The World Resources Institute (WRI) is a global research non-profit organization established in 1982 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation[3][4] under the leadership of James Gustave Speth.

[8] WRI studies sustainable practices for business, economics, finance and governance, with the purpose of better supporting human society in six areas: food, forests, water, energy, cities, and climate.

[27] WRI worked with companies to develop a common standard, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for quantifying and managing GHG emissions.

[35] In 2008, the World Resources Institute reported on water quality world-wide, identifying over 400 dead zones due to eutrophication including areas in the Baltic Sea, the Chesapeake Bay in the United States, and Australia's Great Barrier Reef (33, 34).

[36] WRI advocates for the use of local nature-based solutions (NBS), which tend to be cost-effective, to improve ecosystems, resist water-related climate impacts, and mitigate the effects of warming.

[38][39] WRI is active in studying the world's coral reefs,[40] publishing reports in 1998 and 2011 that tracked damages due to coastal development, overfishing, climate change and rising ocean acidity.

Global Forest Watch is most frequently used by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academic researchers, government employees, and the private sector.

For example, they have identified industrial scale internationally traded commodity crops such as beef, soybeans, palm oil, corn, and cotton as a dominant driver of forest loss in South America and Southeast Asia.

By integrating emissions and removals, the map increases the transparency and accuracy of global carbon estimates and can support more effective forest management decisions.

Released in June 2022, its uses include monitoring ecosystem restoration, assessing protected areas, and detecting land changes due to deforestation and fires.

[59][60][61] WRI's LandMark project provides maps and information indicating lands that are collectively held and used by Indigenous peoples and local communities.

He called the WRI study an example of environmental colonialism and suggested that a fairer analysis would balance sources of emissions against terrestrial sinks for each nation.