Business & government - Business

There are plenty of loud voices trying to make politicians believe that airport expansion in the South East is what we need to lift the UK out of recession. But is this simply wishful thinking? How much evidence is there that simply building more runways, so that more flights can go to more places, will [...]

Recently, the fight against climate change suffered a serious blow as MEPs in the European Parliament narrowly voted against a plan to shore up the EU’s struggling emissions trading scheme (ETS). The proposals – known as ‘backloading’ – would have pushed up the price of carbon, which had sunk to record lows. In fact, ahead [...]

Twenty-three trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money. It’s also the amount that is invested globally in fossil fuels, including everything from large institutional money to our own individual pensions. Investing in fossil fuels shares (like shares of oil companies) is often considered a safe choice with minimal risk. But is it really that safe [...]

Indonesia has the second largest natural tropical forests on the planet and these have endured continual threats from illegal logging and unsustainable practices for decades.  WWF and many other local and international groups are working to turn these problems around to ensure ‘High Conservation Value Forests’ are left standing. It would be great to think [...]

The wisdom of the crowd was particularly evident at our pivotal Net Positive conference. The attendees – 200 sustainability experts – offered many great insights for firms stepping up a gear. Their guide to going net positive is available via Green Mondays. For a company to reach a net positive result, it’ll need to make [...]

We’re really excited about a landmark piece of environmental law taking effect this Sunday. For the first time ever there will be a law across all 27 EU member countries banning the import, sale or commercial use of illegally sourced timber and wood products. It’s great news, having spent years campaigning and lobbying for this, [...]

It has been a hectic couple of weeks since the European Parliament voted to ambitiously reform the EU’s Fisheries policy. Now the dust is settling it is time to take stock of what we achieved and what we still need to do to convert this major step forward into meaningful fisheries reform. Perhaps the most [...]

John Compton manages Streetclub by B&Q (Kingfisher), which is the first social network aimed at getting neighbours at street level to talk, share and save together to build a stronger sense of community spirit. B&Q is exploring models of collaborative consumption by creating social network sites such as Streetclub and is featured in WWF’s new [...]

It’s a technology that might be able to safely remove and store harmful carbon emissions from coal and gas-fired power stations. According to some studies it could create 13,000 new jobs in Scotland by 2020. However, some five years after the UK government first launched its £1 billion funding competition, aimed at helping kick-start the [...]

‘Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation, would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees of warming by the end of the century’.  PwC. ‘The world has failed to meet its target to achieve a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss’.  Convention on Biological Diversity. Optimisation is clearly failing.  We need to [...]