World Resources Institute (WRI)

WRI is enhancing available data on water and climate in Ethiopia and working to integrate water into planning processes within and across sectors. WRI developed a model to assess Ethiopia’s water supply and sectoral water demand as well as current and projected water risk based on growth and climate change. This model has the capacity to assess and monitor SDG 6.4.2.

"WRI is working with partners in Ethiopia to improve available information on the country’s water resources, analyse water risk across different temporal and spatial scales, and identify solutions to better manage demand and safeguard water supplies. We use this knowledge to inform water planning across sectors in an effort to advance water resources management towards a more sustainable and resilient development path. This work aims to better understand water risk, improve water-wise planning, and advance integrated water resources management toward a more sustainable and resilient development path.

In line with WRI’s overall mission and WRI Africa’s strategic pillars, the Water Program in Ethiopia works to advance sustainable water resources management by: analyzing and managing water risk; promoting the role of nature-based solutions for water and healthy watersheds; driving increased urban water resilience. WRI's expertise and core offers include research, data and modeling as decision-support tools, training and capacity building, and convening dialogue and knowledge sharing to stimulate awareness and action."

"WRI is working with partners in Ethiopia to improve available information on the country’s water resources, analyse water risk across different temporal and spatial scales, and identify solutions to better manage demand and safeguard water supplies. We use this knowledge to inform water planning across sectors in an effort to advance water resources management towards a more sustainable and resilient development path. This work aims to better understand water risk, improve water-wise planning, and advance integrated water resources management toward a more sustainable and resilient development path.

In line with WRI’s overall mission and WRI Africa’s strategic pillars, the Water Program in Ethiopia works to advance sustainable water resources management by: analyzing and managing water risk; promoting the role of nature-based solutions for water and healthy watersheds; driving increased urban water resilience. WRI's expertise and core offers include research, data and modeling as decision-support tools, training and capacity building, and convening dialogue and knowledge sharing to stimulate awareness and action."

WRI is working with partners in Ethiopia to improve available information on the country’s water resources, analyse water risk across different temporal and spatial scales, and identify solutions to better manage demand and safeguard water supplies. We use this knowledge to inform water planning across sectors in an effort to advance water resources management towards a more sustainable and resilient development path. This work aims to better understand water risk, improve water-wise planning, and advance integrated water resources management toward a more sustainable and resilient development path.

In line with WRI’s overall mission and WRI Africa’s strategic pillars, the Water Program in Ethiopia works to advance sustainable water resources management by: analyzing and managing water risk; promoting the role of nature-based solutions for water and healthy watersheds; driving increased urban water resilience. WRI's expertise and core offers include research, data and modeling as decision-support tools, training and capacity building, and convening dialogue and knowledge sharing to stimulate awareness and action.

WRI is working with partners in Ethiopia to improve available information on the country’s water resources, analyse water risk across different temporal and spatial scales, and identify solutions to better manage demand and safeguard water supplies. We use this knowledge to inform water planning across sectors in an effort to advance water resources management towards a more sustainable and resilient development path. This work aims to better understand water risk, improve water-wise planning, and advance integrated water resources management toward a more sustainable and resilient development path.

In line with WRI’s overall mission and WRI Africa’s strategic pillars, the Water Program in Ethiopia works to advance sustainable water resources management by: analyzing and managing water risk; promoting the role of nature-based solutions for water and healthy watersheds; driving increased urban water resilience. WRI's expertise and core offers include research, data and modeling as decision-support tools, training and capacity building, and convening dialogue and knowledge sharing to stimulate awareness and action.

WRI, and partners at Quantis, LimnoTech and Valuing Nature, have developed a new approach for implementing and valuing water stewardship activities. The Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) meets a critical need in corporate water stewardship: a common method for assessing the benefits of water stewardship activities in a comparable way and ensuring they address current or projected water challenges and contribute to public policy priorities. Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA): A Method For Implementing and Valuing Water Stewardship Activities empowers companies with a comprehensive, standardized and science-based methodology to calculate and valuate the benefits of water stewardship activities. This new method enables businesses and other key stakeholders to better tackle shared water risks at catchment-scale.

WRI is working with Pacific Institute, AGWA, and IWMI to develop a Water Resilience Assessment Framework and Water Resilience Assessment Corporate Guidance so that businesses and their stakeholders are able to understand how future shocks and stresses in water will affect their operations and how to mitigate the impacts accordingly.

