Unparalleled global treasures stretch across the distant reaches of Canada, from the Great Bear Rainforest along British Columbia’s coast to the boreal forest, which accounts for a quarter of the world’s remaining intact forests and holds nearly twice as much carbon as all the world’s oil reserves combined.

These ecosystems are home to hundreds of Indigenous communities and many of North America’s most iconic species. They also play a pivotal role in protecting our climate. But industrial activities threaten them with irreparable harm—activities like the development of Alberta’s tar sands, among the world’s dirtiest sources of oil, and the clearcutting of more than a million acres of boreal forest each year.

Canada’s energy and land-use decisions have major implications for its future, as well as that of its neighbors in the United States and the climate of the entire planet. This is why NRDC works with Indigenous allies and environmental partners to protect the country’s landscapes and shape its conservation choices, from Quebec’s James Bay to British Columbia’s Clayoquot Sound.

Some of our accomplishments:

• NRDC experts have gained a reputation for credible research that has earned us a place in the federal regulatory process, shaping decisions on issues such as tar sands pipeline proposals and deep-sea drilling. We have established trusted partnerships with Indigenous allies, environmental and community groups, and government agencies, making us one of the few environmental organizations that can convene key stakeholders on both sides of the U.S.–Canadian border.
• NRDC is defending Canada’s boreal forest from unsustainable logging, which is driven in part by the U.S. demand for single-use, throwaway products like toilet paper. We support our allies by backing their efforts to establish Indigenous protected areas and by challenging companies like Procter & Gamble to stop using intact boreal forest to make products like Charmin toilet paper.
• As one of the first organizations to call international attention to the destructive power of oil production from Alberta’s tar sands, NRDC worked with a coalition that stopped the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline and the Energy East pipeline that would have brought hundreds of tar sands tankers down the U.S. Atlantic coast. We continue to fight the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, and we work to protect our communities and marine ecosystems along the Pacific coast from tar sands tankers.

India is emerging as a global leader and an economic powerhouse. Yet the nation of 1.3 billion people is facing multiple unprecedented challenges—extreme weather events, health burdens from pollution, poverty alleviation, and now COVID-19. As the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, India is extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including more deadly heat waves and cyclones.

The fight to keep the planet below the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold cannot be won without India’s support. For more than a decade, NRDC and our on-the-ground partners have been working with government agencies, academic institutions, and civil society leaders on three interconnected initiatives: clean air and healthy cities; cooling and efficiency; and renewable energy. Through the vision of fearless climate leaders and continued knowledge sharing, India’s strong climate plan will pave the way to sustainable economic development, create jobs, promote equitable access to clean energy, provide cleaner air for communities, and combat climate change.

Some of our accomplishments with our partners:

• In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, NRDC helped launch the country’s first standards and compliance system for energy-efficient buildings. Since 2017, more than 150 buildings have been compliant in the two states. In expanding this work to other states, we aim to save an estimated 3,453 TWh of cumulative electricity by 2030—the equivalent of taking 47 million cars off the road for one year.
• Across cities in India, NRDC’s work on life-saving heat action plans is building climate resilience. In western India, NRDC coordinated with city officials and public health institutions to develop the Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan in Gujarat, South Asia’s first early-warning system for extreme heat. Backed by groundbreaking scientific research, the plan helps protect those who are most vulnerable, including slum communities and outdoor workers. The award-winning plan has been replicated in more than 100 cities and 23 of India’s 29 states, representing more than 700 million people.

• NRDC worked with stakeholders in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad, Telangana, to launch the first-ever cool roof model program in India, initially covering 3,000 roofs for low-income families and now expanding toward 15,000 government and slum rooftops.
• In Ahmedabad, NRDC helped the city launch the first-ever air quality index plan. Extending the program to Pune, Maharashtra, NRDC promotes clean air plans and health-risk communication to minimize children’s exposure to air pollution while integrating pollution reduction measures in both cities.
• In Gujarat and Telangana, NRDC is working on electric mobility policies—focused on charging infrastructure—to improve air quality.
• Together with partners, NRDC conducted India’s first analysis on job creation in the solar and wind energy sectors. The groundbreaking analysis shows that achieving India’s ambitious renewable energy target of 175 gigawatts has the potential to create up to one million short-term and long-term job opportunities by 2022. Findings like this, which were shared with India’s parliament, help build political support for clean energy.
• In collaboration with a leading women’s grassroots group, NRDC helped improve the lives of more than 1,500 women salt farmers in the Gujarat desert by replacing expensive diesel-powered water pumps with solar-powered ones—increasing their incomes by 94 percent. This partnership is on track to reach 15,000 solar-powered pumps and 43,000 families. Now, we are developing village-level clean energy plans with solar pumps and energy efficiency solutions that help communities support livelihoods, save costs, and reduce pollution.

