Synopsis

WRI focuses on four areas: healthy ecosystems, stable climate, sustainable enterprise, and access to environmental information and decisions.

Executive Summary

The global issues that WRI worked to put on the international agenda 20 years ago have emerged as major challenges of the 21st century: climate change: biodiversity loss, desertification, forest and reef destruction, and growing stress on freshwater resources.

But the job of calling attention to these issues is not as lonely as it once was. WRI has succeeded in constructing a big tent, welcoming partners ranging from small NGOs in developing countries to multinational corporations and international institutions.

WRI now focuses on four areas:

  • healthy ecosystems,
  • stable climate,
  • sustainable enterprise, and
  • access to environmental information and decisions.

Issues such as these drive our work at WRI and produced some remarkable results in 2004, which are described in more detail in this report.