WRI Statement in Response to COVID-19

WRI's response to COVID-19 focuses on staff safety, virtual operations, and ensuring that global economic stimulus packages promote low-carbon development and climate protection rather than restoring high-carbon economies.

• WRI has implemented a three-part response to the pandemic: protecting staff and families, enhancing virtual operations to maintain goal delivery, and reassessing activities to support a safer and more resilient global future.
• To ensure staff safety, WRI shifted to mandatory work from home across its entire network, starting with WRI China in January, and has either postponed or moved all sponsored events online.
• WRI argues that the hundreds of billions of dollars intended to reflate declining economies should be used to drive low-carbon development and protect against existing threats, rather than restoring unequal, high-carbon economies.
• WRI asserts that the global health crisis and global climate crisis must be addressed simultaneously, and the organization is using knowledge of past stimulus packages to identify measures that advance climate protection and poverty-reducing growth.
• Despite the disruption to 2020's planned international decisions on the ocean, biodiversity, and climate, WRI suggests the crisis could enable a new social contract based on protecting natural systems and supporting the vulnerable.

APA

Steer, A. (2020). WRI Statement in Response to COVID-19. World Resources Institute. https://www.wri.org/news/statement-wri-statement-response-covid-19

Chicago

Steer, Andrew. WRI Statement in Response to COVID-19. World Resources Institute, 2020. https://www.wri.org/news/statement-wri-statement-response-covid-19.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Steer |first1=Andrew |title=WRI Statement in Response to COVID-19 |publisher=World Resources Institute |date=18 March 2020 |url=https://www.wri.org/news/statement-wri-statement-response-covid-19 |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{steer2020wri, author = {Steer, Andrew}, title = {{WRI Statement in Response to COVID-19}}, publisher = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2020}, month = mar, url = {https://www.wri.org/news/statement-wri-statement-response-covid-19}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }