Sumba Island in East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia is possibly the driest area in the country. Sumba has a dry season that lasts for nine months. In East Sumba, the Ministry of Forestry estimates that 80 percent of the land is in critical condition owing to most of its forest being felled before the turn of the millennium. The Indonesian Rural Economic Development (IRED) project has been helping local communities rehabilitate their degraded land through farmer-managed natural regeneration and agroforestry. IRED is led by Wahana Visi Indonesia in collaboration with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and Lutheran World Relief.

SCS Global Services (SCS) announced today that Dave Bubser, a world-renowned forest resource management and certification expert, has joined the company as its new Vice President of Forestry Services. Bubser now oversees international business for SCS’ forest-based certification programs in the company’s Natural Resources division, providing strategic and operational guidance and support to Program Directors, and focusing on client relations, sales and marketing, auditing key accounts, and special projects.

“Our work addresses a fundamental and universal need: financial security. Literally millions of people rely on us. Last year alone, we paid out close to €50 billion in claims and benefits to our customers. Financial security is something that many people lack, which not only has serious implications for them, but for wider society too. We’re here to change that.”

The tide is turning for salmon thanks in part to Boeing’s continued cleanup of the Lower Duwamish Waterway.

Whether starting university or college for the first time, or returning to school to learn a new trade, paying for education can be challenging, especially when costs can vary from $5,000 to $50,000 per year. That’s one of the reasons why we launched the TransCanada Community Scholarships Program last year — to help students from the communities where we live, work and operate across North America reach their academic goals.

This past weekend, 350 activists stormed D.C. for the weekend to speak out against Trump’s Global Gag Rule, and to urge their elected officials to support the Global HER Act, and a robust $1.2 billion U.S. investment for international family planning, including $70 million for UNFPA.

Whole Planet Foundation is proud to welcome Weleda, a new $50,000 donor to our cause of global poverty alleviation. Weleda's generosity this year will fund approximately 275 microloans and 1,500 opportunities for microentrepreneurs and their family members to live a better life through microcredit.

If sustainability is so “in,” why aren’t more people buying ethically made clothes? The past few decades have changed the shape of the apparel industry. A few iconic media scandals over child labor and sweatshop labor have made Western shoppers sensitive to certain social responsibility topics. People are willing to pay 5 percent more for a product to ensure that it was made under ethical working conditions. The rise of conscious consumption has created new consumer markets in which labels like fair trade, organic and “made in USA” comingle and overlap.