Common African Position (CAP) on the Post-2015 Development Agenda

That the post-2015 Development Agenda provides a unique opportunity for Africa to reach consensus on common challenges, priorities and aspirations, and to actively participate in the global debate on how to provide a fresh impetus to the MDGs and to examine and devise strategies to address key emerging development issues on the continent in the coming years. The post-2015 Development Agenda should also reaffirm the Rio Principles, especially the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, the right to development and equity, and mutual accountability and responsibility, as well as ensure policy space for nationally tailored policies and programmes on the continent, including appropriate support for the implementation of the NEPAD

PRIMUS/Informed Cities: Making research work for local sustainability

The final report of a three year European Commission FP7 project

Optimizing the Structure and Scale of Urban Water Infrastructure: Integrating Distributed Systems

Large-scale, centralized water infrastructure has provided clean drinking water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management and flood protection for U.S. cities and towns for many decades, protecting public health, safety and environmental quality. To accommodate increasing demands driven by population growth and industrial needs, municipalities and utilities have typically expanded centralized water systems with longer distribution and collection networks. This approach achieves financial and institutional economies of scale and allows for centralized management. It comes with tradeoffs, however, including higher energy demands for longdistance transport; extensive maintenance needs; and disruption of the hydrologic cycle, including the large-scale transfer of freshwater resources to estuarine and saline environments.While smaller-scale distributed water infrastructure has been available for quite some time, it has yet to be widely adopted in urban areas of the United States. However, interest in rethinking how to best meet our water and sanitation needs has been building. Recent technological developments and concerns about sustainability and community resilience have prompted experts to view distributed systems as complementary to centralized infrastructure, and in some situations the preferred alternative.In March 2014, the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread partnered with the Water Environment Federation and the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida to convene a diverse group of experts to examine the potential for distributed water infrastructure systems to be integrated with or substituted for more traditional water infrastructure, with a focus on right-sizing the structure and scale of systems and services to optimize water, energy and sanitation management while achieving long-term sustainability and resilience

Strategic Research Agenda for organic food and farming

The TP Organics Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) was finalised in December 2009. The purpose of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) is to enable research, development and knowledge transfer that will deliver relevant outcomes – results that will contribute to the improvement of the organic sector and other low external input systems. The document has been developed through a dynamic consultative process that ran from 2008 to 2009. It involved a wide range of stakeholders who enthusiastically joined the effort to define organic research priorities. From December 2008 to February; the expert groups elaborated the first draft. The consultative process involved the active participation of many different countries. Consultation involved researchers, advisors, members of inspection/certification bodies, as well as different users/beneficiaries of the research such as farmers, processors, market actors and members of civil society organisations throughout Europe and further afield in order to gather the research needs of the whole organic sector

Join Up, Scale Up: How Integration Can Defeat Disease and Poverty

This report addresses three of the core areas: primary healthcare, clean water and sanitation, and nutrition -- that are essential to achieving the MDGs. It highlights examples across 17 countries of how bringing different development approaches together (ie. integration) is working to help tackle poverty and disease and calls on the international community, including donor and developing country governments, to prioritize and invest in these joined-up programs. The experiences and lessons learned from the case studies described in this report show real world examples of how to make integration work and why it's so important to do so

WRI's Governance Strategy, 2016-2020

Transparent, effective, accountable governance is critical to ensuring that development benefits people and the planet. The Governance Center of Excellence works with civil society, governments, development agencies, businesses, and other institutions to improve decision-making processes and legal frameworks. Our goal is to empower people and strengthen institutions to foster environmentally sound and socially equitable decision-making.In many countries, citizens and communities face social and environmental injustices that can leave them without a say in the development decisions that affect their lives and the resources they depend on.As a global leader on environmental governance, the Governance Center uses data and research to institutionalize fundamental democratic principles - such as transparency, participation, and accountability - into decision-making processes, policies, and legal frameworks. The Governance Center is divided into five practice areas—climate resilience, environmental democracy, energy governance, natural resource governance and urban governance— where our work is concentrated on six priority issues: climate, energy, food, forests, water, and cities

Building resilience: Adaptation mechanisms and mainstreaming for the poor

human development, climate change