Sustainability

• [New] Middle-class growth driven by urbanization and education should help counter the effects of the rapid population aging trend in many economies, including China
• [New] Slowing growth in China has raised concerns about the potential knock-on effect on the global economy.
• [New] The application of the global guidelines and the achievement of their goals will help to conserve forest biodiversity, ensure sustainable forestry, and contribute to the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations linked with forest biodiversity.
• [New] Financially sustainable social enterprises in Saudi Arabia could contribute an additional 2.5% to GDP per year and create more than 250,000 jobs by 2030.
• [New] Somewhere between $ 5-7 trillion per year will be required globally through 2030 to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
• [New] The London Plan (2017) projects 722,000 tonnes of household and commercial and industrial waste arisings in Westminster in 2021 rising to 750,000 tonnes in 2041.
• [New] Firms are signing up to support the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals through the UN Global Compact and setting their own net zero targets which might even be more ambitious than their governments.
• [New] Fry's, a division of Kroger Co. has a goal of eliminating food waste by 2025 by being a part of the Zero Hunger / Zero Waste plan.
• [New] The need to improve production efficiency will continue to rise as global meat consumption grows - it's projected to increase by 12% by the end of the decade.
• [New] By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out, non-recyclable solar panels will double the tonnage of all today's global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades.
• [New] The market for batteries for electric vehicles is expected to grow to more than 2,000 gigawatt hours by 2030 resulting in more than $200 billion in battery consumption.
• [New] The vast sums of money flowing out of Africa through illegal, corrupt practices are undermining progress made by African countries to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
• [New] Electric SUVs and large cars will reach price parity with traditional internal combustion engines by 2022 due to lower fuel efficiency of traditional internal combustion engines, followed by small and medium-sized vehicles in 2024.
• [New] If there is an effective vaccine for the coronavirus available in 2021, the share of UK people working from home in 2022 is likely to be significantly down from 50%.
• [New] Unless we take action now, we face a global recession that could wipe out decades of development and put the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development completely out of reach.
• New Zealand could be sending nearly 9000 tonnes of plastic into the environment each year by 2030 - and that does not include the containers of waste we are shipping overseas.
• Continuing pressure to cut CO 2 emissions to mitigate the effects of climate change, specifically to limit the average rise in global temperature up to between 2 °C, will require halving CO 2 emissions by 2100, as agreed in the last Paris COP21 conference.
• The EU plans to introduce a new law within the next 12 months which will require manufacturers to ensure their products last longer, are easier to repair and able to be reused as we move towards a circular economy.
• Even when taking the effects of the coronavirus pandemic into account, the industrial slice of the IoT sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.7% through 2027 - to a whopping $263.4 billion annually.
• As things stand, the draft Kunming agreement has headline targets of protecting 30% of the world's land and sea by 2030, introducing controls on invasive species and reducing pollution from plastic waste and excess nutrients.

Last updated: 17 October 2020