About WRI World Resources Institute provides information, ideas, and solutions to global environmental problems. Our mission is to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment for current and future generations. Our program meets global challenges by using knowledge to catalyze public and private action. To reverse damage to ecosystems. We protect the capacity of ecosystems to sustain life and prosperity. To expand participation in environmental decisions. We collaborate with partners worldwide to increase people’s access to information and influence over decisions about natural resources. To avert dangerous climate change. We promote public and private action to ensure a safe climate and sound world economy. To increase prosperity while improving the environment. We challenge the private sector to grow by improving environmental and community well-being. To reverse damage to ecosystems Deteriorating biological resources threaten to disrupt the life-sustaining goods and services that ecosystems produce, such as water purification and erosion control. Human use of fragile ecosystems is placing an enormous strain on forest, marine, and agricultural systems all over the world. WRI’s work: * Safeguards biodiversity by shaping international debates and negotiations. * Promotes a safe, accessible, and environmentally sustainable food supply. * Protects the world’s diminishing frontier forests. * Creates markets to protect clean air and water. * Protects sensitive coral reefs and ends destructive fishing practices. To expand participation in environmental decisions Limited access to education and information, to technologies and resources, to markets and decision-making forums diminishes the well-being of people everywhere. These gaps in opportunity are an environmental tragedy, as well as a human one, because inequitable participation in economic and political systems leads to unnecessary degradation of natural resources. WRI’s work: * Supports regional cooperation on resource management in the Mekong river system and the Mesoamerican biological corridor. * Assists partners in Africa and Eastern Europe to address governance issues that impede environmentally sustainable development. * Determines the points of leverage for environmental advocates to influence public and private decision-making on international financial flows. To avert dangerous climate change Climate change poses risks of far-reaching, irreversible, unanticipated changes in natural systems and human societies. The solutions depend on the will of nations and businesses to work together to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. WRI’s work: * Promotes new technologies and new forms of enterprise to reduce global warming, while increasing prosperity. * Brings developing countries’ concerns into international climate negotiations. * Analyzes the long-term causes and effects of climate change. To increase prosperity while improving the environment To meet the aspirations of a growing population, we need to produce food without spreading toxic pesticides and fiber without degrading frontier forests. We need to develop energy sources without polluting the air or water and provide transportation without relying on internal combustion. WRI is setting the agenda for businesses to provide these goods and services without destroying the environment. WRI’s work: * Encourages the information technology industry create profitable markets that will also protect the climate, promote development, and improve environmental management. * Provides information to capital markets worldwide that will lead them to reward environmental leaders. * Helps business schools in North and South America to train future leaders in sound, sustainable business practices. A commitment to put ideas into action For hundreds of years, enterprises have expanded and national economies have grown by using more resources, burning more energy, creating more waste. That economic growth has improved human well-being dramatically by providing more goods and services, by creating more opportunities for trade and employment, and by underwriting more investments in technology and education. But the historical process of growth has also degraded biological resources, depleted energy supplies, and polluted the water, the land, and the air. WRI believes the remedy to environmental problems lies not in reducing growth, but in breaking the connection between expanded prosperity and depleted resources. We are working with governments, businesses , and civil society to find new ways to use resources more efficiently and to take advantage of new technologies and new markets. WRI is classified by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt, publicly supported, educational organization. As a charitable, tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code, WRI is eligible to receive grants from charitable foundations; in addition, gifts and grants by individuals and corporations are both tax-exempt to us and tax deductible to tax-paying persons or firms. If your country does not appear on the order form list please contact the World Resources full list of Distributors