Forest Fires

What is the relationship between El Niños, forests and climate change?

When it comes to forest fires, what might we expect this year with the potential Super El Niño?

How can we counteract El Niño’s potential impacts on forest fires?

As Temperatures Climb, the Ocean Takes the Brunt

The Rate of Ocean Warming Has More Than Doubled

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What the Paris Agreement Was Built to Do — and Why It Still Matters

What Was the Paris Agreement Designed to Do?

1. Provide a central global political platform for climate action

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2. Provide a vision for the future of climate action and support through collective ambitions

3. Shape country-level implementation and spotlight national and collective climate progress

Getting the Most Out of the Paris Agreement’s Next Decade

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