Follow the growing amount of collaborative work — cross-functional, cross-sector, pre-competitive and more — bringing about massive, disruptive, needed shifts to business as usual.
On October 5, the Paris Agreement on climate change cleared the final hurdle to go into full effect. This required at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of emissions to join – as I write this post, WRI’s real-time Paris Tracker shows that 89 countries representing 63 percent of emissions have now joined the Agreement.
Asia Pulp & Paper Group (APP) is reinforcing its commitment towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through participation in “The Pari Island Project,” a new multiparty collaboration aimed at improving the availability and sustainability of clean water in Indonesia.
The third Setouchi International Art Festival is currently taking place across 12 islands and two coastal ports in the Seto Naikai, or Inland Sea of Japan. The Sea boasts over 700 islands in total. The islands, which never underwent rapid industrial modernization, have maintained their original backdrop of lively Japanese culture, tradition and rusticity. But the legacy of that harsh era remains, with many islands grappling with unauthorized dumping of industrial waste, environmental pollution, and rapid depopulation. The festival, which aims to revitalize the islands through modern art, has proved a successful joint effort by companies and the local community.
As California enters its sixth year of record-breaking drought, 20 leading organizations this week announced the formation of the California Water Action Collaborative (CWAC), their collaborative effort to support critical projects designed to protect the state’s water future.
Steve Jennings, the Founding Partner, Chief Innovation Officer and Futurist at Better Ventures opened up Wednesday afternoon's panel discussion entitled Understanding and Developing the Capacity for Transformative Relationships by asking the panellists to share what transformative partnerships mean to them. “10 years ago, partnerships for sustainability were very transactional,” answered Loa Dalgaard Worm, the Executive Director at FSC Denmark. “NGOs wanted money to run their initiatives, and businesses wanted something to put it their CSR reports.”
In 1908, Dr. Kikunae Ikeda changed the culinary world forever when he discovered umami as the fifth basic taste (along with sweet, salty, sour and bitter). Aspiring to foster healthy lifestyles and “create good, affordable seasonings and turn simple but nutritious fare into delicacies,” Ikeda invented a method for producing seasoning with glutamate as a key component. The following year, his friend, chemical and pharmaceutical businessman Saburosuke Suzuki II, launched a business venture to begin selling AJI-NO-MOTO®, the world's first umami seasoning, and the Ajinomoto Group was born.
The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) has announced a new digital ‘Global Solutions Platform’ to engage business students to support the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals). The platform consists of two parallel projects through which business students will analyze and evaluate the quality of company activities as they relate to responsible and sustainable business operations, and highlight the most notable achievements of companies in each major industry.
British creative consultancy Radley Yeldar (RY) has launched the 2016 Fit for Purpose index, ranking the world’s most socially, environmentally and economically purposeful companies. The overall trend that surfaced in this year’s index was collaborative thinking; the top purposeful brands are collaborating with stakeholders and partners within and outside the company to embed purpose in authentic and meaningful ways.
Today, brewers, governments NGOs and retailers in 76 countries around the world partnered on the second annual Global Beer Responsibility Day in an effort to promote responsible consumption of beer.
Today, 37 leading agri-business companies have today launched the Global Agri-Business Alliance (GAA) in Singapore. Their aim is to collectively tackle the major environmental and social challenges facing agricultural supply chains and rural communities across the world.
For the first time ever, leading food and agriculture supply chain companies and conservation organizations have formed an “end-to-end” partnership to support farmers in the improvement of soil health and water quality.
News Deeply, in partnership with Sustainable Brands, has produced a series of profiles looking at how brands are tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. The goal is to examine trends and gather insights from a new wave of corporate citizenship – in an era when the private sector is increasingly expected to play a positive role in improving our lives and societies. This is the 8th article in the series.
While the challenges of climate change are undeniably global, politics and measures to actually solve them remain largely local. Last year’s Paris Agreement was a landmark moment for this issue. Now comes the difficult task of putting words and treaties into action. The IUCN World Conservation Congress, set to begin in Honolulu this week, seeks to do just that. In order to be successful, it’s critical the delegates representing government, business, NGOs, the scientific community and indigenous people from more than 160 countries embrace not just the hard work ahead, but also the urgent need for meaningful collaboration.
At SB’16 Cape Town in May, Tetra Pak, South African Airways (SAA) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) came together to share their views on the importance of building market demand from environmentally conscious consumers to move sustainable commodities further into the mainstream.
When in hot water, take a bath. To many westerners, this Chinese saying is nonsensical. Yet it accords with a fundamental African way of thinking: when faced with something profoundly troubling, the solution lies in a deeper experience of that very state.
The industry group Sustainable Apparel Coalition has opened use of its Higg Index suite of tools for measuring and evaluating supply chain impact to non-member small and medium-sized (SME) brands and retailers. SMEs may now take advantage of a special licence for full access to the Higg Index.
When (Red) was founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver back in 2006, it was born out of necessity. The Global Fund — an organization dedicated to fighting diseases such as AIDS, TB, and malaria in the developing world — had launched in 2002, with a commitment to garner private sector engagement and raise funds from governments in an effort to accelerate the end of AIDS. But the private sector was not biting, contributing only $5 million in the Global Fund’s first four years. This low level of funding threatened to jeopardize ongoing commitment levels from the public sector.
News Deeply, in partnership with Sustainable Brands, is producing a series of profiles looking at how brands are tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. The goal is to examine trends and gather insights from a new wave of corporate citizenship – in an era when the private sector is increasingly expected to play a positive role in improving our lives and societies. This is the 2nd article in the series.
Companies including SABMiller, Dow, Novozymes, and many others have begun to align their corporate responsibility targets with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since the United Nations (UN) launched them in September.
Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP) is a consortium featuring Accenture, the University of Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) and The Rural Development Company, which have joined forces on a renewable energy initiative in Uganda and South Africa that leverages solar-powered microgrids to deliver clean, affordable electricity to local populations.