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Making Waste Pay: The Keys to Sustaining Paying Customers in Solid Waste Management
Despite growing discourse around the revenue potential of waste to wealth — i.e., reimagining waste as a valuable resource — profitability in municipal solid waste management remains low in India and other low- and middle-income countries. As Vishwanath Varma, Archana Masih, Diksha Rana and Ashish Kapil at Waste Warriors Society argue, this challenge has led to a growing focus on collecting user fees from households — yet that goal is easier said than done. They share analysis based on Waste Warriors Society’s user fee records and customer surveys, which reveals key insights on how to retain paying customers in solid waste management and other user fee-based models of social entrepreneurship.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, WASH
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The Blind Spot in the EU’s New Deforestation Regulations: Laws and Satellites Don’t Save Forests — People Do
The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) represents an ambitious legislative effort to protect our planet’s remaining forests. But Priscillia Moulin at MosaiX highlights a potential flaw in the regulations: To meet the EUDR's data requirements and prove that their supply chains are deforestation-free, major commodity buyers are turning to remote sensing and satellite AI — and if these technologies detect any tree-cover loss, the path of least resistance is often to permanently exclude that supplier. She argues that this creates the illusion of compliance while pushing vulnerable small farmers into the grey market, as satellite algorithms can identify changes in forest cover but cannot determine intent or causality, or assess other complex realities on the ground. She proposes three ways companies can comply with the EUDR without freezing smallholders out of the EU's premium, regulated markets.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Analysis: Green Crime Goes Global
Environmental crime has become so extensive that it is reshaping the global policy agenda, evolving from a niche concern to an urgent topic of international diplomacy.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Technology
- Region
- Global
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ADB Approves $50 Million Loan to Modernize Nepal’s Customs, Boost Trade and Jobs
Aligned with Nepal’s Sixteenth Plan and broader efforts to promote private sector-led growth, diversify the economy, and strengthen resilience, the reforms support the implementation of the Government of Nepal’s Customs Reform and Modernization Plan, Trade Logistics Policy, and new Industrial and Logistics Trade Master Plan.
- Region
- South Asia
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UN Report Flags $800 Billion Climate Fund Gap in Asia-Pacific, Calls for Synergistic Action
The report titled ‘Asia-Pacific synergies report: Advancing synergistic solutions to the triple planetary crisis and the SDGs’ said that framing cooling as a health and safety issue strengthened political support and facilitated coordination across energy, urban, labour and social sectors.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Global
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Report: Africa’s Green Transition to Create Up to 84 Million Jobs by 2050 but It Risks Embedding Inequality Without Urgent Action
Africa’s green transition could generate up to 84.5 million jobs by 2050 but without concerted policy action the benefits risk entrenching inequality rather than reducing it.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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We Economists Have Done the Maths: ‘Growth’ Is a Doomed Strategy – There Is a Better Way
For decades, the recipe was simple: grow the economy, and poverty would gradually disappear. But the promise that economic growth would “lift all boats” has not been kept.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Global
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‘Deep Pockets’ vs. ‘Long Pockets’ in DPI: What Instant Payments and Open Finance Tell Us About Sustainable Funding for Digital Public Infrastructure
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is gaining traction in emerging markets around the world. But as David Porteous at Integral: Governance Solutions and Rafe Mazer at Fair Finance Consulting explain, while the financial cost of building DPI may be modest, operating it at scale requires ongoing costs to be allocated across the ecosystem over time, making DPI sustainability fundamentally a governance issue centered on pricing policies. They explore how two of the three broadly accepted categories of DPI, instant payment systems and open finance, can develop credible mechanisms to finance long-term costs — while maintaining incentives for participants and trust among users.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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