Business/Markets

Strange as it may appear, I cannot hide my excitement to read in the World Economic Forum’s 2016 global risk report the great emphasis on the risks posed by climate change. Quoting WEF, the top finding is “the potential for climate change to exacerbate water crises, with impacts including conflict and more forced migration, calling […]

The 2016 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting follows an extraordinary year with the first-ever truly global response to some of the most challenging problems in our relationship with the planet. The “Anthropocene” made headlines earlier this month, as scientists presented further evidence that we have entered a new era in Earth’s history – one in […]

On August 6th the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) launched a two month public consultation on its proposal for a voluntary add-on standard, RSPO Next, which aims to draw on the strengths and breadth of the RSPO to help companies deliver on their ‘no-deforestation’ commitments. If successfully adopted by the RSPO, WWF believes RSPO […]

Bella Roscher, Forest Project Coordinator for the WWF and IKEA partnership, reports on the importance of smallholders, certification and partnership in creating a more sustainable timber market. Around the world, millions of “smallholders” – people who manage or use forests that are considered small in relation to others in their region, and who mainly apply […]

When I asked around the office how much soy people ate during a year the answers were along the lines of ‘none’, ‘a little’ or the ‘odd splash of soy sauce or soy milk’. With my perhaps unusual request came several questions of what exactly is soy? And in what forms can one eat or […]

Long meetings and animated discussions are usually fuelled by coffee. But at the New Generation Plantations (NGP) annual meeting in Santiago, Chile, most of us were drinking maqui juice. Maqui berries grow wild in the forests of southern Chile. They’re so rich in antioxidants that they make other superfoods look positively ordinary. And, mixed with […]

What could be better than a blog about Nick Cave and palm oil? Nothing, I hear you say. I was humming along to the song ‘Red Right Hand’ the other night. I don’t know all of the lyrics and hence I hum a lot. One line that I do know the words to and that […]

My name is Denis Pozzebon, and I am a second-generation cane farmer in the Burdekin. In 1954, my father emigrated from Italy. He had nothing in his pocket. (He always tells me that story.) When dad made it up to Queensland, he went off to cut cane by hand. He did that for a few […]

For those of us who work on water, yesterday was a big day. The World Economic Forum released the results of its 2015 global risk survey, and guess what tops the list for potential impact? Water crises. In a perverse way, I greeted this news with enthusiasm. And I wasn’t alone. My network of water […]

The holiday season is coming and if your family is anything like mine that means there will be a lot of chocolate given, eaten and enjoyed. Huzzah! The time of year you can eat chocolate with complete freedom, knowing that you are part of an international movement of chocolate lovers. Not that I’m obsessed with […]