Exponential Organizations: Why New organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)

Exponential Organizations: Why New organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)
Authors: Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest, and Mike Malone
Recommended by CFA Member: Lorenzo Rosenzweig
"In the past five years, the business world has seen the birth of a new breed of company—the Exponential Organization—that has revolutionized how a company can accelerate its growth by using technology. An ExO can eliminate the incremental, linear way traditional companies get bigger, leveraging assets like community, big data, algorithms, and new technology into achieving performance benchmarks ten times better than its peers.Three luminaries of the business world—Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest, and Mike Malone—have researched this phenomenon and documented ten characteristics of Exponential Organizations. Here, in Exponential Organizations, they walk the reader through how any company, from a startup to a multi-national, can become an ExO, streamline its performance, and grow to the next level."

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Author: Simon Sinek
Recommended by: Lorenzo Rosenzweig
"Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way -- and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY."

The Clean Money Revolution: Reinventing Power, Purpose, and Capitalism

The Clean Money Revolution: Reinventing Power, Purpose, and Capitalism
Author: Joel Solomon with Tyee Bridge
Recommended By CFA Member: Lorenzo Rosenzweig
Explores how “clean money” is transforming capitalism by powering sustainable businesses that build social and financial equity and change the world. Part memoir of an inspiring thought-leader’s journey from presidential campaigner to multi-millionaire investor, part insider’s guide to the businesses that are remaking the world, and part table-pounding manifesto for innovative investors and entrepreneurs

The Untethered Soul: The Journey beyond yourself

The Untethered Soul: The Journey beyond yourself
Author: Michael A. Singer
Recommended by: Lorenzo Rosenzweig
"Whether this is your first exploration of inner space, or you’ve devoted your life to the inward journey, this book will transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you. You’ll discover what you can do to put an end to the habitual thoughts and emotions that limit your consciousness. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, author and spiritual teacher Michael A. Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization.
Copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) TheUntethered Soul begins by walking you through your relationship with your thoughts and emotions, helping you uncover the source and fluctuations of your inner energy. It then delves into what you can do to free yourself from the habitual thoughts, emotions, and energy patterns that limit your consciousness. Finally, with perfect clarity, this book opens the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being."

Conservation of Tropical Rainforests: A Review of Financial and Strategic Solutions

Conservation of Tropical Rainforests: A Review of Financial and Strategic Solutions
Author: Brian Joseph McFarland
Recommended by CFA Member: Brian McFarland
With 15+ years of tropical rainforest experience and after 60+ interviews with leading practitioners, Mr. McFarland’s Conservation of Tropical Rainforests provides an historical overview of numerous conservation finance tools including debt-for-nature swaps, payments for ecosystem services, and ecotourism.
The book’s greatest contribution is 24 in-depth case studies spread across 15 countries and four continents. One such case study is of the Purus Project, a forest carbon offset project that Mr. McFarland has been involved with since 2011. The Project is the first ever REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) project in Acre, Brazil – one of the world’s leading jurisdictions working on subnational accounting of deforestation - to be independently validated and verified to the leading voluntary carbon certification standards known as the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and to the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS). The Project also achieved CCBS Gold Distinction for exceptional biodiversity benefits.

On the Edge: The State and Fate of the World's Tropical Rainforests

On the Edge: The State and Fate of the World's Tropical Rainforests
Author: Claude Martin, Foreword by Thomas E. Lovejoy
Recommended by CFA member: Brian McFarland
Dr. Claude Martin, the former Director General of WWF International for 20+ years, has written an exceptional book entitled, On the Edge: The State and Fate of the World's Tropical Rainforests.
On the Edge provides an excellent overview of the historical causes of deforestation and degradation and provides a much needed, contemporary outlook on the fate of rainforests across the major tropical regions. Incorporating specialist views on a range of related topics including the role of climate change and the rights of indigenous peoples, Dr. Martin’s On the Edge is an invaluable resource for those interested in the future of tropical rainforests and for those interested in how we got to where we are today.

Biodiversity Offsets: European Perspectives on No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Biodiversity Offsets: European Perspectives on No Net Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
Authors: Wolfgang Wende, Graham M. Tucker, Fabien Quétier, Matt Rayment, and Marianne Darbi
Recommended by CFA Member: Fabien Quétier
“Biodiversity offsets and policies aimed at achieving no net loss or net gains of biodiversity are often promoted as innovative financing mechanisms for biodiversity. Numerous publications and analyses are based on the well-documented experiences of the USA or Australia. Europe has had biodiversity offset policies since the 1970s, but these are often only described in grey literature, and not always in English. A new book published by Springer contributes to filling this gap: it provides a comprehensive overview of the full range of offsetting principles in several European countries. Each country chapter gives the respective legal background, methods adopted as well as case studies. More information about the book is available on the Springer webpage. “

How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information

How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information
Alberto Cairo
“Charts, infographics, and diagrams are ubiquitous. They are useful because they can reveal patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. Good charts make us smarter—if we know how to read them.
However, they can also deceive us. Charts lie in a variety of ways—displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty— or are frequently misunderstood. Many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day.
‘How Charts Lie’ teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones. In his new book, Alberto Cairo demystifies an essential new literacy, one that will make us better equipped to navigate our data-driven world.”

