The natural world is in crisis – but on every continent, entrepreneurial minds are helping to restore the planet through people-centred innovation. A special series on climate and biodiversity action in partnership with Hogan Lovells.
Smallholder farmers in the Peruvian Amazon have little alternative but to cut down trees to make a living. Plant Your Future has an ambitious plan to change this - but bureaucracy, skills shortages, and climate change all pose challenges.
The journey from farm to fork can be highly polluting, with food processing firms a major source of emissions. How do you get companies to take action? In Indonesia, one B Corp has found a solution – one that also offers renewable power to rural homes.
Smallholder farming can be a thankless way to make a living. To boost incomes, social enterprise Nuup connects farmers with a whole range of players while making regenerative techniques more accessible. And it wants others to steal its best ideas.
For more than 20 years, Hugo Spowers has been developing zero-emission cars. It’s not only about innovative technology: his vision includes circular business models and an unusual company structure. But is Riversimple – at last – ready to hit the road?
Our oceans are drowning in plastic waste. But what if you could stop the stream of rubbish closer to the source? One nonprofit is doing just that, by bringing its unusual invention to the world’s dirtiest rivers. Technology, though, is just the beginning.
Mangroves are among the world’s most valuable ecosystems. In Madagascar, Blue Ventures has worked with coastal communities to tend these long-overlooked ‘blue forests’. Will carbon capture be the breakthrough that halts their decline?
Fisherman turned climate scientist Tero Mustonen set up Snowchange, a co-operative, to help rewild his native Finland. But, as peatlands and lakes slowly recover, a new question emerges: how much should humans continue to intervene with nature?
Millions of people need but can’t afford an air purifier. But a social entrepreneur, who just “happened to be in Beijing breathing dirty air”, decided to set off to understand the science, build his own devices and bust the myth that clean air had to be expensive.
The ambitious Great Green Wall project could have a huge impact – if, that is, it can be driven not just from the corridors of power but also by local citizens. In the Gambia, that’s starting to happen. But the clock is ticking.
