Terry Slavin

Catherine Early and Terry Slavin report on the implications in America and Europe as corporates withdraw targets to buy from minority and women-owned businesses

News earlier this year that Asian clothing factories supplying H&M and Zara were buying cotton linked to deforestation and land-grabbing in Brazil doubtless come as a shock to the two global fashion giants, who pointed to the fact that the cotton had been certified sustainable by the Better Cotton initiative.

As a girl growing up in Nigeria, Sandra C Chukwudozie was struck by the stark contrastbetween the country’s abundant natural resources – oil, gas and minerals – and the overwhelming energy poverty of its people.

Marcelo Montanari likes to say he was born under a coffee tree. In the four generations that his family has farmed coffee in Brazil after emigrating from Italy 130 years ago, the Motanaris had to relocate four times, when farming became unviable for either political or climate reasons.

Compared with the greenery-bedecked skyscrapers of Singapore’s central business district, Keppel Bay tower, on the city’s harbourfront, looks a decidedly ordinary 18-storey box of glass and steel.

As U.N. Women’s latest report again confirms, the struggle for greater gender equality has stalled, with women continuing to have to fight to have their voices heard in boardrooms and in corridors of power. For women working in climate change, this iniquity was crystallized late last year, when the government of Azerbaijan announced the organizing committee of this year’s COP29 climate conference

To see how escalating deforestation and rising temperatures are already having profound impacts, look no further than the Amazon rainforest, where water levels last year reached their lowest since measurement began, threatening both humans and animals – and the integrity of the world’s biggest tropical forest.

At COP26 in Glasgow, nature’s role in tackling climate change was acknowledged for the first time, with a day devoted to “nature-based solutions”, and 141 countries signing up to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 through the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use.

In a small geodesic dome in the otherworldly setting of Iceland’s giant Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, Olafur Teitur Jonsson is demonstrating a novel approach to storing CO2 emissions that is attracting global attention.

For Icelandic recycling firm Pure North, the ability to earn money from selling plastics credits would be a game changer in its efforts to make the tiny country on the fringes of Europe lift its paltry recycling rates.