The United Nations has increasingly come to recognize that cities possess the potential to play a major role in promoting sustainable development. Evidence of this is most visible in the agreement within the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals to establish a stand-alone goal on cities. Part of this realization builds on increased recognition […]
In a joint effort between the World Bank Group and several other global financial institutions, they produced a document entitled “From Billions to Trillions: Transforming Development Finance”. The purpose of the document was to explain that the steps needed in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require more than money. It needs a global change of […]
The Rockefeller Foundation’s current innovative finance portfolio, called “Zero Gap,” works to develop new financing mechanisms to mobilize large pools of private capital, identifying, and supporting innovations that have the potential to create a bigger impact. Global philanthropic funds, even when combined with the development or aid budgets of governments, add up into the mere […]
The European Union has adopted a new Circular Economy Package to help European businesses and consumers to make the transition to a stronger and more circular economy where resources are used in a more sustainable way. The proposed actions will contribute to “closing the loop” of product life cycles through greater recycling and re-use, and bring […]
In an article written for Sustainable Brands, Mark W. McElroy, Ph.D. discusses the connection between corporate social responsibility and market capitalization. For the past 40 years, the search has been on for a causal link between the sustainability performance of organizations and their economic bottom lines. Executives and sustainability proponents could point to a compelling business case […]
On a fundamental level, the circular economy is a model that decouples economic growth from resource constraints by reducing reliance on virgin materials. Instead, the goal is to keep materials functioning at their highest utility at all time, preventing potential waste from reaching landfills. While the idea of maximizing value out of materials for both economic and […]
The R20 Climate Finance Advisory Committee in conjunction with the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy created a report to address the topic of climate finance. Climate experts, law makers, and philanthropists gathered together to discuss the current state of climate finance reform and what needs to be done in the future. After the […]
Most people would be surprised to know that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both actively promoted measures to combat climate change. This is quite a contradiction to today’s top GOP officials, who generally deny that climate change even exists. A series of memos, stamped “confidential” and kept under wraps for years, portray a White […]
Two degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels is an important milestone for climate change. For years, global leaders have agreed that 2 degrees of warming is the point above which “dangerous” climate change will commence. In the Paris Agreement, nearly 200 nations agreed to work together to limit global warming to well below the 2 degree […]