Rebel Ideas

Rebel Ideas
Matthew Syed
“Where do the best ideas come from? And how do we apply these ideas to the problems we face – at work, in the education of our children, and in the biggest shared challenges of our age: rising obesity, terrorism and climate change? In this bold and inspiring new book, Matthew Syed – bestselling author of Bounce and Black Box Thinking – argues that individual intelligence is no longer enough; that the only way to tackle these complex problems is to harness the power of ‘cognitive diversity’…

A Comprehensive Overview of Global Biodiversity Finance

A Comprehensive Overview of Global Biodiversity Finance
OECD
“Implementing an effective post-2020 global biodiversity framework will demand ambitious and widespread use of biodiversity policy instruments, and other measures, to promote sustainable patterns of production and consumption. It will also require governments and the private sector to scale up biodiversity finance and reduce finance flows that harm biodiversity. While it is clear that biodiversity finance must be increased, little information has been available on recent biodiversity expenditure. Building on OECD’s 2019 report to the G7 Environment Ministers on “Biodiversity: Finance and the Business and Economic Case for Action”, which included a preliminary update on global biodiversity finance flows, this report aims to address this information gap by providing a more comprehensive overview and an aggregate estimate of global biodiversity finance. The report also provides an overview of government support potentially harmful to biodiversity, and offers recommendations for improving the assessment, tracking and reporting of biodiversity finance”

Blue Infrastructure Finance: A New Approach Integrating Nature-based Solutions for Coastal Resilience

Blue Infrastructure Finance: A New Approach Integrating Nature-based Solutions for Coastal Resilience
IUCN
All coastal and marine ecosystems are critical to human well-being and global biodiversity. Mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds are examples of these. But urban and rural infrastructure investments are having a heavy negative impact on these sytems, and it is increasing over time.
To find out how to turn this around, IUCN brought together a group of leading experts – with finance, conservation and engineering backgrounds – to explore how infrastructure finance and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can work hand in hand to make infrastructure investments better, more durable, and financially more attractive.

Investing in Impact on the Ground - Eco.Business Fund Impact Report 2018

Investing in Impact on the Ground - Eco.Business Fund Impact Report 2018
Eco.Business Fund
Read the eco.business Fund’s first Impact Report, “Investing in Impact on the Ground.” It provides an in-depth look into the progress the eco.business Fund has made since inception and presents the fund’s approach to making a real difference for people and the planet. In this report you will learn more about what impact the eco.business Fund creates: how the fund promotes change in financial institutions’ practices; how it supports its end borrowers in integrating sustainable practices into their production processes, and how the fund facilitates an enabling environment for a greener economy.

COMBO - Reducing Infrastructure Impacts on Biodiversity

COMBO - Reducing Infrastructure Impacts on Biodiversity
Wildlife Conservation Society, Forest Trends, Biotope
“Over the past four years, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), together with its partners Forest Trends and Biotope, have been operating an innovative program called Conservation, Impact Mitigation and Biodiversity Offsets (COMBO) in Africa. The programs overarching aim is as simple as it is ambitious: to reconcile economic development with the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

Investing in Nature - Private Finance for Nature-based Resilience

Investing in Nature - Private Finance for Nature-based Resilience

“The Nature Conservancy joined forces with Environmental Finance to better understand what major investors are looking for, what obstacles they face and what can be done to help them scale up investments in projects that protect or enhance natural capital. They conducted a global survey of asset owners, asset managers and financial intermediaries (including banks, investment advisors, consultancies, government agencies and NGOs) and attracted responses from 168 institutions. This was complemented by 23 one-to-one interviews.”

Conservation Finance: Can Banks Embrace Natural Capital?

Conservation Finance: Can Banks Embrace Natural Capital?

“Climate is no longer the only risk in town: thanks to a loud call from the scientific community, nature has finally been given a seat at the table with finance ministers, regulators and central bank governors.

