This benchmark series outlines key legal, operational, and investment considerations shaping ESG and the sustainable economy. It provides structured guidance for investors, operators, and policymakers on evolving practices, regulatory expectations, and sector-level developments, offering a consistent foundation for understanding how sustainability themes influence financial and organisational decision-making.

The report analyses how critical minerals sourced in the Uyghur Region—titanium, lithium, beryllium and magnesium—are linked to state-imposed forced labour. It identifies companies involved, downstream exposure risks, and implications for global supply chains, underscoring the need for stronger due diligence and avoidance of forced-labour-tainted inputs.

This report outlines a blueprint for responsible banking, detailing how banks can embed climate, nature, human rights, and inclusive economy considerations into strategy, governance, client engagement, capital allocation and disclosure. It provides guidance on setting and implementing targets to align portfolios and practices with global sustainability frameworks.

FreshExplorer is an interactive mapping tool that displays data on water, sanitation, and hygiene services globally, assisting policymakers and researchers to view coverage statistics, trends, and service gaps. The platform enables data exploration by country, service type, and time period, using Aus/UK spelling and grammar conventions.

This report examines how Australian boards are beginning to integrate nature into governance, identifying rising awareness of nature-related risks, early adoption of frameworks such as TNFD, and varied oversight and disclosure practices. It highlights barriers, emerging approaches, and the growing financial relevance of nature for organisational decision-making.

Oxygen Consulting offers specialist sustainability consulting services across carbon, climate and nature, sustainability strategy and advisory, disclosure and reporting, audit and assurance, and capability development. Serving organisations in New Zealand across diverse sectors, it supports measurement, strategy formation and robust sustainability-governance frameworks to drive meaningful business impact.

The report outlines how industrial goods companies are advancing circular economy practices through product design, life-extension initiatives, collaboration, policy engagement and transparent reporting. It provides real-world examples across global firms and offers a framework to assess progress, highlighting emerging innovation and the importance of systemic, sector-wide approaches to circularity.

The article explores the paradox in which institutional investors focus heavily on climate-risk disclosure, an area of comfort and perceived legitimacy, while underinvesting in real-economy climate policy that could meaningfully reduce systemic risk. It argues that meaningful climate action requires shifting from technocratic “managing tons” approaches toward politically challenging asset revaluation and more robust policy engagement.

The report examines rising global food insecurity, driven by conflict, climate impacts, inflation, and supply disruptions. It outlines the economic and social consequences, highlights regional vulnerabilities, and assesses future risks. It also presents social, technological, financial, and geopolitical actions needed to strengthen food system resilience.

This report uses empirically validated probabilistic forecasting to assess future energy technology costs. It finds that rapid deployment of solar, wind, batteries, and electrolyser technologies is likely to lower overall system costs and deliver substantial net savings compared with continued reliance on fossil fuels.

This paper argues that restoring wild animal populations can significantly enhance natural climate solutions by boosting carbon capture and storage across ecosystems. It presents evidence that animal-driven processes can help reduce emissions shortfalls and supports integrating trophic rewilding into climate and biodiversity policy.

The report outlines solutions to curb plastic pollution by improving sustainability information, driving behaviour change, advancing sustainable procurement, and promoting circular economy measures, particularly for plastic packaging. It presents coordinated actions across sectors, including tourism, to reduce plastic use and support systemic, upstream interventions aligned with SDG 12.

Australia’s fossil-fuel-exposed regions are assessed across seven dimensions of adaptive capacity, showing common weaknesses in economic diversity, social capital and service access. The report outlines region-specific strengths and proposes tailored, place-based transition planning to support diversification and community resilience through the net zero shift.

The report outlines the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance’s progress in reducing financed emissions, strengthening target-setting, and expanding climate-solution investments. It highlights updated methodologies, increased engagement with companies and policymakers, and rising member participation, underscoring the need for credible transition pathways and supportive policy environments to advance alignment with 1.5°C goals.

This article dives into an analysis of over 12,000 YouTube videos and finds that while outright climate-change denial is dropping, content undermining climate solutions and trust in scientists is rising sharply. It also highlights concerns over YouTube’s ad policies, which still allow monetisation alongside videos that downplay impacts or spread misleading claims about climate policy.

Climate denial on YouTube has shifted from rejecting global heating to undermining climate impacts, solutions, and science. New Denial now represents most claims, while Old Denial has declined. The report highlights platform monetisation of such content and calls for updated policies and stronger action to address evolving misinformation.