The Sonen team recently had a healthy competition calculating each team member’s water consumption. The results – even among the biggest water savers – were surprising. Shorter showers and more efficient dishwashing are just the beginning – do you know how much water goes into your sandwich? Find out more here.
McKinsey & Company
May 2015
Three billion people will join the global consumer class over the next two decades, accelerating the degradation of natural resources and escalating competition for them. Nowhere is this growing imbalance playing out more acutely than the water sector. Already, scarcity is so pronounced that we cannot reach many of our desired economic, social and environmental goals. If we continue business as usual, global demand for water will exceed viable resources by 40 percent by 2030.
Report: Harnessing Social Impact Investing in Latin America
Atlantic Council
May 2015
The report demonstrates that impact investing is making a real difference in Latin America by making financially sound investments that help make social progress in the realms of education, health care and inequality. The Report tries to make clear that, although social enterprise is driven by the private sector, policymakers also have an essential role to play. Governments must enforce rules, invest in core infrastructure, and act as important risk-bearers, supporting promising, early-stage initiatives.
The Economist
By Mark Clifford
April 25, 2015
The Asian economic miracle has lifted millions out of poverty, but at a terrible cost to natural ecosystems. The author makes a powerful case or phasing out subsidies and introducing muscular regulation that uses a mix of incentives and penalties to encourage green growth. America offers a good example: a successful trading system for sulphur-dioxide emissions solved the problem of acid rain by providing polluters with strong incentives to clean up; they could sell credits in the marketplace for a profit if they cleaned up beyond the minimum required by regulation.
The Precision Agriculture Revolution: Making the Modern Farmer
Foreign Affairs
By Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer
May/June 2015 Issue
Agriculture has gone from nursing individual plants suited to a specific environment to changing soil, seed and pesticides to significantly increase uniform yields of crops. Today, that uniform process is starting to reverse, taking advantage of information technology, farmers can now collect precise data about their fields and use that knowledge to customize how they cultivate each square foot.
