The World Resources Institute (frequently just WRI) is a global non-profit research organization established in 1982 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation under the leadership of James Gustave Speth. Subsequent presidents include Jonathan Lash (1993–2011), Andrew D. Steer (2012–2021) and current president Ani Dasgupta (2021–present).
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. The institute's flagship report series is the World Resources Report, each of which deals with a different topic. WRI encourages initiatives for monitoring, data analysis, and risk assessment, including global and open source projects. WRI has maintained a 4 out of 4 stars rating from Charity Navigator since 1 October 2008.
Contents
Organization
The mission of the World Resources Institute (WRI) is to “move society to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations”. It seeks to promote a sustainable human society with a basis of human health and well-being, environmental sustainability, and economic opportunity. WRI partners with local and national governments, private companies, publicly held corporations, and other non-profits, and offers services including global climate change issues, sustainable markets, ecosystem protection, and environmentally responsible governance services.
The World Resources Institute maintains international offices in Brazil, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States and is active in over 50 countries.
A report by the Center for International Policy's Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative of the top 50 think tanks on the University of Pennsylvania's Global Go-To Think Tanks rating index found that during the period 2014–2018 World Resources Institute received more funding from outside the United States than any other think tank, with a total of more than US$63 million, though this was described as "unsurprising" given the institute's presence in so many countries.
In 2014, Stephen M. Ross, an American real estate developer, gave the organization US$30 million to establish the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. One of the largest donors to WRI's Land and Carbon Lab is the Bezos Earth Fund, which financed the lab with over $100 million in 2021. In 2025, Michael and Tanya Polsky through the Polsky Foundation gave WRI and the University of Chicago a $100 million contribution, of which $75 million was slated to establish the WRI Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition. WRI's revenue stood at $212 million in 2025.
Initiatives
WRI's activities are focused on the areas of water (including oceans), forests, climate,
energy,
food
and cities.
WRI is active in initiatives for monitoring, data analysis, and risk assessment.
WRI emphasizes the extent to which systems are linked, and the need to connect issues such as addressing food insecurity with strategies to address climate change, protect ecosystems, and provide economic security.
Food, Land and Water
In 1997 and 2000, WRI published the first comparative study of material flow accounting (MFA), using time series data to comprehensively assess all material inputs and outputs (excluding water) used by industrial economies.
Beginning in 2002, the World Resources Institute worked with the Cameroon Forest Initiative, to combine disparate sources of data on land use to form digital and paper maps to track changes to Cameroon's forests and improve their management. They integrated satellite imagery with information on agricultural terrain, boundaries, protected land, community-owned forests, and authorized land use by commercial logging operations and mining concessions.
In 2014, WRI built upon Matthew C. Hansen's work at the University of Maryland on forest change analysis. WRI partnered with Google Earth Engine to develop Global Forest Watch (GFW), an open-source web application that uses Landsat satellite imagery to map forest changes. Weekly GLAD deforestation alerts and daily Fires alerts can be specific to a 30 square metres (320 sq ft) area. Global Forest Watch is most frequently used by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academic researchers, government employees, and the private sector. It is also used by journalists and indigenous groups, many of whose lands are threatened.
Applications of Global Forest Watch include rapid detection and response to fires, detecting illegal logging, assuring supply chain transparency, and assessing endangered tiger habitats.
Criticism
A 1990 study by the World Resources Institute was criticized by Anil Agarwal, who had been on the council of the World Resources Institute from 1988 to 1990. Agarwal, who "was among the first to argue that concepts of social equity need to be integrated into international policies aimed at mitigating the harmful effects of human-induced climate change", accused WRI of allocating too much responsibility for global warming to developing countries, and under-acknowledging the impact of U.S. overconsumption on global warming. 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. His critique sparked considerable debate about the appropriate methodologies for such analysis, and resulted in increased awareness of the issues involved.