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Seven Billion: The Real Population Scare Is Not What You Think
The Earth’s resources that underpin our modern lifestyles are deteriorating. This is not to suggest that hard-earned middle class lifestyles must be curbed or that Africans and Asians should be denied the chance to own laptops and iPods. Far from it. Rather, as the middle class grows, business needs to find ways to shrink natural resource use.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
- Tags
- nutrition
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At the Tipping Point: How Can Global Financiers Create a Sustainable World Economy?
Last week’s UNEP FI conference, ?The Tipping Point: Sustained Stability in the Next Economy? considered the emerging role of sustainable finance in reforming the financial sector for the long term. As we reach a different tipping point, the 7 billionth person on Earth, it’s just the sort open and strategic conversation we need.
- Categories
- Environment
- Tags
- impact investing
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NextThought Monday: Market, Government and Finding Synergies Between the Two
It’s easy to let advocacy - the process of scaling a solution through policy change - slip into the distance and focus on the market-based approach to scale. Social change has swung toward the market-based approach to scale and largely lost sight of the other method, which involves those sometimes taboo words: institutions, lobbying, and policy.
- Categories
- Environment
- Tags
- scale
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Proteak’s IPO Journey, Part II: Lessons Learned
In part one of my interview with Proteak Founder Hector Bonilla, he explained why the Mexico-based sustainable timber company decided to go public. In the part two he shares how the initial public offering changed the company for the long-term, and shares advice for social entrepreneurs and their investors seeking a successful financial exit.
- Categories
- Environment
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On the Quest for Exits: Proteak’s Successful IPO
In the impact investing sector, conversations about the need for financial exits abound, but there are scant few cases. Proteak, a Mexico renewable tropical forestry company that sells conflict-free plantation teak wood products, is one sterling example. In a two-part interview, Proteak Founder Hector Bonilla walks us through the firm’s 2010 IPO.
- Categories
- Education, Environment
- Tags
- impact investing
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The Doughnut Hole in Sustainable Finance
Despite the recent upsurge in attention to "social," "impact," and "clean tech" investing, there is still a structural gap ? a doughnut hole ? in sustainable finance. But this also means that there is a huge opportunity for visionary financiers to invent the new investment categories and asset classes needed to fill this gap.
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
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SOCAP11: Waste Management that Works
Parag Gupta, founder and CEO of Waste Ventures recently told me that urban India produces a mound of garbage that weighs twice as much as the Empire State Building every week. In that big pile of trash, Gupta and his team identified a glowing opportunity for economic, social, and environmental impact.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
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Serving the Trillion Dollar BoP Energy Market
Not everyone wants to spend their weekend in a conference room discussing challenges like benchmarking low-cost solar home lighting systems, finding the right business model, and raising the seed capital. But for the 11 social entrepreneurs gathered with experts and the CSTS Clean Energy Sector team, there’s no place else we would have rather been.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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