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Rize Raises $31 Million to Tackle Climate Impact of Rice Farming
Rice is the largest crop market in the world, with an annual market size of more than $300 billion, but it also accounts for approximately 12% of global methane emissions, a climate footprint comparable to that of the entire aviation industry.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Investing, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Social Finance First: Standard Bank Pioneers $29 Million Helios Towers Facility
Standard Bank has launched its first social documentary credit facility, providing Helios Towers with a $29m trade finance solution structured under the Loan Market Association's social loan principles.
- Categories
- Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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What Drives Positive Outcomes in Gender-Lens Investing? DFI Portfolio Evaluations Reveal Four Key Factors
Few developments in the impact investing space have been as striking as the rise of gender-lens investing, as recent years have seen development finance institutions (DFIs) and others mobilize a growing amount of capital for gender equality. Katie Turner, and Jenny Holden at Kore Global share a first-of-its-kind synthesis of portfolio evaluations involving several DFIs, providing evidence on the outcomes and impact of their gender-lens investments at scale. They explore what these findings suggest about how and why some investments achieve deeper and more meaningful gender outcomes than others.
- Categories
- Investing
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Brazil Shifts from Mandatory to Voluntary Sustainability Reporting
The revised regulation, while making sustainability reporting voluntary, creates a “comply-or-explain” system, under which a public company that chooses not to file a sustainability report is required to justify the decision through a market announcement, including the reasons for the decision, by the time it files its annual financial statements in 2027.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing
- Region
- Latin America
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Press Release: ResponsAbility Finances Robust International to Strengthen Climate-Smart Agricultural Supply Chains in Emerging Markets
The strategy is structured around three core pillars: climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, and sustainable production and consumption.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Global
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Flipping the Script on Investor Feedback: A New Survey Gives Entrepreneurs a Platform to Assess — And Influence — Their Impact Investors’ Practices
There have been a number of critiques of impact investing in recent months, targeting several common investor practices. Yet as Yaquta Fatehi at the William Davidson Institute (WDI) points out, these appraisals rarely come from entrepreneurs, who often receive feedback from investors, but typically lack the ability to respond in kind. She shares a new research initiative by Acumen and WDI called "Founders in Focus: The State of Impact Capital" that aims to change this dynamic: Instead of focusing on what entrepreneurs need to do differently to attract investment, it invites founders to capture their experiences with investors — both the good and the bad — in a structured manner that can spark actual change in the investing ecosystem. The survey is open to founders and C-suite executives across Africa, Asia and Latin America who have raised capital in 2024-2025: Respond by June 26 to add your views.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Analysis: Why the World’s Most Ambitious Coal Phase‑Out Deal Has Failed – And What It Means for Climate Finance
The failure to decommission Cirebon-1 matters beyond Indonesia. It suggests the world’s flagship model for financing the end of fossil fuels isn’t working. And the longer it takes to admit that, the harder the transition becomes – for Indonesia, and for everyone.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- South Asia
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Grant Dependency is Undermining Global Development: Here’s a Fundamentally New Architecture for Funding NGOs
Across the Global South, NGOs often function as the default conduits for addressing key development challenges in remote and marginalized populations. But as long-time development sector advisor Rajat Ray argues, these systemic problems cannot be solved by organizations that are perpetually teetering on the edge of financial suffocation, propped up by short-term, project-based grants. He explains how the survival tactics NGOs adopt to navigate this funding dilemma end up warping their operations and perpetuating some of the sector's biggest shortcomings. In response, he proposes an entirely new funding model — the “Diminishing Grant Framework” — that treats self-reliance not as an aspiration, but as a mandatory financial milestone.
- Categories
- Investing
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