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.
A coalition of a dozen major food brands and retailers (and Patagonia!) have asked federal regulators not to back down on reducing trucking emissions and increasing fuel economy.
In February, the U.K.-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) announced the launch of a U.S. network to run in parallel with the Foundation’s successful international Circular Economy 100 (CE100) programme. Today, the CE100 USA network of business leaders, academics, innovators, policymakers and city authorities who aim to develop and act on circular economy opportunities held their launch workshop in San Francisco.
Tomorrow, at a forum of the G7 Alliance on Resource Efficiency in Washington, D.C., Ford Motor Company will highlight its new Partnership for A Cleaner Environment (PACE), a program that aims to help the automaker’s suppliers minimize their impact on the environment by sharing details of Ford’s best practices for water, energy and carbon dioxide reduction.
There is yet another new group that can be filed under Sustainable Development Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals. Yesterday, Unilever and several industry partners announced the creation of an open platform to share their ideas, data, and insights on addressing key global challenges.
According to a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office, deforestation activity accounts for 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Companies such as Unilever have adopted zero-deforestation policies; while private sector initiatives are critical to broader zero-deforestation efforts, a more comprehensive approach involving multiple entities from the private and public sectors is necessary.
Protein is an essential part of any diet. As the global population surges to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, meeting the world’s demand for protein will become increasingly difficult. Having researched the issue and after working with 200 stakeholders, Forum for the Future is bringing together organisations across the protein system to collaborate as part of The Protein Challenge 2040.
Ford Motor Company is proud to become the first automaker to join the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), a nonprofit coalition of leading electronics companies dedicated to improving the social, environmental and ethical conditions of their global supply chains.
The Climate CoLab — an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched in 2009 — has launched its annual set of contests seeking high-impact proposals on how people, organizations and governments can collaborate to tackle major climate change challenges. Entries can win prizes — including a $10,000 cash award and a chance to present at MIT — and also feed into larger climate action plans for countries and the whole world, which the community will build on the platform later this year.
This week, John West Australia, WWF-Australia (WWF) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), announced that they have come together to make the single biggest brand commitment to help end unsustainable fishing methods within the canned tuna industry in Australia.The alliance with WWF and MSC is the result of years of the entities working together to find a way to overhaul John West's supply standards within Australia, moving towards a more sustainable future for the world's oceans.
Representatives from almost 200 countries convened in Paris in December to reach the most significant agreement on climate change since the topic initially surfaced as a political priority some decades ago.
In recent years, the travel and hospitality industry has smartly identified the business case for investing in the preservation of popular destinations around the world, and the environmental and social ecosystems that comprise them.
Late last year, the United Nations published the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals). The main difference between the former millennium goals and the new goals is that the latter apply to all countries. It is no longer about goals in poor countries that should be realized through financing from richer countries. The SDGs merge poverty reduction, safety and justice with the familiar cornerstones of sustainable development - People, Planet and Profit.
Malnutrition remains a significant global problem despite corporate and charitable efforts to fight it. Malnourishment results in the deaths of an estimated 2.6 million children each year – about a third of global child deaths. An estimated 221 million people in India are chronically or acutely malnourished – over 17 percent of the country’s population. Nearly half of children in India are underweight and/or are too small for their age.
Dermatologists Grace Bandow and Samar Jaber were surprised by the experience they had on their first mission to a Syrian refugee camp. They prepared for parasitic and bacterial infections associated with crowded living – minor diseases that flourish in “close, dirty quarters.” What they did not anticipate was the number of people who simply needed an item commonly found in a household medicine cabinet.“It never occurred to us to prioritize Vaseline petroleum jelly,” they wrote in an article published by The Washington Post upon their return.
Viscose and rayon fibers are made from wood pulp and are some of the most widely used in clothing and textiles, threatening endangered forests. Approximately 120 million trees are logged annually for fabrics and about one third of them are sourced from ancient and/or endangered forests. Since its launch in October 2013, 60 companies have committed to eliminate endangered forests from their fabric supply chains by 2017 through the CanopyStyle initiative.
As evidenced by the unprecedented private-sector engagement in COP21 earlier this month, businesses globally get that they need to innovate (and improve!) their products, services and business models to combat climate change, resource scarcity and unpredictable futures. Aside from the alignment of 195 nations on a climate-action agreement, what did all the talk at COP21 amount to from a business perspective? A lot of initiatives that push forward change and collaboration. But is it all smoke and mirrors, and toothless pledges, or is there real action brewing?
Climate change, biodiversity, human rights and development issues are higher up the global agenda this year than ever before. The recent adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals will shape the global remit for social, economic and environmental development for the next 15 years, while COP21 aims to achieve a new international global climate agreement to tackle the growing environmental crisis.
Conservation International (CI), in partnership with Ceres and industry leaders such as Starbucks and Keurig Green Mountain, have announced a call to action to make coffee the first sustainably sourced agricultural product in the world. The Sustainable Coffee Challenge, launched last week at COP21 in Paris, comes as ministers gather to write a new climate agreement and as momentum builds for businesses to take direct action to combat climate change.
For the United Nations, working with business is not always easy business. Yet it is a necessary - particularly if the recently approved Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are going to be achieved by 2030. A broad consultation and negotiation process has led to the ground-breaking and inspirational 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A process which was one the most inclusive and wide-ranging dialogue processes in the UN history. How to effectively engage businesses in this new agenda proved to be one of the most recurring, contested and challenging elements.
To mark its 150th anniversary, German firm BASF is hosting a ten-day program in Ludwigshafen focusing on one of the most pressing global challenges: Given the limited resources, how can we secure our energy supply also in the future?By 2050, global energy demand is forecast to rise by more than 50 percent, BASF says, and new solutions will have to be developed in order to secure the energy supply in the future.Germany, in particular, is in the midst of an energy transition: Electricity generation is becoming increasingly decentralized. As a result, electricity grids and energy markets will have to change and become more flexible. That’s why BASF says it chose to make “smart energy” the theme of the tour stop in Germany.