ESG and Of Interest News
A Critical Look at Dollar Dominance
May 23, 2025--The dollar remains central to the global economy despite the search for alternatives.
How has the US dollar dominated the global financial system for so long? Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff seeks to answer this question in Our Dollar, Your Problem. As the world comes to terms with the dollar’s weaponization in geopolitical rivalries and recent flight from US financial assets, the book couldn't be timelier.
Rogoff compares the dollar's post-World War II performance with other major currencies. While the Soviet ruble was never a serious competitor to the dollar, the Japanese yen at one point was. However, the yen’s sharp appreciation after the 1985 Plaza Accord fueled a bubble in Japan's stocks and real estate. By the time Japan had recovered from the bursting of the bubble, the US and its dollar had forged ahead.
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Source: IMF.org
Economics and Nature's Laws
May 23, 2025--A provocative new book proposes a radically different approach to economic theory
Among ongoing efforts to rethink the basic tenets of mainstream economics is a provocative new book by James Galbraith and Jing Chen. The authors sweep aside the intellectual structure of mainstream theory-which rests on concepts like the marginal utility theory of value, market equilibrium, and a steady state for the economy-and propose a radically different approach: "entropy economics."
The book is part of an emerging biophysical view of the world, grounded in the laws of nature, which sees economic activities as resembling biological and mechanical activities. For example, economies are prone to become unstable as they expand and become more complex, and they need regulation to exist and survive.
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Source: IMF.org
AI Needs More Abundant Power Supplies to Keep Driving Economic Growth
May 13, 2025--The power-hungry technology requires policies to help expand electricity supplies, incentivize alternative sources, and help contain price surges
Artificial intelligence is an emerging source of productivity and economic growth that's also reshaping employment and investment.
AI has the potential to raise the average pace of annual global economic growth according to scenarios in our recent analysis, included in the IMF's April 2025 World Economic Outlook.
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Source: IMF.org
Africa Poised to Become a Global Leader in Carbon Markets, Says New Report
May 7, 2025--A new report, the 2025 Africa Carbon Market Outlook (ACMO 25) says Africa is poised to become a global leader in carbon markets.
The report, set for online launch on Wednesday, 14th May at 10am GMT, says Africa's carbon markets, both for voluntary and compliance carbon credits, are expected to see rapid expansion in 2025 and succeeding years, underpinned by the continent's extensive natural resources and ecosystem.
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Source: Harvest Portfolios Group Inc.
Charted: Countries Accumulating the Most AI Patents
April 22, 2025-Key Takeaways
According to the 2025 AI Index Report. China has accumulated 70% of global AI patents
Evidence suggests that the majority of China's AI patents are only applied for and protected within China
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape industries globally. but which nations are leading its innovation?
One way to measure leadership is through patent filings. which legally protect novel ideas or inventions. In the case of AI. securing a patent typically involves demonstrating unique methodologies. machine learning algorithms. or applications capable of significantly advancing existing technologies.
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Source: visualcapitalist.com
State of the Global Climate 2024
April 15, 2025-Key messages
Key climate change indicators again reach record levels
Long-term warming (averaged over decades) remains below 1.5℃
Sea-level rise and ocean warming irreversible for hundreds of years
Record greenhouse gas concentrations combined with El Niño and other factors to drive 2024 record heat
Early warnings and climate services are vital to protect communities and economies
The clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024, which was likely the first calendar year to be more than 1.5℃ above the pre-industrial era, with a global mean near-surface temperature of 1.55 ± 0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 average.
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view the World Meteorological Organization State of the Global Climate 2024 report
Source: World Meteorological Organization
OECD urges strengthened co-operation to sustain trillion-dollar ocean economy
March 31, 2025—While the ocean economy doubled in real terms, from USD 1.3 trillion in 1995 to USD 2.6 trillion in 2020, co-ordinated policy action is essential to safeguard its long-term prosperity and sustainability, a new OECD report finds. The OECD Ocean Economy to 2050 identifies key priorities for policymakers to secure a resilient and sustainable future ocean economy, balancing economic opportunity with environmental responsibility.
Over the past 25 years, the ocean economy- driven by offshore oil and gas, marine and coastal tourism, marine fishing and aquaculture, maritime transport and port activities-contributed between 3% and 4% of global gross value added and grew steadily with no substantial contractions. But various forces - including climate change, demographic shifts, trade disruptions, and insufficient investments in productivity and green energy - could slow or even reverse growth. In a future scenario where investment in productivity is not forthcoming and the energy transition stalls, global ocean economic activity could decline by around 20% below 2020 levels by mid-century. In contrast, an accelerated shift to cleaner energy combined with technological innovation could support continued ocean economy growth, albeit more modestly than past performance.
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Source: OECD
Africa: Fast Fashion Fuelling Global Waste Crisis, UN Chief Warns
March 30, 2025-Fast fashion is accelerating an environmental catastrophe, with the equivalent of one garbage truck's worth of clothing either incinerated or sent to landfill every second, the UN chief warned on Thursday.
Speaking at an event commemorating Sunday's International Day of Zero Waste, Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to curb the textile industry's devastating impact on the planet.
Braganza was speaking at the official opening of the 5th edition of the AFRODAD Media Initiative (AFROMedI) held in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa recently.
With half of the continent currently being in debt distress, Braganza said the need to capacitate the media for the benefit of the public and holding authorities accountable.
"Dressing to kill could kill the planet," he stressed.
The fashion industry is one of the world's most polluting sectors, responsible for up to eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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Source: allafrica.com
'Renewables are renewing economies', UN chief tells top climate forum
March 26, 2025-2025 marks a milestone: the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement and the deadline for countries to submit their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), designed to keep the global goal alive of limiting temperature rise to 1.5℃C above pre-industrial levels.
Addressing the 16th Petersberg Climate Dialogue (PCD) in Berlin-the first official gathering on climate since last year's COP29 summit in Baku-the UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a strong call for decisive climate action.
He said the year had begun against a backdrop of geopolitical instability and widespread cuts to overseas aid budgets.
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Source: news.un.org
How DeepSeek has changed artificial intelligence and what it means for Europe
March 20, 2025--By mid-2024, artificial intelligence large language models (LLMs) were running into diminishing returns to scale in training data and computational capacity. LLM training began to shift away from costly pre-training to cheaper fine-tuning and allowing LLMs to 'reason' for longer before replying to questions.
Fine-tuning uses chain-of-thought (CoT) training data that includes questions and the logical steps to reach correct answers. This increases the efficiency of learning for smaller AI models, such as DeepSeek. CoT data can be extracted from large 'teacher' LLMs to train small 'student, models.
These changes shift the cost structure of AI models from high pre-training costs to lower fine-tuning costs for model developers and more inference costs for users.
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Source: bruegel.org
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