The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture helps small holder farmers access quality inputs and sell products at fair prices. To do that the foundation has developed the Farmers Hub, a franchisee based business model which helps both agri-entrepreneurs and businesses to invest in products that serve small holder farmers. This approach has …

Saran Song is the CEO of Amru Rice, Camobodia’s largest producer and exporter of organic rice from Cambodia. In this podcast he talks about the contract farming business model, the advantages that farmers can derive from growing organic and sustainable rice and peers into the future of rice. Sections Section 1 : First 10 minutes introducing Saran a…

Heather Couture is an international consultant in computer vision (applying artificial intelligence to images). In this episode, she explains the different types of modern artificial intelligence and its use in a variety of food-related applications. It is used for monitoring crops and trees in fields and automating activities such as harvesting an…

Futurepump is a small company from the UK with a factory in India manufacturing solar pumps. One of its partners in Africa is Celfre Energy, an even smaller company, which operates in Zimbabwe. Celfre Energy started by importing one Futurepump and creating awareness among farmers. It raised grants and then used the money to import a container load …

Futurepump is a small company from the UK with a factory in the UK manufacturing solar pumps. It is distributing its product in Africa through Davis & Shirtliff, a large company with a 78 year old history. The partnership is bringing the pumps to small holder farmers across 11 countries in Africa. As climate change is having a “real negative impact…

Rice millers in the Central and East Java provinces in Indonesia are facing a shortage of paddy from farmers. Production has been impacted by changing rainfall patterns, pest attacks and the occasional non-availability of pesticides and fertilisers. The industry association Indonesia Rice Millers and Traders Association -PERPADI has partnered with …

Fishing methods of small-scale fishers are more sustainable because they capture less bycatch (fish that is discarded). Unfortunately, like in many places of the world, the livelihoods of small-scale fishers in the Occidental Mindoro province in Philippines are vulnerable both to climate change and overfishing by large fleets. The fishing community…

Description: Small fishing communities in South Africa (and many other parts of the world) have often been discriminated against. First there is colonisation and (in the case of South Africa) the apartheid regime. Then there is the interest of national governments to create an industrial fishing sector. And yet these communities live on thanks to t…

Bangladesh is acutely vulnerable to the climate crisis. BRAC, the world’s largest NGO is implementing adaptation clinics in very vulnerable areas. The process involves understanding the specific problem the community is facing and then implementing a solution, while taking the community along. The results are extremely encouraging. Sections Section…

Cellular meat is not going to flood your supermarket shelves anytime soon. Across the world, only four companies have got regulatory approval. They are organising tasting sessions in restaurants and “pop ups” but it will take several years for companies to scale up manufacturing processes to produce sufficient volumes of products at reasonable cost…

A rancher in South America is worried about the condition of his land. He knows that improving the soil condition will help in growing more grass which his livestock can feed on. He wants to leave his land in a better state to his children so that they can inherit his profession as well and decides to more regenerative practices. A NGO in East Afri…

The Luangwa region and the Kafue regions in Zambia hosts some of the finest national parks in the world. Unfortunately, these forests and the wildlife are under threat. An average farming family who lives near theseareas cuts down 60 to 70 big trees in a year just to use as firewood for cooking food. Falling soil fertility and a growing population …

Years of repeated tilling the same piece of land with a hand hoe has compacted the soil in Malawi into a hard layer. Plant roots cannot penetrate this “hard pan” and they grow laterally, instead of vertically. Rainwater does not penetrate the soil either but rushes along the furrows created in the land, washing away the top soil. This is drasticall…

The wine and the alcohol industry has been around for millennia and obviously is not the major cause of climate change. But then like every other industry it has to reduce its emissions and environmental impact. More importantly, the wine industry is being impacted by unpredictable weather events. Drought, sudden frost and wildfires are affecting t…

In the last five years, plant based foods have started appearing on supermarket shelves, on restaurant menus and even on the assembly chains of fast food outlets. There is still skepticism however. Customer demand in the US and UK seem to be flattening out and there are no real entry barriers to new companies bringing out new products. It is not un…

Extreme events occur not just because of climate change but also local damage to the environment. The effects are also sometimes hard to foresee. Not all events are well reported either. ClimateNode wants to scan websites, news reports, scientific papers to understand what type of climate events are happening, their causes and effects. ClimateNode …