What cannot be measured cannot be managed. Poor water management poses major risks to agriculture, industry, and local communities. However, there is a critical lack of information available about local water conditions – making better management difficult. WRI’s Water Program studies local water data and governance, and shares best practices in order to advance context-driven, meaningful water management. WRI, Pacific Institute, and the CEO Water Mandate are currently working to map public water risk by harmonizing and sharing water risk information among a variety of actors. The first step is to collect information on indicators of water management, and five indicators have been selected as proxies for water management: access to information on water quantity and quality; state of infrastructure; local water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) conditions; existence and enforcement of allocations and caps; and local pricing systems. To advance this work, we are seeking partnerships with multinational companies to share non-sensitive data on public water management. Collecting data through multinational companies rapidly amasses water management data – information which is valuable for businesses, investors, NGOs, governments, and governance institutions.

Urban Water Resilience in Africa initiative produces research to illuminate urban water resilience challenges and pathways. Research under the Urban Water Resilience initiative is enhancing awareness and understanding of urban planning, water resources management, governance, finance, and infrastructure design, with a focus on resilience for vulnerable populations.

Urban Water Resilience in Africa initiative creates partnerships with cities to enhance capacity and demonstrate pathways. WRI is partnering with a cohort of six cities and their regional and national governments, supporting cities to advance their water resilience agendas, providing technical assistance, and facilitating capacity building.

Urban Water Resilience in Africa initiative is mobilizing collective action through engagement with key stakeholders, including regional governments, financial institutions, and research institutions to improve enabling environments.

Urban Water Resilience in Africa initiative is working to develop guidelines, definitions, and standards for developing urban water resilience in African cities. The initiative frames core challenges and major barriers that prevent water resilience in African countries, as well as highlights the potential power of city-regions in Africa to drive transformation.

Cities4Forests conducts research, capacity building with cities, produces publications, case studies, recommendations, blogs, articles, op-eds, commentaries, and more.

Cities4Forests is a coalition of more than 60 cities from around the world involving mayors’ offices and other city agencies, such as public water utilities and offices of sustainability. Cities4Forests encourages peer-to-peer learning and connects cities with technical support from institutions with expertise in cities, forests, climate crisis, water, communications, finance, policy and social equity. This helps cities recognize their interdependence with the world’s forests and use their political, economic and cultural power to protect and manage those forests for human well-being. Cities4Forests helps cities better conserve, manage and restore their inner forests, including city trees, urban parks, natural areas and other green infrastructure; nearby forests, such as watersheds; and faraway forests, especially tropical forests. We assist cities by inspiring political action and engagement, providing technical assistance, building capacity, and facilitating economic analysis, finance, and investment.

Cities4Forests is a coalition of more than 60 cities from around the world involving mayors’ offices and other city agencies, such as public water utilities and offices of sustainability. Cities4Forests encourages peer-to-peer learning and connects cities with technical support from institutions with expertise in cities, forests, climate crisis, water, communications, finance, policy and social equity. This helps cities recognize their interdependence with the world’s forests and use their political, economic and cultural power to protect and manage those forests for human well-being. Cities4Forests helps cities better conserve, manage and restore their inner forests, including city trees, urban parks, natural areas and other green infrastructure; nearby forests, such as watersheds; and faraway forests, especially tropical forests. We assist cities by inspiring political action and engagement, providing technical assistance, building capacity, and facilitating economic analysis, finance, and investment.

Cities4Forests is a coalition of more than 60 cities from around the world involving mayors’ offices and other city agencies, such as public water utilities and offices of sustainability. Cities4Forests encourages peer-to-peer learning and connects cities with technical support from institutions with expertise in cities, forests, climate crisis, water, communications, finance, policy and social equity. This helps cities recognize their interdependence with the world’s forests and use their political, economic and cultural power to protect and manage those forests for human well-being. Cities4Forests helps cities better conserve, manage and restore their inner forests, including city trees, urban parks, natural areas and other green infrastructure; nearby forests, such as watersheds; and faraway forests, especially tropical forests. We assist cities by inspiring political action and engagement, providing technical assistance, building capacity, and facilitating economic analysis, finance, and investment.

Cities4Forests supports cities around the globe to recognize their interdependence with the world’s forests and use their political, economic and cultural power to protect and manage those forests for human well-being. Cities4Forests is a city-led movement to protect forests.

The Water, Peace, & Security Partnership (WPS) publishes Quarterly Updates to accompany its updated maps. These Quarterly Updates flag some of the hotspot areas WPS is tracking and describe what journalists and other actors are seeing on the ground. While WPS is primarily concerned with water- and climate-related conflict, the tool is designed to forecast any type of violent conflict (and can therefore be used by a variety of users interested in conflict).

