Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

P LASTICS AT THE BRS COP Many countries are taking steps to mitigate plastic pollution, recognizing it as a serious and rapidly growing issue of concern worldwide that needs an urgent global response. The Basel and Stockholm Conventions have a direct impact on the plastic waste trade, on standards for the management of plastic waste, and on the toxic exposure inherent in the plastic pollution crisis for large and microscopic plastics on the land and in the marine environment. The UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) had invited the Basel Convention “to increase their action to prevent and reduce marine litter and microplastics and their harmful effects,” and the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Convention (BRS) Secretariat has participated in and presented at UNEA’s Ad Hoc Open-Ended Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics. In 2018, Norway proposed amendments to the Basel Convention annexes to bring the global trade in dirty, hard-to-recycle, or u...

"This article first appeared in the RFI Foundation's weekly newsletter " A feature of the responsible finance market for as long as it has existed has been the overlapping and diverse range of what is meant by ‘responsible’ and how it translates (or diverges) between one context and another. A  recent report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC)  does a remarkable job of providing an overarching framework for how to understand responsible finance, in a way that is highly consistent with how the RFI Foundation defines it. The consistency between the IFC’s narrow focus on impact vs. no impact and RFI’s umbrella term lies in the perspective applied: from the financial sector rather than what it invests in.  RFI includes as ‘responsible’ all of the following: socially responsible investing (SRI); environmental, social and governance (ESG); Islamic finance; and impact investment. The IFC more narrowly defines ‘impact investing’ as: “Investments made into companie...

Cairo/Geneva, 7 May 2019 —Egyptian insurance industry leaders and financial regulators, UN officials and key stakeholders gathered in Cairo last month to discuss ways to tackle major sustainability challenges—from climate change, pollution, water scarcity and disaster vulnerability; to social inequality, health risks, and the insurance protection gap. The event, Shaping the sustainable insurance agenda in Egypt , produced a pioneering initiative to develop a national sustainable insurance strategy and action plan—or a “roadmap”—by 2020. This roadmap aims to harness the triple role of the Egyptian insurance industry as risk managers, insurers and investors for economic, social and environmental sustainability—in other words, sustainable development. The event was co-organised by UN Environment’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI) —the largest collaborative initiative between the UN and the global insurance industry—and by the Egyptian Financial Regulatory Auth...