Governments worldwide will invest over $10 trillion in crisis relief this year, but to emerge stronger from COVID-19, that money must be directed into the right places. Where is that? Christina Chan, director of WRI’s Climate Resilience Practice, highlights five aspects of a resilient recovery: empowering local voices, improved food security and rural livelihoods, nature-based solutions, better water access in cities, and more global adaptation finance. For Adaptation Week, she tells how the Global Commission on Adaptation is catalyzing change. Read more.

Governments are in uncharted territory as they respond to the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic—but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn from the past. In a new WRI report, Research Associate Joel Jaeger and co-authors Michael Westphal and Corey Park identify lessons from green stimulus programs launched in response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Then China, the United States, South Korea and Japan spent the most on green stimulus, but they have pledged less in response to COVID-19 to date. This time the E.U., Germany and France are planning to spend far more on green stimulus than they did 12 years ago. How to succeed? “Governments should focus on projects that can scale up quickly, avoiding untested technologies and complicated infrastructure projects,” Jaeger says. Read More.

Amid extreme U.S. partisanship, planting trees and restoring forests is a rare bright spot of bipartisan agreement. Yet there has been little progress. Alex Rudee, an expert in carbon removal via forestry and agriculture, welcomes the launch of a new coalition that aims to increase the ability of U.S. forests to fight climate change. He highlights three policies in the group’s new platform that could seed action to grow 60 billion new trees by 2050. Read More.