How Can We End Malnutrition?
Here is a business proposition: invest $1 today and reap $16 in benefits, saving millions of lives at the same time. Yes, this 1,500% payback is possible – according to theGlobal Nutrition Report 2014 – and represents a return on investment that has comfortably outperformed the US stock market over the past 80 years, while […]
Passion Fruit and a New Approach to Agriculture
Partnering to Scale Impact of Sustainable Entrepreneurs
A woman using a solar energy charger, supplied by Kumudzi Kuwale, 2014 SEED Africa Award Winner By Helen Marquard, Executive Director SEED & Anais Mangin, Project Manager SEED Are locally-driven social and environmental enterprises too small to have an impact? We at SEED don’t think so, and Organic Africa demonstrates that. In 2007, when everyone […]
Eight Steps to the Four A's of Food Security
The potential of African agriculture is undoubtedly bright, but it will take more than just encouraging investment from large scale agri-players – of which Olam is one – into the continent. Food security depends on the four As – the essential combination of availability (is there enough), accessibility (in the right place), affordability (for the […]
Eight Steps to the Four A’s of Food Security
The potential of African agriculture is undoubtedly bright, but it will take more than just encouraging investment from large scale agri-players – of which Olam is one – into the continent. Food security depends on the four As – the essential combination of availability (is there enough), accessibility (in the right place), affordability (for the […]
No Strings, Big Risks and Even Bigger Rewards
We are taught at school if at first you don’t succeed, then try, try and try again, yet how many charities put this mantra into practice? Too many charities avoid risk and rarely admit failure, especially to their donors, which prevents them from learning from mistakes or revising their strategies. Yet charities have such huge […]
Three Ways Businesses Can Boost Sustainable Development
What does a procurement manager in Managua have to do with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Or a Kenyan farmer’s mobile-phone plan with the World Economic Forum’s development discussions? When it comes to long-term development solutions – well, everything. Given the increasing involvement of the private sector in developing countries, ordinary aspects of doing business […]
How We Can Help Smallholders Feed the World
The world’s population is expected to number more than 9 billion people by 2050, and to feed them agriculture will have to grow by 60%. It’s an expansion that can only be fuelled by investment – to the tune of $83 billion. Growth generated by agriculture is up to four times more effective at reducing […]
Strengthening Public Extension Service Delivery to Farmers in Bangladesh
Mahmud Zaman explains how the LAN project aims to increase farm productivity and efficiency. A recent case study published by Katalyst, Improving Public Agricultural Extension Services in Bangladesh Using the M4P Approach, has attracted interest from a wide range of readers and the BEAM Exchange has organised a webinar to discuss the topics and share […]
Living Wage Comes of Age?
January in the UK is a time of New Year’s resolutions, traditionally with commitments to new goals, or renewed attempts to meet some old ones. The trick is to stick with your plans and implement them – not run out of steam half way through February. I’m curious to see if this is the year […]
Why Companies Fail to Pay a Living Wage
With companies seeking to maximise profits to meet investors’ expectations, workers in the supply chain lose out and remain trapped in poverty. Erinch Sahan looks at why workers continue to earn poverty wages around the world and argues that companies need to be given the freedom to forgo profits for the greater good of shared […]
Lifting the Game in Sustainable Reporting
With the start of a new year, it is usually a time for people to reflect on the year that has passed, draw lessons from it so that they can improve themselves in the coming year. For sustainability practitioners, and advocacy evangelisers like myself, it is also an opportunity for us to review the year […]
Enhancing Vital Goods and Services Provided by Nature
25 years ago you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone in a company who thought that nature had anything to do with their business. We thought that nature would pollinate, control crop pests and disease and would continue to provide plentiful water and rich soil – all free of charge. But with rapid industrialisation […]
The Connected Farmer Alliance
You can’t talk about reducing poverty in this world without talking about agriculture. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, with the vast majority dependent on agriculture for all or part of their incomes. Growth in the agricultural sector, therefore, has been shown to be at least twice as effective at reducing […]
Transcending Boundaries for Global Food Security
In just 25 years, Olam International has gone from a single-country, single-commodity company to a fully integrated global agribusiness firm operating in 65 countries. This growth is a true reflection of the meanings of the word ‘olam’, which is alternatively translated from old Hebrew to mean ‘transcending boundaries’, ‘the world’ and ‘timeless’. These definitions also […]
A Unique Way of Investing in Small Family Businesses
Interview with Composer Christopher Gunning, Lendwithcare Supporter It’s no secret that Christmas, traditionally associated with goodwill and generosity, has over the years become a festival of gluttony and excess. Waste, too, is slowly creeping up: this year an estimated £2.4billion will be spent on unwanted gifts in Britain alone. Charity gifts are on the rise […]
Giving The Gift Of Opportunity This Christmas
When crowdfunding is combined with microfinance, amazing things can happen. Jo Broughton of Lendwithcare, the peer-to-peer microfinancing platform devised by aid and development charity CARE International, says that in the fight against poverty this is a winning combination. Lendwithcare began in 2010, offering individuals in the UK the chance to club together to finance the […]
Fighting Climate Change With Indigenous Livelihoods
edia Manager, Ashoka Changemakers In Indonesia, where forests are being destroyed at the highest rates in the world, an untapped solution exists for balancing conservation with economic expansion. Indonesia is the world’s fastest deforester—a dubious distinction that once belonged to Brazil. A recent reportrevealed that more than 2 million acres of primary forest are cleared […]
Global Health: 3 Good News Stories From 2014
When the calendar turned to 1 January, who could have imagined 2014 would be quite such a tumultuous year for global health. The outbreak of Ebola virus, which emerged in February this year, continues to rage across West Africa and has killed more than 6,000 people. No one yet knows when it will end, but […]
How Inclusive Business is Transforming Tourism
In 2012, 1 billion tourists travelled across borders, compared to 25 million in 1950. Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, and it’s growing most quickly in emerging and developing countries. Currently, UNWTO calculates that tourism is responsible for 9% of global GDP, for over 1 in 11 jobs and for USD 1.3 […]