By WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE STAFF

When IKEA, the world’s largest home furnishings company, began to contemplate a commitment to stop sourcing their wood from intact natural forests, they realized that a critical first step was to learn where these forests are located. They sent out feelers to Greenpeace International, who at that time knew of the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) nascent plans for an initiative called the Global Forest Watch.

Global Forest Watch is an international monitoring, data-gathering and mapping program that combines satellite technology, on-the-ground observation and the Internet to give the general public access to information on the world’s forests.

Thus began Global Forest Watch. Launched early this year, Global Forest Watch is an international monitoring, data-gathering and mapping program that combines satellite technology, on-the-ground observation and the Internet to give the general public access to information on the state of the world’s forests.

“This is, as far as I know, the first time that a global tool is coming up here that really can support us in our efforts and that we can move forward together,” said Jan Kjellman, president of IKEA North America.

Funds from IKEA and donations from software companies like Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. and ERDAS, and others enabled Global Forest Watch (www.globalforestwatch.org) to begin operating this year in Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Gabon, Indonesia, Venezuela and Russia. During the next five years, this international network will span 21 countries and cover 80 percent of the world’s remaining frontier forests.

“Global Forest Watch enables communities to connect with consumers, it enables activists to connect with corporate leaders, it enables government officials to understand comprehensively what the impacts are of their policies,” said Jonathan Lash, President of WRI (www.wri.org).

Global Forest Watch is but one of many projects that illustrates WRI’s ability to convene disparate parties – businesses, governments, environmental activists and development NGOs -- and get them to talk with each other.

The key to this is the availability of credible information, exhaustive research partnerships and analyses – all hallmarks of the work of the World Resources Institute. Using new communications technologies, particularly the Internet, WRI’s work is now within reach of more people all over the world. “It almost always drives change if the source of information can be made more broadly available,” said Lash.

While such new technologies are transforming commerce and creating new wealth, it is also creating a new class of have-nots, especially in the poorer regions of the world. WRI has teamed up with computer industry leaders and foundations in a multi-year effort to turn this emerging digital divide into a digital dividend. The goal is to expand access, alleviate poverty and resolve other social and environmental problems.

As a first step, WRI will convene the Digital Dividend Conference in Seattle, Oct. 16-18, 2000. The conference is based on the belief that there are potentially large markets not now targeted by the digital industry. With the use of appropriate business models, it can catalyze the wider and non-traditional use of existing and emerging technologies.

While WRI’s work in digital technologies is relatively new, it has been helping prepare industry leaders by encouraging the world’s leading business schools to include more environmental topics in their curricula. Through a project called BELL or Business-Environment Learning and Leadership, WRI provides a forum where business school professors learn innovative ways to incorporate environmental topics in management disciplines. It also develops case studies and other environmental materials for business schools.

“We have, in effect, been ‘greening’ the world’s business schools since the early 1990s,” said Rick Bunch, WRI’s director of business education. Although it started in the U.S., the program has expanded to Canada, China and Latin America.

Oftentimes, businesses approach WRI to seek help on how to improve their environmental performance or live up to environmental commitments. Together with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, WRI is working with 50 business, governmental, accounting and environmental organizations to develop an international protocol for measuring greenhouse gas emissions.

When completed, the protocol will simplify the task of reporting greenhouse gas emissions for businesses, while improving the credibility and comparability of the information for a range of different users.

At the same time that it is encouraging business to do this, WRI itself is committed to reduce its carbon dioxide net emissions to zero by 2005. It is the first organization of its kind to make this commitment.

“By going to zero net emissions, we hope to demonstrate that significant and early action on climate change is technically and economically feasible,” said Liz Cook, director of WRI’s Management Institute for Environment and Business.

When the staff voted to make the commitment in 1999, its current carbon emissions were estimated at 1,663 tons or the equivalent of burning 188,000 gallons of gasoline. Paper use, staff travel and electricity generate these emissions. When reached in 2005, WRI’s commitment will be equivalent to keeping 300 cars off the road or saving more than 680 tons of coal annually.

Although the World Resources Institute started out purely as a research think-tank, it quickly realized that it should do more than research and analysis. The innovations it has encouraged corporations and environmental organizations to adopt is proof that a sound business can create a safe environment and stronger communities.