World Resources Institute

Goals and Activities

The activities of the institute are structured around four key areas and goals. In the field of people and ecosystems, the institute aims to reverse the process of rapid degradation of ecosystems and guarantee their ability to provide humans with needed goods and services. Regarding access to information, WRI attempts to improve public knowledge about decisions on natural resources and the environment. In the area of climate protection, energy, and transport, WRI is active in the protection of the global climate system from further harm caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. The institute is also committed to help humanity and the natural world adapt to the climate change that is already taking place. As for markets and enterprise, WRI seeks to promote an economic development that will increase social opportunities and, at the same time, protect the environment. WRI has worked with the private sector to find profitable solutions that have both economic and environmental benefits. WRI also created the accounting system which companies all over the world use to account for their greenhouse gas emissions.

WRI was founded in June 1982 by American lawyer and environmental activist James Gustave Speth. Speth, a former chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality and later professor of law at Georgetown University, also acted as WRI's first director. He held this position until January 1993, when he became director of the UN Development Programme and was then succeeded by Jonathan Lash, senior staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council from 1978 to 1985. The institute was created thanks to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, which provided $15 million to help finance the first five years of WRI. The institute was organized as a nonprofit Delaware corporation that could receive tax-deductible contributions under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. WRI was founded not as an activist environmental membership organization but as an independent institution that should carry out scientifically sound research and suggest viable policies.

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