Action on Climate Resilience is Business Critical

Business Action on Climate Resilience

As the impacts of climate change bite, business efforts to reduce emissions must now be matched by action to strengthen climate resilience. Here I set out four action areas where companies can better protect themselves and others, while seizing opportunities to market resilience-enhancing products. Many businesses are acting on climate change: setting net-zero or science-based […]

Six Principles for Businesses to Drive Sustainable Behaviour Change in Low-Income Communities

Six Principles for Businesses to Drive Sustainable Behaviour Change in Low-Income Communities

Six Principles for Businesses to Drive Sustainable Behaviour Change in Low-Income Communities. Creating a more sustainable future for people and planet will require fundamental changes in attitudes and behaviours across society worldwide. This is no easy feat; altering behaviours is a long process, one which requires consistency and encouragement. Business plays an important role in […]

10 Things You Could Be Doing as a Man on International Women’s Day

ALLY Dice

International Women’s Day. A day to not only celebrate everyone who identifies as a woman but also help drive gender equity in the workplace. Alas our Masculinity in the Workplace report shows that there is still so much more work to do and that starts by ensuring we engage more men. And that means getting far […]

What Does It Really Take for Companies to Lead on Gender Equity?

Digital transformation image

Women drive our global economy. They control more than $20 trillion in annual consumer spending today, and that figure is expected to rise to nearly $30 trillion annually in the next five years. As a market, they represent an opportunity more than twice as big as China and India combined. And the number of women joining the workforce is […]

Four Essential Elements for the “Just” in “Just Transitions”

The concept of “just transition” – a whole-of-society approach to decarbonisation that respects human rights while promoting sustainable development, the eradication of poverty, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs – has come increasingly centre stage in national and international discussions on finance, energy, agriculture, and other key industrial transitions to net-zero.  While […]

Millers Change the Game for Food Fortification

WEF Meeting 2023 Discussing Food Fortification

Food fortification has been recognized as a highly effective intervention to counter malnutrition, and it has been the subject of events and commitments at the Davos World Economic Forums before. But millers – shorthand for the food processors who produce fortified staples, including rice, flour and oil – have not historically been at the centre […]

Nudges & Bridges: As Good As It Gets

The category As Good As It Gets is about a sense of joy. Think to a time when you experienced something that was just, well, as good as things can get. What mood does it put you in? How do you feel about others? Do you have a sense of wanting to connect with others, […]

Five Lessons from Ten Corporate-Charity Partnerships

In one of my series of articles about progress on eliminating world poverty in the last 25 years, I talked about why it’s not just about official aid. Government policy and the private sector really matter too. At CARE I worked with ten of the UK’s largest FTSE100 companies. And I gave a couple of […]

Seafood’s Social Justice Problem: How to Better Share the Benefits of Aquatic Foods

_Fish market, Vĩnh Trường_ by Khánh Hmoong is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0_3.jpg

The global fish and seafood sector – the world’s fastest growing food-producing industry – is at a crisis point. The narrow pursuit of profit has led not only to unsustainable growth but to the exclusion of entire communities, undermining social justice, mobility and progress. Three countries – China, Norway and Peru – account for almost a quarter of […]

New Research Reveals the Benefits and Costs of Gender-Smart Technical Assistance to SMEs and Investors

Woman smiling, Selling Banana's on a stall

Gender lens investing includes three key entry points for investors: (1) providing capital to women-led/founded companies and/or gender-forward businesses; (2) applying a gender lens to the investment cycle, such as during pipeline development; and (3) funding and supporting the design and implementation of gender-inclusive technical assistance (TA) activities. Investors often focus on the first two […]

Why Investing in Informal Women Workers is Critical to Maintaining Resilient Supply Chains

Women on a blue background with sewing machine

Over 60% of the world’s employed population make their living through informal work, with no access to formal contracts or protection. Women make up a disproportionate percentage of informal workers, with 740 million women’s livelihoods dependent on the informal economy globally. Lack of secure employment contracts or social protection for these workers means that when […]

Fostering Innovation in Healthcare Financing for Vulnerable Populations

Two doctors walking side-by-side in a village.

Major progress has been made in improving the health of millions of people globally, with higher life expectancy, lower maternal and child mortality, and better prevention of prevalent communicable diseases. But in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries, access to quality healthcare remains unaffordable for most people. Without a financial safety net, a […]

Why the Burden on Business Women to ‘do it all’ Must Stop

Shadab Khan in workshop arms crossed

Glorifying multi-tasking by women entrepreneurs must stop. Women the world over are often celebrated for juggling their business with childcare and household responsibilities. The assumption that a woman should be the primary caregiver and the man should be the breadwinner are norms so entrenched they remain consistently unchallenged. This needs to change. NGOs and businesses […]

The Unrecognised Intersections Between Climate Change and Modern Slavery

Affected families carry emergency-supplies over a makeshift-bridge-after-the mudslide in Freetown Sierra Leone

Modern slavery is on the rise. New global estimates of modern slavery published in September 2022 found that almost 50 million people are in modern slavery, a rise of 10 million people since the previous estimates were released in 2017. This increase has been driven by the compounding crises of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and armed […]