private sector

The World Bank’s 'Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal' report delivers a troubling new assessment of the impact climate change is having on food security, water resources and ecosystems. It warns that without action heat waves and other weather extremes that occur once every hundred years, if ever, would become the new climate normal putting millions of people at risk.

Leading chocolate companies Mars, Mondelez International and Nestle have made some progress on their 2013 promises to improve gender equality in their cocoa supply chains but significant gaps still remain, according to an independent evaluation published today.

This evaluation provides an analysis of four gender impact assessments and action plans published by the world’s “Big Three” chocolate companies in two countries.

People around the world are trapped in a ‘toxic triangle’ made up of short-term financial investors, timid governments and fossil fuel companies, which threatens to push up  global temperatures, putting 400 million people at risk of hunger and drought by 2060. 

The Behind the Brands scorecard is the core tool of the Behind the Brands campaign. It ranks the world’s ten biggest food and beverage companies on their agricultural sourcing policies. 

A billion-dollar flagship scheme to support private sector-led health care in Africa is bypassing poor people and concentrating instead on high-end urban hospitals catering mainly for the rich.

After decades of underinvestment, governments in Africa are turning to partnerships with donor aid agencies and large companies or investors to develop the agriculture sector. But this so-called ‘mega’ public-private partnerships are unproven, risky and represent a dubious use of public funds to fight poverty and food insecurity. 

African governments are increasingly turning to partnerships with donors and multinational companies to stimulate investment in agriculture, after decades of neglect.

The European Commission’s new plan to boost the role of the private sector in development cooperation could put efforts to reduce poverty second to the interests of European companies, said leading