This brief explains how metals are produced and are associated together in mineral deposits and mining operations. The aim is to highlight some challenges that may be encountered in the search for minerals that are critical for the energy transition.

An MOU is often the first formal step toward a collaboration between a host government and a private, typically foreign, investor for an investment project. In the context of agribusiness investments, this early phase is crucial because there are many important precontractual steps needed to ensure that the investment is made and operated responsibly in a way that respects legitimate tenure rights and safeguards the interests of local communities. Despite this, many MOUs are rushed or not carefully vetted.

Depending on how they are drafted, MOUs can create unexpected risks and unwanted legal effects for host governments. Conversely, host governments can carefully craft MOUs to minimize these risks and help promote effective governance for responsible investment in agriculture.

Public procurement is a powerful lever for advancing sustainable development and climate action. Public authorities across the European Union buy goods, works, and services worth 14% of their gross domestic product every year. At the same time, public procurement is responsible for as much as 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By choosing goods and services with reduced environmental impacts, governments can provide a strong incentive for businesses to develop more sustainable practices, products, and technologies.

One best-practice tool for green public procurement is the CO2 Performance Ladder, which functions as both a carbon management system that helps organizations reduce their emissions and as a procurement tool that rewards suppliers with an award advantage in procurement processes.

The feasibility study confirms that there is a clear opportunity to use the CO2 Performance Ladder across Europe, as it responds directly to the demand from public authorities for easy-to-use, practical tools to reduce carbon emissions. There is a clear interest in tried-and-tested approaches to stimulate decarbonization through public procurement processes, as well as a marked demand for third-party verified certification systems.

For each of the 10 countries, the study provides information about

• Sustainable public procurement: What are the key priorities and activities in the country? Which tools, instruments, and labels are used for sustainable public procurement?
• Low-carbon procurement: What are the emission reduction targets in the country? What is the status of low-carbon procurement of goods, works, and services, and how is this monitored?
• Potential for the CO2 Performance Ladder: Who are the main stakeholders for sustainable public procurement in the country? What are the potential challenges and opportunities in using the CO2 Performance Ladder?

The feasibility study is complemented by a paper about Legal Considerations When Using the CO2 Performance Ladder in Public Procurement.

Specifically, this report explores the progress made by MDBs to

• Scale up finance for adaptation at the country level across the full breadth of their investment portfolio, including designated climate finance and development finance streams.
• Incorporate climate risk screening and assessment in project design and implementation.
• Align their portfolios with adaptation priorities identified by national governments in their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Drawing upon case studies prepared by three research organizations—the African Centre for Technology Studies based in Kenya, the Prakriti Resources Centre based in Nepal, and Libélula based in Peru—the paper’s key findings are:

• The four MDBs examined have increased their flows of finance for adaptation over the past decade at the global level. At the country level, the reviews of finance for adaptation provided by these MDBs in Kenya, Nepal, and Peru indicate that while they are generally increasing, it is difficult to discern clear trends.
• Screening for and assessing climate change vulnerability and risk have become standard practices with most MDBs, with an observed increase in the number of projects now being assessed for climate risk in the design and implementation stages. It is likely that this allocation of upfront funding to assess climate risks, particularly for large infrastructure investments, has led to an increase in the proportion of project budgets tagged by the MDBs as having adaptation co-benefits.
• MDBs are beginning to draw on information in national documents—such as NAPs and NDCs—to guide their programming and project identification at the country level.

Despite this progress, the paper highlights ongoing challenges in scaling up MDB finance for adaptation. Among these challenges is a lack of transparency in how allocations of finance for adaptation are determined at the project level. Finance ministries also need a greater understanding of the economic case for and benefits of adaptation, as well as the need to mainstream adaptation in national economic development strategies and budgets. Consequently, scaling up finance for adaptation in developing countries like Kenya, Nepal, and Peru will require continued MDB support for technical analysis and country-led climate adaptation planning processes.

The paper concludes that MDBs could also place greater emphasis on funding discrete adaptation projects, in addition to financing the additional costs of ensuring that climate risks are reduced in the design and implementation of development projects. It also calls for consideration to be given to programmatic finance for adaptation and utilization of a wider range of financial instruments to support long-term adaptation programs. These efforts should be anchored in an ongoing commitment to using countries’ NAPs and NDCs to identify the best and most strategic use of MDB climate and development finance.

