The impacts of climate change were everywhere this year.

Record wildfires scorched South America. Devastating floods destroyed lives and property in Brazil and Kenya. Extreme heat gripped cities in India and the U.S.

Yet behind the headlines, progress bloomed. Brazilian farmers are using sustainable agriculture to revitalize degraded landscapes in the Amazon. Renewable energy is bringing power and boosting incomes in sub-Saharan Africa. Countries forged a new climate finance deal that, while insufficient, can help build resilience in the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

WRI’s experts were there for all of it — providing analysis to help people understand pressing challenges, identify evidence-based solutions and inspire global ambition. And we made all our articles freely available to you, our readers.

Below we’ve compiled some of our top stories from 2024. The list includes a visual history of carbon emissions, groundbreaking analyses on water-stressed foods and extreme heat, a global climate action tracker and so much more.

We hope you’ll take a look back on this important year for people, nature and climate, and support our work producing more insightful content in the year ahead.

Thanks for reading!

Sarah Parsons
Editorial Director

2024 witnessed an onslaught of climate disasters, from record wildfires across South America to deadly floods in Kenya and Brazil. Our experts helped explain why these events are getting worse and how people are building resilience in unexpected ways.

What will happen if the world stays on course for nearly 3 degrees C of temperature rise this century? We modeled future heatwaves and other climate risks in nearly 1,000 of the world’s largest cities to find out.

New data on WRI’s Aqueduct platform revealed that one-quarter of the world’s crops are grown in areas where water is highly stressed, highly unreliable or both — threats that could exacerbate hunger.

The world lost an alarming amount of trees in 2023: almost 10 football (soccer) fields of tropical primary forest per minute. But there were glimmers of progress, too, like Brazil and Colombia reducing primary forest loss by 36% and 49%, respectively.

Our visual history of carbon emissions shows which countries have contributed most to climate change — and how that list has changed over the last two centuries.

Small-scale farmers are reviving abandoned palm oil plantations in the Amazon, showing that food production and healthy forests can go hand-in-hand.

Expanding electricity access in Africa does little good if people can’t afford it. But what if renewable power could also be used to boost people’s incomes, tackling both issues at once?

From staple foods to cancer-treating drugs, people everywhere rely on the ocean in more ways than they might realize — which means keeping it healthy should be a top priority.

WRI research found that options like grass-fed and free-range meat, which are better for animals, often take a bigger toll on the planet than conventional farming. So, what's really the “better” option?

Lands managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities are some of the last biodiversity strongholds. But without secure legal rights, they can't always protect these pristine ecosystems from harm.

WRI’s climate commitment tracker takes stock of how countries are progressing on their promises to scale up renewables, halt deforestation, stem methane emissions and more.

The world is on track to cut emissions 1% by 2030. To prevent increasingly dangerous climate change impacts, that number needs to be 42% — a yawning gap, but one that’s still possible to close. We outlined how

President Donald Trump’s re-election was undoubtedly a blow to U.S. climate and environmental action — but not a death knell, say WRI experts.

2025 will reveal a lot about where climate action is headed, with nearly all countries expected to submit new national commitments for the coming decade. Here’s what to know.

Denmark’s groundbreaking agriculture policy is the most ambitious national effort yet to tackle the environmental impacts of farming, setting a new bar other countries should strive to meet.