• NRDC is contributing to developing India’s first green bank-like structure within an existing public financial institution to help attract new capital and grow the market for clean energy. This includes working with the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency to implement financing solutions—or green windows—to channel $1.2 billion (USD) in capital over 10 years, targeting underserved and emerging markets with decentralized renewable energy programs, such as rooftop solar, electric vehicles, and battery storage.
• Leveraging our relationships in India, China, and the United States, NRDC promoted global climate cooperation on the Paris Agreement, U.S.–India partnership, and the groundbreaking Kigali Amendment in the Montreal Protocol. To help India meet its commitments—and as part of the India Cooling Action Plan, which addresses the skyrocketing consumer demand for cooling—NRDC is working to phase down powerful heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbons, increase air conditioner efficiency, and promote low-cost cool roofs and green buildings for all.

Latin America boasts some of the world’s most spectacularly varied landscapes and wildlife, as well as diverse cultures, traditions, and political systems. But many countries in this region face the same challenges, like how to achieve their economic development goals and supply enough energy, food, and services to their citizens, all while protecting fragile wildlands, waters, and forests and limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

With the impacts of climate change already being felt across the region, the urgency is mounting to implement sustainable solutions both in rural communities and in rapidly expanding cities. Fortunately, Latin America is a hub for climate solutions across sectors, including energy, transportation, conservation, and finance. Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Mexico have also emerged as a progressive force for global climate action.

NRDC joins forces with a broad spectrum of partners to address the region’s environmental challenges and build on its potential as an incubator of sustainable solutions. Together we promote robust policies to help Latin American countries grow toward a low-carbon, climate-resilient future while protecting important natural resources and communities. Throughout our work, we uphold the fundamental right of all communities to have a say in the decisions that affect their health and environment. With a particular focus on clean energy issues, our work includes technical and economic analyses, policy studies and recommendations, public outreach and engagement, and collaborative processes.

Some of our accomplishments:

• NRDC collaborations promote a clean energy transition grounded in the region’s renewable energy resources and energy efficiency potential. For example, we worked with the Chilean Renewable Energy Association to assess the economic and social benefits of adding more renewables to the country’s power grid.
• To address chronic air pollution problems in cities like Santiago, Chile, and Mexico City, we advocate for sustainable transportation technologies, including cleaner diesel fuels, tougher vehicle emissions and efficiency standards, and electromobility.
• NRDC experts are developing innovative financial solutions to spur investment in a low-carbon and climate-resilient future. In Mexico and Chile, we work with key financial institutions to apply lessons from the green bank model and advance domestic leadership on green finance.
• In step with our local allies, we defend iconic landscapes and species under threat. Among our efforts: our engagement in the decades-long fight to keep Patagonia’s wild rivers from being yoked by massive hydroelectric dams.
• In Chile’s Metropolitan Region, we partner with local organizations to improve water management practices and address water scarcity so that everyone in the region can have access to clean, potable water.

China has made a serious commitment to turning its cities into healthier places to live and currently leads the world in renewable energy installation and electric vehicle penetration. But the planet’s most populous country still faces severe pollution, impacts from climate change, and other environmental challenges. The more the country uses its enormous reach to push for sustainable options, the more its residents—and the entire planet—will benefit.

NRDC has been supporting China’s sustainable development by providing technical and legal expertise for more than 20 years. Since the mid 1990s, we have been collaborating with a wide range of Chinese and international partners to facilitate exchanges and learning, develop innovative policy tools, and introduce and demonstrate best practices in energy efficiency, clean energy, pollution controls, wildlife conservation, and low-carbon urbanization.

Some of our accomplishments:

• As the first international nonprofit to launch a clean energy program in China, NRDC helped develop many of the nation’s firsts, among them energy codes for residential and commercial buildings, a research and development program for clean vehicles, and a utility-based initiative for energy conservation.
• Our pilot efficiency programs in Jiangsu province were so successful that they inspired the central government to issue a national requirement that all grid companies invest in similar measures.
• China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020) established, for the first time, a mandatory target for decreasing the share of coal in total energy consumption. This was a direct reflection of the strategy we promoted—and NRDC energy experts are now designing policies to help the country meet this goal. We’re promoting ways to add more wind and solar to the grid and bring efficiency measures to more of the country’s industries.
• After we studied China’s supply of and demand for mercury—a neurotoxin linked to cognitive delays in children and fertility problems—we helped to shape a plan for reducing mercury in the country.
• We are working to help clean up China’s ports, which allow ships to use the dirtiest diesel fuel, by applying the lessons of some of our successful cleanup efforts, including those at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
• NRDC helped draft and pass many of America’s most important environmental laws, and now we are helping China fortify its environmental regulations while training legal professionals in environmental litigation and advocacy.
• NRDC has doggedly pursued wildlife conservation and bans on the ivory trade globally. In China, we supported studies of the legal barriers to an ivory ban. In a major victory for the conservation of elephants, the Chinese government shut down its legal commercial ivory trade on December 31, 2017.

For more information about NRDC’s China program, please visit www.nrdc.cn.