Bananas are believed to be the first cultivated fruit and are currently the world’s most consumed and exported fruit. Along with plantains, they are the fourth most important staple crop globally, helping to maintain food and nutritional security for 400 million people in producing countries.

But banana supply chains are very vulnerable to disruptions in the global economy, such as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and variations in fossil fuel prices. Producers also face increasing environmental challenges due to climate change. What’s more, very little genetic diversity on banana plantations puts them at particular risk of pests and diseases, which can be exacerbated during extreme weather. For example, Tropical Race 4 is a deadly fungus found in soils that poses a threat to banana plantations and risks wiping out entire banana varieties.

Our research shows that banana producers are most affected by market disruptions. Recent crises have led to higher costs across all inputs in the banana supply chain, putting banana producers under increasing financial pressure.

However, voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) such as GlobalG.A.P., the Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade International, and Organic can help build producers’ resilience to such challenges in the banana sector. They are adopting measures to ensure banana farmers and workers are better remunerated, such as by setting minimum prices, paying premiums to cover the costs of sustainable production, and offering base wages to farmers. They are also supporting them in improving their resilience to climate change—for example, by requiring farmers to adopt soil preservation measures to maintain soil moisture and fertility, which can help the soil cope with periods of drought.

But responsibility for picking up the costs of more sustainable growing practices must be shared across industry actors at all levels of the banana supply chain. For example, retailers can play their part by committing to paying fairer prices for bananas and establishing long-term partnerships with producers. Governments can help improve producers’ knowledge of—and access to—sustainable growing practices and market prices. And regional networks and associations, such as worker unions, can advocate for higher prices for producers.

This submission to the first formal United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Global Stocktake provides evidence of the extent to which parties have made progress on aligning public financial flows—including subsidies, investments by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and lending from public financial institutions—with the need to reduce emissions in line with climate targets.

Commitments on shifting financial flows have not fared well during the COVID-19 and energy crises. According to the Fossil Fuel Subsidy Tracker, fossil energy subsidies reached USD 732 billion in 2021, 35% higher than in 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement (USD 543 billion). They further jumped to USD 1.1 trillion in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency's preliminary estimate that does not cover all countries and includes only consumer subsidies, so the final value of fossil fuel subsidies for 2022 will be even higher.

Yet, fossil fuel subsidies hinder the implementation of the Paris Agreement because they create incentives to produce and consume more fossil fuels, increasing greenhouse gas emissions. They also they skew the level playing field for investing in and deploying clean energy technologies. It is sometimes claimed that they are needed to support low-income households—while research shows that the biggest benefits often accrue to the wealthiest groups.

These subsidies are also often extremely costly, consuming public resources that could instead be used to support the poor more efficiently (such as health and education services) or to address climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Shifting public support away from fossil fuels can be a source of positive social and environmental changes, but in many cases, it needs to be carefully planned or it can have negative socioeconomic impacts.

The following steps can help overcome challenges to shifting public financial flows towards clean energy:

• Improving the state of transparency.
• Improving the accountability of global commitments on shifting public support from fossil fuels to clean energy.
• At the national level, good planning is essential: getting the prices right, managing impacts, and building support.

Cotton is a key sector in South Asia, driving economic growth and employment while supplying 30% of the world’s cotton lint that ultimately goes into goods like textiles and medical supplies. At the same time, cotton cultivation has led to significant environmental degradation and persistent social challenges that undermine the sector’s long-term sustainability.

This research from IISD’s State of Sustainability Initiatives examines these key sustainability issues against voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) like Organic, Fairtrade, Better Cotton, and the Responsible Environment Enhanced Livelihoods (REEL) Cotton Code. It explores how VSSs interact with the existing policies and trade relationships in the region.

Focusing on major cotton and textile producers in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the report shows that these VSSs require farmers and textile facilities to adopt more sustainable practices with potentially far-reaching benefits. These benefits include improvements in agrochemical use, water conservation, and the incomes of South Asian cotton farmers and textile workers.

The policy landscape could be strengthened to take full advantage of VSSs in the cotton sector—for example, through national policies and legislation that advance environmental and social sustainability in the sector as well as trade agreements that can also provide a basis for regional collaboration and cooperation.