There are 150 million mid-market companies across the world who do not have the resources to invest in measuring climate metrics. Software can help them understand what standards are applicable, pull out and validate data sitting at various places in the company systems, suggest and help manage personalised projects and then communicate results to …

In the Sahel, farmers do not have the money to buy chemical fertilisers. They use organic methods of farming which works well when they do. Unfortunately, the temperatures in the Sahel are already more than global averages. Rainfall is scarce but when it does the downpours are heavy. The top soil is often carried away, making the soil infertile. Pe…

There are six subsectors to the alternative protein industry. Plant based meats, precision fermentation and cellular meat are the main ones. Plant based “mock meat” has been around in Asia for centuries. There are relatively less technological barriers to get products out but companies will still have to overcome taste, nutrition, cost and regulato…

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is driving the demand for AI software. Some companies also want to go beyond just meeting the standards and genuinely develop a nature strategy. Xylo Systems, helps energy and property companies understand baseline biodiversity data, analyse possible impacts and develop potential projects…

Transition Zero has used artificial intelligence to measure emissions from coal and gas power plants. It has trained software to learn from satellite images and verified published emissions. The trained software can then estimate emissions only from satellite pictures of power plants where the published data is not available or needs to be verified…

Arnab Sengupta has worked with about six agricultural commodities and knows a lot about tuna. Tuna is consumed fresh and in canned forms. It is caught in the deep sea near some of the small island developing states and then processed in Thailand or Ecuador. The processing industry employs a lot of people because the fish has to be cleaned perfectly…

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are complex (climate is only one of the five pillars of sustainability) and that creates the need for software to manage the process of meeting the new standards. Metabolic a consultancy used its experience of working with clients to develop Link a product that enables users start with data that they…

Credit lines are a very common instrument of moving climate finance from international development financial institutions to intermediaries in developing countries. Unfortunately and very surprisingly, not all of these lines get utilised. Rainer and Sanjoy who have worked with credit lines for many years explain how credit lines can be made more ef…

A small country like Bangladesh is vulnerable to both extreme events and slow deterioration of living conditions due to climate change. People migrate in droves when extreme events occur, they migrate in trickles as agriculture and fishing becomes unviable. The Climate Bridge Fund, supported by the German Development Bank, and implemented by BRAC, …

BBOXX started selling small solar home systems in Rwanda thirteen years back. It was heady times as several entrepreneurs from the Western world rushed to provide modern electricity to millions of customers in Africa . The industry soon attracted enormous global investor interest. Like all hype cycles, reality dawned as some of these companies coll…

A very small part of arable land in Africa is irrigated and with climate change already happening, there is neither time nor money to build grand irrigation projects. What can be done, however, is to collect rainwater, which now comes in sudden heavy downpours, using age-old techniques. Add on solutions that measure soil moisture, predict weather a…

Michael Poisson helps us understand the types of companies in the crowded ESG scoring industry. The industry is very crowded with various types of companies offering different data products based on the customer needs. Incoming regulations will lead to standardised products. Companies use broadly two types of approaches. One way is to make sense of…

What you learn at a world class incubator? In this podcast , two entrepreneurs reflect on the time they spent at Carbon 13, Cambridge’s climate venture builder. Why did they apply? What happened when they meet their other cohort members? Did the experience help them? What is the progress they have made since then? Finally, it seems to boil down to …

Human wildlife conflict has social causes and is being exacerbated by climate change. Solving it requires an integrated approach. Technology is key but you cannot air drop it in these frontiers of climate change. To make real impact organisations of different types must come together and their funders will have to support these partnerships. Listen…

Deep Science Ventures is building climate businesses with a plan. What is required to reverse global warming? What are the constraints in reaching outcomes? What technology solutions can remove these constraints? Who are the best people to develop the technology? How can we give them opportunity to think about the problem? Listen to this fascinatin…

The mining industry contributes more than 4 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions. That is about the share of cement and chemicals & amp; petrochemicals taken together. It also consumes water in areas where it is in short supply. Things can get worse. The transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy will increase the demand for mi…

Can the tools that we have – science, technology and business – address the issues that we face from climate change? After all, these are the very things that has brought us to this problem. So it is right to be skeptical. But then in the limited time these tools are all that we have. It is not practical to think that we will build everything afres…

2 people attract 15 volunteers. These 15 volunteers are supported by people across the UK. Seeing the success of this first group, scores of groups spring up across the UK and the world all working on recycling plastic waste for products such as survival blankets for people who have nothing else to keep warm during the winter. The groups partner wi…

