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Alarming Levels of Glyphosate Found in Popular Foods

Towards the end of the 19th Century Ireland’s vast potato fields became infected by an invasive fungal disease and caused the death of one million people. Another two million were forced to leave the country.

We avoid such agricultural catastrophes today with the help of pesticides, a range of synthetic and natural chemicals that control insects, weeds, funguses and bacteria that have that ability to threaten global food security. Now an essential part of our food production system, breakthroughs in synthetic crop care enabled us to sustain our growing populations with increased efficiency and at a lower cost. Only now are we discovering how food and global health has become more vulnerable as a result.…

The Opportunity in Climate Action

Since the US President-elect Donald Trump was chosen, hundreds of governments around the world ranging from superpowers such as China to small-island nations such as the Maldives have convened in Morocco to reaffirm their support for the 2015 UN COP21 Paris Agreement.

According to some of the world’s most renowned environmental scientists, if humankind does not reduce their greenhouse gas emissions life on Earth will become increasingly volatile, unpredictable and dangerous. With continued temperature rise, water stress, ocean acidification, land degradation and crop losses experienced around the world today, the stakes for our environment are at an all time high and we need immediate action.…

Beyond the US Election

On January 20th 2017, Donald J. Trump will be the new President of the United States of America. After years of intense campaigning and an election result met with both jubilation and disappointment at home, global financial markets quickly went into a frenzy of volatility and uncertainty. This is to be expected while the world determines whether the US President-elect’s policies match his often-divisive campaign rhetoric.

An extraordinary time for global financial markets, Trump’s victory saw investors flee to and return from safe haven assets as they considered the implications of such a historic event. Overnight traders from New York to Hong Kong were caught off guard by a result that defied all odds and polls.…

A Better Future is Within Our Reach

After one of the most controversial and cutthroat election campaigns in US political history, which saw the prospective ‘leaders of the free world’ debate policy with an unprecedented lack of respect and decorum, today is the day that will reverberate for generations. Or so many of the world’s news and political organizations will have you think.

As voters walk into voting booths, and as the world watches from the edge of their seats, the normal sense of uncertainty nurtured and propagated by the mainstream media has been catalyzed by presidential campaigns that take advantage of our most fundamental fears. The reason is simple – this is an incredibly effective campaigning strategy as it taps into one of our primal defense mechanisms.…

Don’t Turn Up the Air Conditioning

More than the global debt levels, free trade and immigration, the threat of multi century droughts, rising sea levels and biodiversity’s sixth extinction should be top of the agenda for the world’s leaders. Yet even after four record-breaking debates for the US Presidential election with hundreds of millions of people watching from around the world, there was no mention of an issue that will reverberate for millennia – climate change.

Source: Grist Organization, 2016

Not only will the impact of climate change be seen in our own lifetime, but also for the next 100,000 years. Global warming over the 21^st Century will produce a climate not previously experienced by human civilizations.…

Preserving Biodiversity to Save the World

We are now witnessing the first signs of the planet’s sixth mass extinction, the last of which occurred over 65 million years ago and was caused by an asteroid hitting our planet, resulting in giant tsunamis, powerful earthquakes and acid raid that obliterated 70% of all species over a period of 33,000 years.

This time human interference will be the major catalyst.

According to the latest data released by the World Wildlife Fund and the Institute of Zoology, the global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles are at risk of a 67% decline by 2020 from levels first documented in 1970.…

The Financial Impact of Aging Populations

In their latest white paper on Secular Stagnation, Federal Reserve economists concluded that real GDP growth and real interest rates are expected to remain low in the coming decades as the global economy acclimatizes to a new normal. One reason can be found in Jeanne Lousie Calment, the oldest woman on record, who reached the age of 122 years old. Having witnessed an unprecedented era of human innovation, from the invention of the radio to over 70 million people accessing the Internet, her life represents a profound shift in demographics affecting our population today. Bear in mind a little over 100 years ago the average lifespan around the world was 30 years old.…

“The only investors who shouldn’t diversify are those who are right 100% of the time”

– Sir John Templeton –

The need for asset diversification has never been greater. Subdued financial markets against the backdrop of very high geopolitical tensions around the world is cause for significant concern in the eyes of investors and will drive a return to the diversified portfolio.

Although investors have generally experienced strong asset class returns since the Great Financial Crisis, those returns have been supported by some extraordinary and unprecedented monetary policies around the world in the form of Quantitative Easing. The US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have all embarked on QE in an attempt to stimulate growth and inflate asset prices.…

Innovating Agriculture to Feed the World

Our global food industry has sustained more people with increased efficiency and at a lower cost than any other period in human history. The problem is that agriculture continues to have an astounding and detrimental influence on global health and the environment.

Polluted waterways caused by fertilizer runoff affect the majority of the planet, harmful growth hormones are traced in the meat we eat, malnourishment persists across developing nations, a profound obesity epidemic exists in first world economies and several million pounds of food is unnecessarily wasted every year. Now the leading cause of deforestation, one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and a major contributor to biodiversity’s 6th extinction, global agriculture must evolve to ensure our own survival.…

Secrets of the Exponential

Evolve or die. Certainly a harsh way to perceive the world around us but make no mistake this maxim is more appropriate today than ever before. With the relentless rise of populations, the rapid degradation of our environment and an unprecedented depletion of our most vital resources, such driving pressures are testing the frontiers of mankind and catalyzing innovation in the very way we live and do business.

A new commercial reality is emerging. In order to succeed, create true value and build the new world order in this new economic age we must achieve exponential progress in four key domains – sustainability, efficiency, integrated information systems as well as circular production and consumption.…

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