June 2012 – Tea has been grown in the highly productive Kericho district of Kenya for many decades. For much of that time plantation managers were focused primarily on agronomic improvements and crop productivity. However, in the late 1990s increasingly unpredictable rainfall led to reduced resource security. Crop productivity fell and the hydroelectric power that ran the factory machinery became increasingly unreliable.

September 2012 – Given the challenging economic backdrop for businesses, one might be forgiven for being uncertain about where sustainable land use fits in. What is clear already, however, is that there are pressures and concerns, readily identified in this report, which we are going to have to tackle in order to have any kind of long-term economic future. Businesses are increasingly realising that in order to operate sustainably they must protect and enhance all the environmental resources and services that are used or affected by their operations.

December 2012 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that global greenhouse gas reductions of 50–85 per cent will be needed by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change, representing a radical shift away from today’s fossil-fuel-derived economy. This begs the question: is such a reduction achievable, and if so, how? This is one of the key challenges tackled through the research of Dr Julian Allwood and his Low Carbon Materials Processing Group (LCMPG) at the University of Cambridge.

December 2012 – There are many roles for business in developing sustainability, but the most important is to integrate sustainability principles into business strategy. Sustainability means much more than just worrying about the environmental impacts of business operations – this only represents ‘business as usual’. I prefer the idea of looking for the business opportunities that could arise from the huge challenge of trying to raise living standards for a likely population of 9 billion in 2050, yet remaining within the limits of our planet.