The Sustainability Imperative
As organizations struggle to define a strategy that balances purpose and profit, opportunities are increasingly emerging to take the lead in sustainability initiatives. Front-line advances in areas such as net-zero emissions, AI-powered solutions for the underserved, precision agriculture, digital healthcare, and more are delivering business benefits, while simultaneously contributing to the realization of the UN’s 17 SDGs. We provide the expert thinking, debate, and guidance to help your organization reposition and transform in the era of sustainability.
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Malni Kumarathunga and Athula Ginige address the important topic of sustainable agri-food ecosystems, an issue that affects all of us. The amount of global food waste is alarming and, not surprisingly, has a huge detrimental impact on natural resources. Blockchain can enhance trust along the supply chain and improve the situation, especially for smallholder farmers. The authors’ suggested model simultaneously reduces greenhouse gas emissions, allows for better resource use, and improves the livelihood of farmers.
Horst Treiblmaier elaborates on the complex concepts of blockchain and sustainability, both of which are comprehensive and frequently misunderstood. He illustrates how the technology offers a multitude of capabilities (e.g., immutability of data, shared access, programmability, security) that can yield numerous beneficial outcomes for sustainability efforts.
Ali Arabnya and Amin Khodaei explore blockchain’s potential to create the sustainable energy grid of the future. One of the defining features of the technology is decentralization, which perfectly matches with the idea of distributing the production, trading, and consumption of energy. This transition is going to be complex, and the authors do an excellent job of outlining what needs to be done and which challenges need to be overcome to produce more robust and efficient energy systems.
Last year, we conducted six focus groups, each containing seven participants and a moderator, to discuss topics related to just business behavior by the largest public corporations in America. Participants said that honest, transparent disclosures affect how positively or negatively consumers and shareholders value the company. This Advisor takes a closer look at the issue of corporate transparency.
Scope 3 sources (GHGs produced by external suppliers and customer activities) represent the largest opportunity to lower emissions, making up at least 70% of overall emissions for most industries. As such, companies that are serious about minimizing their carbon footprint must focus strongly on Scope 3.
The aviation industry is committed to achieving decarbonization by continuing energy-efficiency efforts and introducing sustainable fuels and new types of aircraft. As we explore in this Advisor, this decarbonization will require steady, transformational growth.
Business for Nature, along with the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) and several other partners, provides a framework called High-Level Business Action on Nature. As we explore in this Advisor, the framework offers an overview of key actions companies can take to help reverse nature loss and contribute to a nature positive world.
In Part III of this Advisor series on reducing methane emissions, we uncover new developments for mitigating methane in the fossil fuel sector.