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Five Ways the Private Sector Can Align with the Sustainable Development Goals
How can the private sector advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and what’s the best way to measure the success of these efforts? Those questions were among the topics explored at the recent Sustainability and Development Conference at the University of Michigan. Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi and Dana Gorodetsky at the William Davidson Institute attended the event, and they share some essential insights on the private sector’s role in supporting the SDGs.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Impact Assessment
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Germany To Give 1 Billion Euros To India To Lower Green House Gas Effect
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed grave concern about the currently inadequate global level of climate action and called on all countries to step up their efforts.
- Categories
- Environment
- Region
- South Asia
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Unite Behind the Science: When it Comes to Cooking, it’s Time for ‘Clean’ to Mean Something
Nearly 3 billion people still live in homes where someone burns sticks, charcoal or dung to cook, devastating their health, their local environments and the climate. Yet thousands of projects have failed to deliver truly clean cooking to the masses, doing a disservice to customers and damaging the sector's credibility with funders. Eric Reynolds, CEO of the cookstove company Inyenyeri, argues that there's only one way to turn this around: "deliver dramatically improved outcomes, and be able to prove it." He outlines a straightforward way the industry can make that happen.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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From Early Adopters to Tech Laggards: Understanding Off-Grid Energy Customers
The team at 60 Decibels recently set out to understand the motivations of customers served by off-grid energy firms in Africa. Researchers quizzed customers in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia about their attitudes and behaviours toward new products to find out who were the early innovators, early adopters or tech laggards. Kat Harrison and Hassan Nasser of 60 Decibels explain the research and how firms can convert ambivalent customers into product ambassadors.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Impact Assessment, Technology
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RSF-Purpose Initiative Responds to Demand for Mission-First Business Models
A grassroots global movement is emerging behind mission-first business models rooted in stakeholder governance—rather than shareholder control—and RSF Social Finance and the Purpose Foundation are collaborating to help that movement grow. Today they released a report that serves as a handbook for companies exploring alternative business structures and financing.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing, Technology
- Tags
- business development, ESG, research, scale
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Facebook, Visa among the stocks with high ESG marks — enough to outrun the S&P 500
Companies that improve their environmental, social and governance reputations outperform the S&P 500 — major technology and financial services firms among them.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing
- Tags
- ESG, sustainable business
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Future Returns: Green Bonds on the Rise
The volume of outstanding green bonds—both “labeled” and “unlabeled”—has reached around US$2 trillion, according to Stephen Liberatore, a managing director at TIAA’s Nuveen and manager of the TIAA-CREF Social Choice Bond Fund.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
- Tags
- impact investing
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Press Release: Fiera Capital Invests in World Bank Sustainable Development Bond
This is the latest example of the World Bank's engagement with investors around specific development challenges and the Sustainable Development Goals ("SDGs"). Through this engagement, the World Bank and Fiera Capital are raising awareness for SDG 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, and SDG 14, Life Below Water.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing, WASH
- Tags
- impact investing, SDGs
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