Jobs:[Full-time] Office Manager and PA to the Director of Strategy & Operations at King's College London See more on our Job Board.
10 Megaforces
Friday, February 24th, 2012
Ahead of the Rio +20 Summit, KPMG have released a report identifying 10 sustainability “megaforces”. Their focus is the impact on corporate growth (they are KPMG, after all), but the themes of wealth, water, climate, urbanisation, food security and resource scarcity are relevant to everyone. The table on p37 is a really interesting summary of all the ‘business-as-usual’ projections across these areas. READ MORE
Bringing it home
Friday, April 1st, 2011
Green Alliance have written a new report looking at the role of government in “helping people to live sustainable lives”. Behaviour change, ‘nudging’ and similar initiatives are very popular with the coalition, so this is a timely report. Defenders of behaviour change activity often remind us of the old saying that “an ounce of of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. The problem seems to be that no-one knows where to buy an ounce of prevention. Read more.
India to include environmental costs in GDP
Friday, December 10th, 2010
The Indian Environment Minister has announced that from 2015, their GDP calculations will be reported in a way that includes environmental costs. He said that whilst GDP growth was currently 8% per year, it would only be 5.5% per year if it included the cost of environmental degradation. If this happens, it is likely to have a significant impact on the way new projects are assessed and how companies report environmental data. If it’s successful it could well be adopted by other countries. Read more.
Global Climate Policy Tracker
Friday, April 30th, 2010
The Deutsche Bank research team publish a number of interesting papers tracking climate policy. In a recent report, they note that 154 climate policy announcements were made around the world in the run-up to Copenhagen. In their view, the fight against climate change will be about regional and national agreements rather than global multinational deals. The driving force behind these country-level deals? A desire to be a leader in the new low carbon economy. Read more.
The Third Sector and Climate Change
Friday, February 19th, 2010
March 9th sees the launch of the report from the joint ministerial and third sector Task Force on climate change, the environment and sustainable development. The invite has been published on the DEFRA blog, so appears to be open to anyone who is interested. Read more.
Investing in Climate Change
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
A new report from Deutsche Bank aims to show investors the opportunities available in “climate change sectors”. It is full of useful analysis and consolidates lots of data. It includes policy frameworks being pursued by different governments, market size and trend analysis, as well as a view on how money is currently being invested. It’s free to download and a useful reference piece. Read more.
Dogs and SUVs
Friday, January 8th, 2010
There’s an urban myth circulating that, in environmental terms at least, owning a dog is worse than owning a 4×4. Whether or not this is a meaningful comparison, in this comprehensive analysis the claim is shown to be false by a factor of between 6 and 30 times. Read more.
Just 28p of an offset goes to the project
Friday, December 11th, 2009
With all eyes on Copenhagen, new research shows that only 28p in every pound spent on CDM carbon offsets finds its way to the environmental projects. The rest goes to financing and middlemen. Co-incidentally, 28p in the £ is the amount given to good causes by the National Lottery. So buying voluntary offsets to fight climate change is a bit like buying lottery tickets to give to charity. Read more.
Timberland’s climate change campaign
Friday, November 27th, 2009
It’s becoming common to see businesses campaigning for social causes and trying to mobilise the public around political issues. Shoe company Timberland are running a climate change campaign in the run-up to Copenhagen. It’s interesting to speculate how seriously these campaigns are taken relative to NGO campaigns of a similar scale and flavour. Or even whether joint NGO-Corporate coalitions would be even more influential. READ MORE
Carbon – what we’ve used
Friday, November 13th, 2009
As part of the run-up to COP15, New Scientist have produced a great infographic on carbon emissions. It shows how we have already released 500,000 megatonnes of carbon, primarily through deforestation and fossil fuel use. To stay the right side of a 2 degree increase in temperature, we can only emit another 250,000 megatonnes. READ MORE.