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Wednesday, January 04, 2012 — Latin America

It's Time for Sustainable Development

Source: The Guardian

Bill Clinton was set to enter the White House, the European Union was born and China had its first taste of a double cheeseburger with fries when McDonalds opened its doors in Beijing. That was 1992. A lot can happen in 20 years. In June 2012, two decades after the groundbreaking Earth summit, which put climate change and biological diversity on the global political agenda, attention will turn once again to Rio de Janeiro for the UN conference on sustainable development, or ...

TAGS:business case

Thursday, December 01, 2011 — No Region Specified

Four Companies Announce New Ventures to Promote Clean Energy

Source: Business Call to Action

New York, Durban, 28 November 2011 -More than 12 million low-income people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will gain access to clean energy following four companies' commitments made today to the Business Call to Action , a global leadership initiative that promotes sustainable economic and social development. The companies also expect to create approximately 42,000 environmentally sustai...

TAGS:business case

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 — Latin America

Uruguayan Farmers Tackles Climate Change

Source: Microfinance Focus

The World Bank approved a US$49 million loan to support Uruguayan farmers tackle climate change. In their efforts, farmers are adopting environmentally sustainable practices to improve the resilience of their production systems in response to the effects of climate variability. The program is called the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources and Climate Change. This will benefit 16,000 Uruguayan farmers through co-financing of land projects to improve their production systems, the ...

TAGS:business case

Monday, October 17, 2011 — No Region Specified

Power Can Challenge Poverty ? And That Makes Universal Energy Access a Must

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Earlier this week, decision makers came together in Oslo to launch Energy +, the international energy and climate initiative. It promises to be a landmark contribution towards securing sustainable energy for all by 2030. The need for such progress is clear, given that half the world's population live without modern energy, the majority of people cook on an open fire, and two out of t...

TAGS:business case

Thursday, September 29, 2011 — No Region Specified

Green Growth

Source: The Economist

THE enrichment of previously poor countries is the most inspiring development of our time. It is also worrying. The environment is already under strain. What will happen when the global population rises from 7 billion today to 9.3 billion in 2050, as demographers expect, and a growing proportion of these people can afford goods that were once reserved for the elite? Can the planet support so much economic activity? Many policymakers adopt a top-down and Western-centric approach to such ...

TAGS:business case, sanitation

Thursday, September 22, 2011 — Sub-Saharan Africa

African Forest Policies Crowned Best in World

Source: AfricaNews.com

The prize is awarded annually by the World Future Council, a foundation that brings the interests of future generations to the centre of policy making. The jury which decided on the winning policies was composed of experts on sustainability and forests from all five continents. Runners-up were forest policies from Bhutan, Nepal and Switzerland. The US Lacey Act's 2008 amendment, which bans the import of illegally harvested wood, received the second Silver Award. Rw...

TAGS:business case

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 — Asia Pacific

Bringing Light to the Poor, One Liter at a Time [Video]

Source: Reuters

A bottled liter of water with a few teaspoons of bleach is proving to be a successful recipe for dwellers in the light-deprived slums of the Philippines. The simple technology is spreading sunlight in places where it has never been, and saving residents money at the same time. Gemma Haines reports. ...

TAGS:business case

Tuesday, July 05, 2011 — No Region Specified

Inc. 5000 Applicant of the Week: World Centric

Source: Inc.

As we process applications for the 2011 Inc. 500 5000, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States . One that caught our eye was Palo Alto , California

TAGS:business case

Tuesday, June 28, 2011 — South Asia

Will Indian IT Companies' Business Model Become Stagnant?

Source: The Economic Times

BANGALORE: Indian IT companies, which rode the outsourcing wave to become large corporations, may lag a bit while becoming sustainable corporations that create fortune "with" the bottom of the pyramid, says management guru Stuart L Hart . The American academic who was in town recently, says: "From what I can see, there is a little bit of self-satisfaction and comfort with the current model. Maybe they are getting stuck in the outsourcing model like that is the endgame. But it is...

TAGS:business case

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 — Europe & Eurasia

Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Give Keynote Address at Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

Source: Sys-Con Media

OXFORD, England, March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Skoll World Forum is the leading international platform for accelerating entrepreneurial approaches and innovative solutions to the world's most pressing social issues. The theme for the 2011 Forum is 'Large Scale Change - ecosystems, networks and collaborative action.' The programme covers a wide variety of complex global issues such as water, energy, food security, climate change, peace and security, social equity and eme...

TAGS:business case, consumer products

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 — North Africa and Near East

Sa?d Business School: US Marines Call on Social Entrepreneur in Afghanistan

Source: The Financial

When Connie Duckworth received a call from the office of Commanding General of the Marines First Expeditionary Force operating in Afghanistan, she was surprised to say the least. Ms Duckworth is a social entrepreneur working in poor rural communities in Afghanistan well beyond the theatre of war. The Marines, however, had heard about her approach to developing sustainable economic growth within these communities and wanted to learn more. Ms Duckworth's social venture ARZU has been w...

TAGS:business case, consumer products

Tuesday, March 01, 2011 — Latin America

Patagonia, Adidas, Walmart Join Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Source: Fast Company

What happens when you put executives from Walmart and Patagonia in a room? This isn't the start of a bad joke--it's how the Sustainable Apparel Coalition was born. The seeds of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition were planted in 2009 when Patagonia and Walmart teamed up to help the latter company create a sustainability assessment tool for its supply chain (Patagonia was also working o...

TAGS:business case

Tuesday, February 08, 2011 — No Region Specified

'Doing Good' with the Profits

Source: Sign On San Diego

Jeffrey Church and Mike Stone started a bottled-water business not to get rich, but to do good. The two San Diego businessmen, who met at Harvard Business School , established Nika Water after Church took his family on a working vacation to Africa to build schools and water systems. "My family and I liked w...

TAGS:business case

Monday, November 15, 2010 — No Region Specified

Unilever Says Sustainability Key to New Business Model

Source: BBC News

Consumer products giant Unilever has unveiled a "new business model" putting sustainability at the heart of its global operations. It pledged to halve the environmental impact of its products while doubling sales over the next 10 years. Chief executive Paul Polman said the new model was "the only way to do business long term". The company said it would produce an annual report on its progress towards achieving these goals. Uni...

TAGS:business case

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 — No Region Specified

C.K. Prahalad: Sustainability Can Lead to Innovation

Source: Economic Times

He's going green. After core competence and the bottom of the pyramid, the world's best-known management guru of Indian origin, CK Prahalad, is talking sustainable development. Why? Because, as he argued in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, "Sustainability is the mother lode of innovations that yield both bottomline and topline returns". In an exclusive interview to ET Now , the Paul and Ruth McCracken professor of strategy at Stephen M Ross School of Business at the Un...

TAGS:business case