Degradation of natural capital through human activity has brought us to a tipping point. The risks are multiple and varied, from precipitous declines in economic growth to the uncertain future of our species. All sectors of society are being called on to go ‘beyond carbon’ and reduce their negative impact on the natural environment, finding solutions that regenerate natural resources. How can financial institutions best be of service? By examining their balance-sheet exposure to nature-related risks and by channelling finance to businesses and projects that are restoring natural resources. They have the full support of the scientific community.”

Behavior Change For Nature: A Behavioral Science Toolkit for Practitioners

Behavior Change For Nature: A Behavioral Science Toolkit for Practitioners

“We are fortunate to live in a world filled with both an abundance and diversity of life. Yet the growing scale and impact of human behaviour pose a grave risk to the natural world in irreversible ways. Deforestation, overfishing, ocean plastics, biodiversity loss, and climate change are increasingly threatening the livelihoods, health, and well-being of people as well as the species and places we know and love.

Past and current efforts in facing these challenges have tended to rely on a standard toolbox that enacts regulations, provides financial incentives or disincentives, and raises awareness about the dire consequences of our actions. These tools have merit – and are sometimes the most effective approaches we have. But oftentimes enforcement is difficult or ineffectual, payments for conservation outcomes can backfire, and information or education efforts come up against our biases, denial and wishful thinking. Behavioural science can provide a far more realistic understanding of what works, in the real world.

In this report, co-written by the Behavioural Insights Team and the conservation charity Rare, we expand the conventional toolkit and argue for a greater focus on how our cognitive biases, emotions, social networks, and decision-making environments all impact our behaviours and choices. We provide 15 concrete tools for conservation and sustainability practitioners, and the methodologies for putting them into practice, to achieve (and evaluate) real change.”

Tracking Economic Instruments and Finance for Biodiversity

Tracking Economic Instruments and Finance for Biodiversity

“The adoption of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 under the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, committed the international community to a set of ambitious goals on ‘living in harmony with nature’. This requires immediate and ambitious action to protect both life below water and life on land, so as to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Economic instruments, such as taxes, fees and charges, tradable permits, payments for ecosystem services schemes, and environmentally-motivated subsidies, provide signals to both producers and consumers to behave in a more environmentally-sustainable way. These instruments also provide continuous incentives to achieve objectives in a more cost-effective manner, and most are also able to mobilise finance and/or generate revenue. Economic instruments are the so-called “positive incentives” embedded in the 2011-2020 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, notably Target 3.

The OECD Environmental Policy Committee (EPOC), through its unique database of Policy Instruments for the Environment (PINE), collects quantitative and qualitative information on policy instruments, in more than 80 countries worldwide. This brochure presents statistics on the biodiversity-relevant economic instruments and the finance they mobilise, based on currently available data in PINE. The data are relevant to monitoring progress towards Aichi Biodiversity Target 3 (on incentives), Target 20 (on resource mobilisation) as well as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 15.a. on finance.”

Mainstreaming Blue Carbon to Finance Coastal Resilience

Mainstreaming Blue Carbon to Finance Coastal Resilience

“The contribution of marine and coastal ecosystems in carbon sequestration, or “blue carbon,” has only recently begun to gain traction in market-based ecosystem management discussions.

At present, existing methods of measuring and monitoring carbon offsets are geared towards terrestrial ecosystems, and do not account for the carbon stored in coastal, marine or wetland soils and biomass.

There are a number of mechanisms in place to facilitate investment in terrestrial carbon through regulatory markets which could be adapted to include blue carbon.”

Photo: Rick Shwartz // CC BY-NC 2.0

Conserving Mangroves, a Lifeline for the World

Conserving Mangroves, a Lifeline for the World

“The roots of a mangrove tree are like veins. They rise up and plunge down into the salty waters of Cispatá Bay in Córdoba, Colombia, along the coast of the Caribbean Sea, sprawling in every direction. A series of channels have formed an arterial highway connecting to the Sinú River, providing single-lane access into and out of the mangroves where fishermen and loggers begin their day’s work…”

Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis engulfing Nature matters for Business and the Economy

Nature Risk Rising: Why the Crisis engulfing Nature matters for Business and the Economy

“It is not surprising that the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Risks Report (GRR), through its comprehensive risks perception survey, ranks biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as one of the top five risks in terms of likelihood and impact in the coming 10 years. Yet general confusion persists on what amount of nature loss has occurred, why it relates to human prosperity and how to confront its loss in a practical manner, especially in the business world. Following on the heels of the 2020 GRR, this report provides a deep dive into how nature loss is material to businesses in all industry sectors and makes a clear argument for nature-related risks to be regularly identified, assessed and disclosed by business – as is now increasingly the case for climate change risks. This will help prevent risk mispricing and inaccurate capital buffers, as well as guiding action to mitigate and adapt business activities that degrade and destroy nature.”