Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

Guest Blog:  Allen White is vice president and senior fellow at Tellus Institute and directs the institute’s Program on Corporate Redesign. Is the post-war ascendance of multinational corporations irreversible? The world’s roughly 80,000 multinational corporations (MNCs), long dominated by U.S., European and Japanese firms, have been joined by a growing number based in China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies. MNCs are the engine of a quarter of total world production and their global supply chains represent about half of world trade. MNCs have played a major role in driving a tenfold increase since 1979, now totaling $16 trillion, roughly the size of entire U.S. GDP. Amidst this rapid expansion is a concurrent concentration in market power. The world's 1,000 largest companies in 1980 represented about 30 percent of the GDP of the OECD countries. By 2010, that figure rose to 72 percent. Pressures to consolidate among technology, pharmaceuticals, airlines an...

Allen L. White is Vice President and Senior Fellow, Tellus Institute; Co-Founder and former CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative;, Co-founder of Corporation 20/20; and Founder of the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings.   The first weeks of the Trump presidency have raised profound anxieties among government leaders and citizens alike. A steady stream of ill-prepared executive orders, unnerving tweets and unsettling phone calls have left allies and adversaries alike confused about Mr. Trump’s intentions.  In a matter of days, his bellicose tone has raised serious threats of confrontation with China and Iran, alienated Australia, and rattled relations with Mexico and European allies. Meanwhile, the institutional foundations of post- War stability—e.g. NATO, World Trade Organization, United Nations— face a U.S. hostile to the very notion of international rules of conduct. Disruption for disruption’s sake seems to be the order of the day. And while “America Fi...