Tag: nim

All Eyes on Agriculture

“Emerging nations have great hunger and meeting this growing demand for food will require great investments to strengthen agriculture and make it more productive.”

Marc Garrigasait, President and Director of the Panda Agriculture and Water Fund, 2016

The growing demand for food across emerging economies is a point of great interest for the world’s largest institutional investors. Sovereign wealth funds are expected to drive a four-fold increase in agriculture investments over the next decade to a total of $240 billion.

A study of the world’s most lucrative Sovereign Wealth Funds by the Esade Business School, KPMG and Icex-Invest found that the current trends in the agricultural investment space point towards an impressive rise in asset allocation from $60 billion to $240 billion in the last decade. …

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Accomplishing Full Sustainability in Waste Management

“Through a move towards stable or declining populations, denser and better-managed cities consuming fewer resources, and greater equity and use of technology, we can bring peak waste forward and down. The environmental, economic and social benefits would be enormous.”

Dan Hoornweg, Perinaz Bhada-Tata and Chris Kennedy, Authors of “Waste Production Must Peak This Century”

The habits of consumers and the rising demand for new products is becoming a serious problem due to the ever-increasing amount of waste that is polluting and degrading the planet’s ecosystems.

A new report from the World Bank’s Urban Development department forecasts a 70% global increase in urban solid waste by 2025, rising from more than 3.5 million tons per day in 2010 to more than 6 million tons per day by 2025.…

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Why Zika’s Emergency Status Downgrade is Bad

In a declaration of defeat, the World Health Organization (WHO) no longer considers Zika a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Although this may seem like good news, this decision in fact reflects the severity of Zika’s rapid transition from obscurity to a permanent threat to human health. The disease now joins the ranks of HIV, XDR-TB, Ebola, Marbug, Dengue and an exhaustive list of other killers that have spread around the world in record time.

The escalation in severity has been remarkable. First documented nearly seventy years ago, Zika was originally considered harmless. 80% of those originally infected demonstrated no physical symptoms.…

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