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Healthy Soils Produce Safer Crops and Healthier People

The very land beneath our feet is an incredible, yet finite resource. Providing critical services to humanity, healthy soil is essential for agriculture, water, carbon sequestration as well as the incredible biodiversity that exists in the world today. The maintenance and enhancement of global soil resources are essential if humanity’s overarching need for food, water, and energy security is to be met. Soils are one of the fundamental bases of life. There’s no denying that the living ecosystem beneath our feet has a major stake in the history and future of Planet Earth.

The soil is utilized globally for biomass production, including agriculture and forestry, as well as for storing, filtering and transforming nutrients, substances, and water.…

The New Frontier of Competitive Advantage

Corporate short-termism has reigned supreme across industry, despite hard evidence supporting the profound value of capitalism and commerce with the long term in mind. Business leaders, governments, and academic institutions are concerned that the corporate focus on quarterly earnings is preventing companies from investing in their workers, research and development as well as technological innovation. We must begin to drive the shift towards capitalism for the long-term in order to create true value; not only by adopting a multi-generational approach when solving the world’s grand challenges, but also by rewriting the very way in which we govern, manage and lead corporations.…

“Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy! Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades – they’re doing an amazing job and we want that to continue.”

Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer at Amazon, June 2017

Amazon has just taken a giant leap into traditional retailing, purchasing the organic food chain Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion ($42 per share). That’s an impressive amount for a once local and always all-natural food store set up in 1978 by a twenty-seven-year-old college dropout and his then college sweetheart.…

The Dangers of Synthetic Pesticides

According to food specialists at the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum, the implementation of an environmentally sustainable food system is an international priority for the development of global health and food security. As further light is shed on the immense environmental and health damage of conventional agriculture, international organizations are increasingly backing organic food systems.

The latest review of scientific research by the European Parliament has found that eating foods with high levels of synthetic pesticides was found to directly impact brain development across the general population. At least 100 synthetic pesticides currently on the market around the world are known to cause neurological disorders.…

Creating Shared Value With Neem

Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers and Chemicals (GNFC) has been awarded the Porter Prize for Creating Shared Value, a prestigious award from the Institute of Competitiveness in affiliation with Harvard Business School, for their Neem Project. Successfully generating $3.9 million in 2016, the GNFC community initiative has provided employment for over 225,000 rural women in India. With plans to expand their operations from 4,000 village collection centers to over 12,000 across the country this year, the project has brought India closer to sustainability by using neem to naturally protect crops, improve soil health and reduce demand of urea – a synthetic fertilizer that is directly responsible for soil degradation and biodiversity loss.…

A Boost in Confidence for the Global Economy

The World Bank has published their latest flagship report on the state of the global economy – Global Economic Prospects, 2017. Here’s what you need to know:

Be Cautiously Optimistic

Increased manufacturing and trade, rising market confidence and stabilizing commodity prices around the world have the World Bank pegging their global economic growth forecasts at 2.7% in 2017. While this will be the fastest rate of growth seen in the last seven years, long-term global economic prospects remain clouded by political uncertainty and renewed financial market turbulence.

Accelerating Global Economic Growth

Source: World Bank (2017)

Think Carefully About the Revival in Global Trade

Healthier industrial activity, investment and commodity prices fueled a revival in global trade growth to 4% in 2017, from a post-crisis low of 2.4% in 2016.…

Pension Funding Gap Set to Overtake Global GDP

The World Economic Forum has calculated that pension systems across the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia will have a joint shortfall of $224 trillion by 2050. If you add China and India to the equation, the combined gap nearly doubles to $400 trillion. That’s five times the size of the current global economic output. Such a shortfall places severe risks on the incomes and quality of life of future generations while setting the industrialized world up for one of the most widespread pension crises in history.

The Global Pension Crisis

Source: Mercer (2017)

Funding this shortfall will not be easy with global debt levels rising to more than 325% of GDP in 2017, reaching an eye-watering $217 trillion.…

Cool Heads Will Prevail in Climate Change Disagreement

President Donald Trump has declared that the United States will withdraw from the historic COP21 Paris Agreement in its current form, as brokered by the United Nations Framework on Climate Change in December 2015.

With an objective to stem the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the landmark Paris Accord saw 195 countries set their own targets in mitigating the drastic impacts of climate change. Despite expert advice from global leaders and heads of industry to uphold the original agreement, President Trump has fulfilled a campaign promise to renege on the previous administration’s commitments to climate action and pave the way for new negotiations to take place.…

Ours is the Era of the Planetary Household

Throughout the 20^th century, the global economic system has prioritized one performance indicator above all else – growth in gross domestic product. In recent decades that focus has propelled the global economy to almost unimaginable heights, pushing inequality to unprecedented levels and intensifying the pressure placed on the world’s most essential resources. The current system, characterized by excessive resource extraction and consumption supported by years of quantitative easing and highly leveraged balanced sheets, risks both economic and ecological collapse. The make, use and lose philosophy for human development and prosperity is clearly unsustainable and demands a fresh strategy that meets the needs of mankind within the means of Planet Earth.…

The Financial Impact of Ecological Debt

Calculating the financial cost of climate change is no easy endeavor. While the impacts of rising temperatures on the foundations of the global economy are well documented, the financial implications remain to be fully understood.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has calculated that helping nations cope with climate impacts will cost the world half a trillion dollars annually by 2050. According to the London School of Economics, climate change is expected to cut the value of the world’s financial assets by $24 trillion by 2050 in the worst-case scenario. The best-case scenario, if efforts are successfully made to build a greener economy, will lead to the loss of only $2.5 trillion.…

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