The Water, Peace, and Security Partnership conducts research, publishes reports, case studies, recommendations, blogs, articles, op-eds, commentaries, and more.

The Water, Peace, and Security Partnership hosts workshops, training, tool demos, convenings, and presentations at conferences like World Water Week

The Water, Peace, & Security Partnership (WPS) offers a platform where actors from national governments of developing countries and the global development, diplomacy, defense, and disaster relief sectors can identify potential water-related conflict hotspots before violence erupts, begin to understand the local context, prioritize opportunities for water interventions, and undertake capacity development and dialogue activities.

The Global Early Warning Tool provides the initial step in a multi-step process, employing machine-learning to predict conflict over the coming 12 months in Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia.

The Water, Peace and Security (WPS) Partnership was founded in 2018 to pioneer the development of innovative tools that identify and address water-related security risks. WPS generates understanding about the risks of water-related security threats by using cutting-edge technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, remote sensing and human responses modelling. Tools such as the Global Early Warning Tool generate crucial information for policymakers that indicate both where and when risks are increasing and how they might be addressed. WPS also provides data, models, decision support and other tools at the regional level to support analysis, dialogue and decision-making on water-related security risks.

WRI presented a new method to quantify physical climate risks for power generation projects at the portfolio level. Co-developed by WRI and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the approach is designed to be flexible enough to work with portfolios with different levels of data availability, leverage the latest science in climate and hydrology, and use machine-learning techniques such as recurrent neural networks.

WRI presented a new method to quantify physical climate risks for power generation projects at the portfolio level. Co-developed by WRI and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the approach is designed to be flexible enough to work with portfolios with different levels of data availability, leverage the latest science in climate and hydrology, and use machine-learning techniques such as recurrent neural networks.

Aqueduct and the Corporate Water Stewardship teams conduct research, publish reports, case studies, recommendations, blogs, articles, op-eds, commentaries, and more.

Aqueduct and the Corporate Water Stewardship teams host workshops, trainings, tool demos, convenings, and presentations at conferences like World Water Week.

The Aqueduct Alliance brings together leading companies, governments and foundations, to gain strategic guidance and industry insight from the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas team and water stewardship activities. The Aqueduct Alliance serves as a space for members to engage WRI, stay at the forefront of thought leadership in water stewardship, and drive innovation in the following areas: water stewardship strategies; water-related data, indicators, and tools; water integration into economic and financial analysis; and water risk and impact evaluation to food and energy systems. Unlike other initiatives, the Aqueduct Alliance is an agile convening space that turns big ideas into action. Since its inception in 2011, the Aqueduct Alliance has helped improve sustainable water management across sectors by developing actionable data, tools, methodologies, analyses, and strategies.

The Aqueduct Alliance brings together leading companies, governments and foundations, to gain strategic guidance and industry insight from the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas team and water stewardship activities. The Aqueduct Alliance serves as a space for members to engage WRI, stay at the forefront of thought leadership in water stewardship, and drive innovation in the following areas: water stewardship strategies; water-related data, indicators, and tools; water integration into economic and financial analysis; and water risk and impact evaluation to food and energy systems. Unlike other initiatives, the Aqueduct Alliance is an agile convening space that turns big ideas into action. Since its inception in 2011, the Aqueduct Alliance has helped improve sustainable water management across sectors by developing actionable data, tools, methodologies, analyses, and strategies.

Using cutting-edge data to identify and evaluate water risks around the world. Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas maps and analyzes current and future water risks across locations; Aqueduct Country Rankings allows decision-makers to understand and compare national and subnational water risks; Aqueduct Food identifies current and future water risks to agriculture and food security; and Aqueduct Floods identifies coastal and riverine flood risks, and analyzes the costs and benefits of investing in flood protection.

WRI’s Water Program empowers companies to reduce business risks related to water. By working with WRI, companies can assess their water risks, advance sustainable water management and prepare for current and future water and climate shocks. This has resulted in a wealth of user success stories: we've helped Cargill set contextual water targets; Tyson Food uses Aqueduct’s Water Risk Atlas to screen for water-related risks across its facilities and segments of its value chain; and Ecolab leverages Aqueduct data for two publicly available tools, the Water Risk Monetizer and Ecolab Smart Water Navigator. WRI works to grow the profile of Corporate Water Stewardship as a critical element of advancing global climate action by: providing tools; reporting and disclosing corporate water risk; setting and tracking contextual targets and water stewardship strategies; providing water risk and opportunity assessments; mapping public water management, as well as the water-food nexus and water-energy nexus; providing nature-based solutions for water infrastructure and management; supporting water finance and accounting; and engaging with partners.