Keep Moving Forward

The world is again looking to COP 22 for our path forward on tackling climate change. This was the first Conference with the Paris Agreement in force though it may have been somewhat overshadowed by the uncertainty following the US presidential election. With the USD3 billion dollar pledge to the Green Climate Fund up in the clouds there are clearly challenges regarding funding. However, in Asia, there are positives pointing the way forward. The Indonesian government backed financing facility is one as Genasci, CEO of ADM Capital Foundation, tells us. Another is the recently approved new standard for climate-resilient water bonds. Hear about it from members of the consortium that created it, Matthews of AGWA and Creed & Dai of the Climate Bonds Initiative. China is also full steam ahead on lucrative solutions. All new waste & wastewater projects must follow the PPP model. We take a look to see if this differs from previous funding. Also, new Chinese EPA standards tackling highly polluting landfill leachate are putting traditional solutions to the test. OriginClear’s Kindler, Eckelberry & Jan introduce a viable alternative. To move forward we also need to go backwards to some degree, well more precisely circular. Fashion can help go circular on plastic waste as Waste2Wear’s Kim expands.  Our global path on the climate may be cloudy but as we can see there are some bright patches. Knowing where we are is a good start and so we reflect on whether we are now seeing clearly on corporate disclosure. Regardless of the situation it’s important that we look in all places for innovations and keep moving forward, otherwise lucrative solutions will be missed. On a positive note, in September we said it’s over to financial research analysts to build scenarios to value water risk and we are glad to see UBS publish two reports regarding this. It could indeed be sunny times ahead.