Blog Posts: communications

I recently had a frustrating experience. It all started during a casual conversation with one of my mother’s friends. After hearing a bit about my role as CFO of the World Resources Institute, my mother’s friend informed me that she regularly contributes to charities. In fact, she stated proudly, she only donates to organizations with “low overhead”-- that is, to groups that spend the lion’s share of their funding on program expenses and only a small amount on fundraising and administrative costs. I couldn’t help but shake my head--not only because I disagreed with her, but because it’s a sentiment we hear all too often in the non-profit world.

Now is a critically important time for the world to focus on climate finance. Developing nations—those least responsible for causing global warming but most vulnerable to its impacts—need funding to adopt clean energy, protect infrastructure from sea level rise, and engage in other adaptation and mitigation strategies. But these activities are costly—the world will need to figure out how to fund them now in order to protect countries from future climate change.

There’s a popular saying in the news that two events are a coincidence, but three make a trend. Over the past few days, there have been two major developments in the national media that will likely have a big impact on coverage of environmental issues. It’s clear that a troubling trend is already underway.

Consider this blog post to have been written hastily on the back of a cocktail napkin. Not really, of course, as my handwriting is increasingly poor in this digital age. But I’m in acceptance-speech mode, as WRI just won the 2012 EthicMark Award for its environmental justice film, Sunita.

WRI’s The Access Initiative created its “Sunita” video to bring attention to the environmental injustices that countless impoverished communities face. But recently, it’s the video itself that’s getting all the attention.

WRI co-hosted a dinner last week to honor Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for advancing sustainability, especially in the Coral Triangle. The event took place at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City, where more than 300 guests from government, business, and the non-profit sector gathered to recognize Indonesia’s president.

WRI’s president, Andrew Steer, opened the event by reminding guests that President Yudhoyono is a “different kind of leader.” Earlier in his career, Steer spent eight years in Indonesia, and he’s seen firsthand how the country has approached its economic and environmental challenges.

“We live in perilous times,” Steer said. “We need innovative thinking and we need out-of-the-box thinking. Today, we have a leader who is an out-of-the-box leader.”

China and the United States have a lot in common. China’s rapid economic development and America’s industry have turned the two nations into world’s largest energy users, as well as the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide. So it’s fitting that experts from these two countries share ideas on how to grow their economies in ways that also protect the environment.