Browse Knowledge

This paper examines the leakage of plastics and other pollutants into the ocean and the resulting impacts on marine ecosystems, human health, and the economy. The paper comments on the kind of regenerative global industry that needs to be built as well as integrated solutions to reduce all pollutants to the ocean.

This paper proposes seven holistic approaches for the reduction of pollutants in the ocean:

• Improve wastewater management
• Improve stormwater management
• Adopt green chemistry practices and new materials
• Implement coastal zone improvements
• Practice radical resource efficiency
• Recover and recycle materials
• Build local systems for safe food and water

In light of the growing interest in natural capital accounting (NCA) and a clear demand for methodologies for including biodiversity into NCA, a wide range of initiatives have been launched to develop pragmatic biodiversity metrics for businesses and financial institutions (FI). Faced with multiple approaches and based on requests from its members, the EU Business Biodiversity Platform started a critical and constructive assessment of a sample of biodiversity measurement approaches developed for or by businesses and FIs in 2018.

The focus of this report is on identifying common ground amongst biodiversity measurement approaches with the final objective to support businesses and FI in selecting an approach that best fits their specific business context. The Report is based on a thorough analysis of 12 biodiversity measurement approaches, technical workshops by the Aligning Biodiversity Measures for Business initiative and feedback from the discussions during the European Business and Nature Summit in Madrid on 7 and 8 November 2019. 

This report provides a checklist that has been developed to provide a comprehensive list of the disclosures that asset owners’ stakeholders are likely to be interested in to adopt sustainable investment.

This report focuses on the path to net zero; the next and most pressing challenge that the global community faces. It equips policy-makers, practitioners, and interested observers with insights on how to make the agreement a reality in this make-or-break year. It features short, incisive articles from 30 authors drawn from the UN system and from governments, the private sector, academia, and civil society. They include:

Carbon Tracker has been writing for many years about which areas are most at risk from the energy transition. They have focused on different areas of supply and demand for existing and new assets, over separate timescales, and the conclusions of that analysis are incorporated into this report.

This report published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) presents its findings upon the newly installed renewable power capacity.

This study presents a review of the literature on the economic features of the chemical leasing and of similar business models, focusing on the drivers and barriers and comparing their functioning to traditional contracts.

This report presents key findings on chemical leasing—a business model that decouples the supplier’s income from volume sold, as the customer pays for the results the chemical use generates, not the volume of chemicals used.

Basic Statistics 2020 presents development indicators for 46 economies in Asia and the Pacific, including new data on economic, environmental, and social indicators used globally to track progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

This country forest note provides an upstream analysis of the status of forests as well as investments and policies relevant to the forest sector in the Lao People’s Demographic Republic. The analysis looks at forests in a programmatic and cross-sectoral manner to strategically position the World Bank Group to support the country in delivering on forest-relevant interventions.