Description: Suppose millions of people come together to fund innovations that have the highest impact on solving the climate crisis. The areas they target are the priority areas science is telling us to focus on, not just the VC flavour of the year. The innovations they support are examined by intelligent common people as well as by experts. The i…

Wasted food leads to a greenhouse gas emissions. Not only is food waste causing global warming but climate change will lead to greater food waste. Extreme events will damage crops. Unseasonal flowering will lead to short term surpluses. Food is wasted because as consumers we have some unsustainable habits and because retailers are seeking efficienc…

The inside story behind the dramatic drop in renewable energy prices is often quite mundane. In this podcast, we discuss how nitty gritty technical and commercial details led to the rapid decline of offshore wind prices in the UK. The story is really that of a trusted organization bringing together industry players to collaboratively explore soluti…

Green hydrogen is necessary to decarbonise industry. It is possible to make green hydrogen from electrolysis process from renewable energy but the UK government has given out grants to test various ways of making green hydrogen from biomass. A few of them will go to the demonstration stage in the next few years. Post demonstration they can go to co…

Helping climate businesses to get their first customers and the first seed investment is a very tough job. The Greenhouse at the at the Centre for Climate Change Innovation gets it done for about 60 to 70% of the companies they support during a twelve month process. More creditable: most companies they have supported are still in business defying t…

Every report on climate finance claims that we need trillions to adapt to climate change and moans that the money is not coming through. In this podcast Jaideep Prabhu, the international frugal innovation guru, contemplates the future where not enough money is available soon enough. His message is one of hope. Sections Section 1: First 22 minutes a…

Climate change will not cause disastrous impact. Vulnerability to it will. To reduce vulnerability, public and private managers will have to be clear headed about risks and plan for them. It is not hard to guess that all businesses will be subjected to greater physical risk. What is hard is to assess to what extent and in what time frame. Cervest u…

Heatwaves, fires and flooding will impact physical and mental health and will cause additional pressures on public health facilities. This means that not only health facilities but also offices, building and public spaces will have to be designed keeping in mind the health of people who will use them. Architects have to build for this new world als…

If we use climate data, we can take actions today at low cost and avoid a lot of pain later. Kayross collects climate data observed by satellites and then makes them useful for public and private investors by combining various sorts of data and interpreting the results using clever algorithms. Investors can use this analysis to take informed effect…

Every city in the world where people have some spare cash to invest in their future should have a group of green angels to support climate innovators. Nick Lyth tells you how to do it and what you can achieve. Section 1: What have we achieved? Section 2: What companies do you support? Section 3: What processes do we follow? Sanjoy Sanyal - Director…

Listen to Johan Mendez explain the implementation of an ecosystem based adaptation project in Seychelles These are the parts of the podcast : First 10 minutes : the climate change and environmental damage in Seychelles 10 -16 minutes : what is ecosystem based adaptation and why is it important ? 16-29 minutes : what really happened in the project? …

Dr. Sanjay Kuttan, Chief Technology Officer of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonization and Ken Hickson, veteran sustainability commentator explain why moving to new fuels is really the only way for the shipping industry to cut emissions. It is not easy to make the transition, however. The Centre located in Singapore, one of the world’s most …

Listen to Chris Coleridge, of the Cambridge Judge Business School talk of how and his colleagues are helping build innovative organizations that will have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by 10 million tonnes per annum at Carbon 13. The process starts with selecting 70 people of diverse backgrounds from over 1000 applications. These 70 peop…

Listen to George Kibala Bauer, Director Digital Utilities, GSMA in this second episode as he reflects on underlying strategies of businesses using mobile and digital technologies to deliver basic services in emerging countries. Innovative companies are seeking out partners as the mobile companies have customer acceptance. Larger companies are partn…

Listen to George Kibala Bauer, Director Digital Utilities, GSMA for a fascinating tour across Asia and Africa, as he talks about how private sector businesses are learning and experimenting and how the deep industry experience of the GSMA is helping to build these businesses. The GSMA Foundation has been running the donor funded Mobile for Digital …

While refrigerants cool commercial and industrial facilities they heat up the atmosphere. The refrigerant gases leak and while they stay in the atmosphere for a shorter term than carbon dioxide, they heat up the atmosphere to a much greater degree. This Catch 22 problem will become worse in a heating world. Luckily solutions exist. One solution is …