Voluntary Sustainability Standards in South Asia: A focus on the cotton sector in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka concludes with clear recommendations for policy-makers and VSS bodies to collaborate and take action to support regional and national policies, address key sustainability challenges in the cotton sector, and boost intraregional cooperation and trade.

Recommendations for VSS-bodies:

• Develop targeted guidelines and training opportunities for farmers on VSS-compliant practices
• Improve assurance systems and product traceability requirements to increase trust in verification and certification processes
• Provide a platform for regional dialogues and action on cotton among different stakeholders
• Build partnerships between standard-setting bodies as well as with private initiatives to increase their impact and efficiency

Recommendations for policy-makers in South Asia:

• Update sectoral, environmental, and labour policies to support best practices in the sustainable production of cotton and VSS compliance
• Strengthen sustainability provisions in trade agreements
• Generate domestic and regional demand for VSS-compliant cotton
• Establish organic seed banks
• Use targeted promotion of VSS compliance as a tool to improve agricultural practices in priority regions

This report provides an update on how the negotiating text has evolved, summarizing the content of the draft agreement as it stands. It also highlights the main changes to the text from 2022 and the issues that members have yet to align on. The paper concludes with an overview of what might be expected from the JSI process going forward, including on the matter of the legal architecture.

This material has been produced with funding by UK aid from the British Government. The Umbrella Grant is a project of the Trade and Investment Advocacy Fund (TAF2+) and is implemented by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and CUTS International, Geneva.

Views expressed in the publication are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect HM Government’s official positions or those of TAF2+.

This seventh report in the series offers a review of the 44 VNR reports submitted to the HLPF in 2022, as well as an analysis of 21 VNR-related civil society reports. It presents key findings, good practice case studies, emerging best practices and recommendations for action. In particular, the report notes that VNR reports in 2022:

• continue to be largely silent on shrinking civic space, including in relation to the ongoing attacks against human rights defenders, journalists and environmentalists in many countries
• included high-level references to the Leave No One Behind principle, but challenges remain in terms of data availability and on the incorporation of the principle in national policies and plans
• show some improvement in including information on other 2030 Agenda key principles—mainly on human rights—though reporting on universality, planetary boundaries, and intergenerational responsibility is still uneven
• provide fewer examples than previous years on contributions to SDGs implementation by non-state actors

The 2030 Agenda, with the SDGs at its heart, provides a global roadmap toward building a better future, while achieving equality and sustainability for all. As this report shows, it is more important than ever that Heads of State and Government meet the commitments of the Decade of Action and Delivery to realize the 2030 Agenda and all SDGs while ensuring no one is left behind. 

In spite of constituting half of the world’s oil and gas production and controlling two-thirds of global reserves, national oil companies (or NOCs) receive a lot less attention than international oil companies (IOCs) from investors, regulators, and the broader public to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to clean energy. If the world is to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, NOCs must begin decarbonizing their activities.

Despite the seemingly closed-off nature of many NOCs, both the extent of investor exposure and the degree of investors’ potential influence over the fates of NOCs are far greater than investors themselves may perceive. For example, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine showcased just how exposed investors are to geopolitical risks borne by state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom, with the latter suspended from trading on the London Stock Exchange in March 2022.

Investors are financially exposed to a range of NOC activities. For example, some NOCs can be partly shareholder-owned like Equinor and Petrobras. Others have issued bonds like Pemex and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Last, a number of NOCs require outside technical assistance and financing, especially on frontier oil and gas projects. In addition, investors are exposed to NOCs through their holdings in banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America, which have financed hundreds of billions of dollars per year to the largest NOCs. This exposure both opens avenues for investor influence and creates a strong incentive for investors to use it.

We encourage investors to take some immediate steps to encourage NOCs to start decarbonizing their activities, and contextually reduce investors’ own exposure risk to NOCs:

• Direct NOCs to adhere to climate disclosure requirements to improve their transparency and prevent offshoring of emissions by IOCs to NOCs.
• Develop and apply ESG frameworks to NOCs similar to those increasingly applied to IOCs to reveal the myriad risks faced by investors, financial actors, and operational firms partnering with NOCs.
• Call on banks to refrain from financing new oil and gas expansion projects by NOCs.