Today, on World Environment Day, we reflect on the latest round of negotiations towards a Global Plastic Pollution Treaty and what financial markets should take away from the discussions.

To have any hope of limiting climate heating to 1.50C: stopping deforestation and cutting methane emissions by 45% before 2030 are essential to meet our interlinked climate, nature and development goals and significantly reduce the food system’s GhG footprint. Transforming the energy system alone will not be sufficient.

Unfortunately, many financial institutions have been ignoring the problems of deforestation and methane emissions for far too long. 61% of financial institutions covered by Global Canopy’s latest Forest 500 survey do not have any policies to tackle deforestation in their lending or investment portfolios. With only seven years left to achieve these targets, action must be taken now.

If you’re looking for a job where compensation can be linked to your impact, consider becoming Head of Traceability (HoT), especially at a nature-dependent company.
We found only 18 companies with a Head of Traceability – excluding companies whose business is to sell traceability solutions and government agencies. By comparison, there are at least 10,000 Heads of Sustainability on LinkedIn. One of the possible reasons why HoTs are a rare species could be that it exposes management to more searching questions from financial institutions, which should be engaging with company executives and enquiring where the traceability function sits within their management structure.

The IPCC Sixth Synthesis Report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all. It demonstrates a clear recognition of the interconnection between nature and climate. A number of intertwined factors need to be addressed by policymakers alongside climate change. This includes nature and its ecosystems.

Decarbonisation is a business imperative for companies looking to remain competitive in the long term. As such, organisations must develop a clear understanding of their current carbon footprint and devise strategies for reducing and ultimately eliminating their emissions. According to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) this ‘climate transition process’ has set over 1,600 companies on a 30-year journey to Net Zero. Planet Tracker, has developed a disclosure assessment template which can be used by investors and lenders to determine the credibility of a company’s climate transition plan.

The United Nations (UN) 2023 Water Conference in New York from 22 to 24 March 2023 will be the first UN Conference to focus strictly on water since 1977. It builds on the momentum generated by frameworks such as the Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework. Commonly traded food products consume vastly different amounts of water. This blog examines how much water major food products require and exposes this hidden trade network. For example, cocoa beans consume 100 times as much total water as sugar crops. Beef, the most water-intensive animal derived product, consumes about 3 to 4 times more than chicken or pork.