WRI provides testimony on climate change to the U.S. House energy & commerce committee, Syria's online agriculture database, cool new tools to visualize data, and a new publication on the economic size of the Bottom of the Pyramid.

March 20, 2007

Climate and Energy

• WRI's latest testimony to the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee is an in-depth prescription for how the U.S. Congress should design policies to address global warming.

EarthTrends: Environmental Information

• Syria pioneers online agricultural database provding up-to-date detailed information on one of Syria's major economic sectors. On average, agriculture accounts for 20% of GDP and 60% of the labor workforce in low-income countries.

• Gapminder: visualizing global development trends is a cool and captivating tool for visualizing time series data, and a must-see for anyone who deals with comparisons of multiple indicators across countries and time.

NextBillion.net: Development Through Enterprise

• Initial news and other Next 4 Billion stories from the launch of the new WRI/IFC publication that comprehensively measures the size and scope of the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Environmental News

• PRNewswire-USNewswire. March 19, 2007. New Analysis Reveals $5 Trillion Market at Base of the Pyramid. Four billion people who live in relative poverty have purchasing power representing a $5 trillion market.

• American Public Media Marketplace. March 19, 2007. Tapping into the poor market. A report out today from WRI and IFC says businesses should be marketing to the poor. Ashley Milne-Tyte has more on why some say this could be beneficial.

• GreenBiz. March 16, 2007. What a Silent Spring Means for Business Risk. The current catastrophic loss of honeybee colonies around the world may mean immediate bad news for agriculture, but it also offers an important lesson for companies that are not looking at their dependence on ecosystem services when examining risk or growth opportunities.

• UN Chronicle Online Edition. March 13, 2007. Business, Environmental Protection and Poverty Reduction Come Together. When the desires to earn a living and preserve the environment are combined, communities and organizations look for ways to harness market forces to protect the ecosystems and reduce poverty.