Last but not least is the World Resources Institute, founded in 1982 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. The “resources” in WRI’s title refers to environmental and socio-economic resources, and it works at the intersection of these two areas. The organization promotes sustainable development through four goals: protecting the global climate system, empowering people and strengthening institutions, harnessing markets and enterprise, and reversing rapid degradation of ecosystems. Working on six continents, the organization is also known for its World Resources Report, published every other year. The report is full of in-depth information and analysis on a number of environmental and development issues. The 2013-2014 edition is titled “Creating a Sustainable Food Future” and asks the following question: “How can the world adequately feed more than 9 billion people by 2050 in a manner that advances economic development and reduces pressure on the environment?”
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
