Climate & Environment

Environmental Strategies to Fight Poverty

Bringing the Lessons of Clean Sanitation Home

Having access to clean toilets is not just a basic human right – it’s also a health necessity. But in India, nearly 50 million people[1] lack access to adequate sanitation, increasing the risk of water contamination and diseases for these individuals.​
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How Can the Healthcare Sector Leverage its Economic Power to Address Climate Change?

The health sector is on the frontline when it comes to dealing with the ever-increasing effects of climate change; and yet the sector with a unique healing mission is also contributing to the problem through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its activities, undermining the health of the very populations it seeks to heal.
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We Finally Have an Official Climate Emergency. But is that the full picture?

From climate change to climate crisis and now a climate emergency, the growing debate around the language used for some of our biggest global challenges is missing the most important word for addressing them: resilience.​
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PREVIEW #BFPOXFORD Keynote Profile: Monique Ntumngia, Winner of the Visa Everywhere Initiative

Be inspired by #BFPOxford Keynote speaker Monique Ntumngia, as she tells us more about the Green Girls Organisation, an award-winning clean energy technological innovation, which is creating a route towards economic independence for women and girls in Africa.
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The Journey of Total to Inclusive Energy Solutions

Over the last decade, many multinational corporations (MNCs) have attempted to set up inclusive businesses of one kind or another, with varying success. Despite good intentions and the investment of significant resources, few of these pilots have been successful and an even smaller proportion has reached significant scale.​
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The Business Case for Climate-Resilient Agriculture

In Uganda, TechnoServe is partnering with Nile Breweries Limited and the Sustainable Food Lab to identify climate risks in sorghum and barley supply chains.
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No Time to Waste: The Plastic Crisis and the World’s Poorest

IDS Research Fellow Patrick Schröder explores how a moving from a ‘throwaway economy’ to a ‘circular economy’ could help tackle the environmental issues that are riding high on current media and political debates
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In Benin, Young Entrepreneurs are Tackling the Plastic Problem

Through TechnoServe’s BeniBiz program, young entrepreneurs like Babatundé Oguidi are getting the training and technical advice they need to run successful micro-enterprises.
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To Boldly Go Where We’ve Not Been Before Doesn’t Need to be a Leap of Faith

Star Trek’s Chief of Logic (COL), Spock nailed it when he said that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” If we are bold and if we act now to change our organisations and our systems we will help ensure that future generations do that other thing the pointy-eared one said and “Live long and prosper.” ​
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Business as Usual – Or Business with Purpose?

As we launch our new strategy, Laura Kelly, Director of IIED’s Shaping Sustainable Markets research group, considers how the private sector can respond to development and environmental challenges – and how IIED can support business to deliver positive change.
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How We Got Our Toilet Business Moving Again

By May 2018, we knew something was missing in the business model for Sama Sama, a toilet business iDE had started in rural Ghana in 2016.1 After two years of knocking on doors, sales were lower than expected or desired. This is a sure sign that another round of design is needed.
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New Ideas are Essential to Ward off Global Water Shortage Threat

Katharine Teague, Head of Advocacy at AB Sugar, explains why one of the world’s leading sugar businesses has created The Innovate Irrigation Challenge  in partnership with WaterAid and the Centre for Industrial Sustainability at the University of Cambridge.
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Practical Action and the IKEA Foundation: Can Small Holder Farming Really Work for Some of the World’s Poorest?

Practical Action and the IKEA Foundation have launched a new partnership worth €6.4million. The partnership will work with 6,000 young smallholder farmers in rural Kenya. Currently, half of the world’s small holder farmers go hungry. The partnership aims to develop the learning and evidence to demonstrate that sustainable farming can provide decent livelihoods whilst protecting the environment.
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Water-Wise Coffee: Making Sustainable Business Profitable in Ethiopia

As greater traceability and ever-growing consumer interest in coffee origins increase the incentives for sustainable production, more opportunities to align profits and sustainability will emerge. If we are innovative and approach problems from a business perspective, we can help the supply chain grow even greener.​
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Fashion has a Huge Waste Problem. Here’s How it Can Change

The biggest trends in fashion today are ones no one wants to be seen in. They include vastly increased clothing production and declining use, massive levels of waste and more greenhouse gas emissions than international shipping and flights combined.​
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WE SOLVE: A Unique Partnership Creates Jobs for Women and Breaks the Barriers to Clean Energy

The Arusha region is home to Tanzania’s nomadic Maasai and other communities who farm and herd in the plains around Mount Meru. Communities here face life without light as soon as the sun sets, meaning that kids can’t play in the streets or study and families are often dependent on expensive and toxic fuel-powered resources to do their daily chores. It is also here that women are seeking a livelihood so they can take care of their families.
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We Learned Simple Ways to Improve the Local Environment and Our Income

In the Nawa region in Côte d’Ivoire, Mondelēz International’s Cocoa Life partners with Impactum and CARE International to engage women and address climate change and deforestation through a Green Entrepreneurship pilot project. They are helping women learn the knowledge and skills needed to create a sustainable future for cocoa farming communities, and generate income for themselves and their communities. ​
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Forests, Farmers and Cococa: Getting the Balance Right

How can we find the right balance between protecting the forests, growing cocoa sustainably and helping the farmers? Darrell High talks about the action plan laid out by Nestle to help end deforestation and restore forests in the cocoa supply chain.
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Claims, Credibility and Landscape Approaches

As the rates of climate change, deforestation and biodiversity loss continue to increase, the urgency to address these sustainability challenges grows. In recent years, landscape and jurisdictional approaches have become an increasingly popular response to these challenges. Patrick Mallet, Innovations Director at ISEAL, and Akiva Fishman, Senior Program Officer at World Wildlife Fund, discuss what credible assurance at a landscape level looks like. ​
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How Can We Address the Global Sanitation Challenge? Insights from “Make a Splash! Toilets for All”

Japan’s maker of water and housing products, LIXIL, has invested in a sustainable social business – SATO – to help bring affordable toilets to those that need them. In 2018, their work on SATO led them to a new partnership, “Make a Splash! Toilets for All” with UNICEF to tackle the global sanitation challenge. How did this partnership evolve and what has been learnt along the way?
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What do we mean by "Climate & Environment"?

Explore initiatives that leverage climate and environmental preservation as critical tools in the global fight against poverty.

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