Insights

A growing library of articles we’ve found worth reading, on the environment, sustainability, and the ideas behind For Better Purpose. We didn’t write these, we gather them so you can explore the issues your votes help address and make up your own mind. Each link opens the original source.

  • Clean Water

    National Geographic

    How a warming climate changes who gets water

    Warmer air makes the water cycle more extreme at both ends, more flooding, more drought, and less drinkable water in between.

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  • Environment & Climate

    Harvard Business School

    What does sustainability mean in business?

    Harvard Business School on the distance between a company calling itself sustainable and actually building a strategy that is.

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  • Environment & Climate

    Investopedia

    What sustainability means, and why it matters

    A clear primer on sustainability in business and policy, and how protecting resources today keeps them available tomorrow.

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  • Environment & Climate

    National Geographic

    Why we cannot afford to lose the Amazon

    A scientist with fifty years in the rainforest on what the Amazon does for the rest of the planet, and how much is already gone.

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  • Environment & Climate

    Columbia Climate School

    What melting ice is uncovering

    Thawing permafrost is releasing ancient microbes, buried pollutants and valuable minerals all at once. The question is who benefits.

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  • Environment & Climate

    Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

    Why the poles decide the weather where you live

    The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and the effects reach as far as a drought in Kansas.

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  • Environment & Climate

    The Ocean Cleanup

    What is actually in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

    Around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic drift across 1.6 million square kilometres of ocean, and most of it came from fishing.

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  • Environment & Climate

    National Geographic

    The fishermen who turn ocean plastic into roads

    In Kerala, five thousand fishermen started hauling plastic out of the sea instead of throwing it back. It ends up in the asphalt.

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  • Environment & Climate

    United Nations

    Climate change, explained from the start

    The UN's own primer on what climate change is, what drives it, and what halving emissions by 2030 would actually take.

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  • Health & Medical Care

    World Health Organization

    What universal health coverage means

    The principle that everyone can get the care they need, when and where they need it, without financial hardship, and how far the world still is from it.

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  • Disaster Relief

    Red Cross / Red Crescent

    How disaster relief actually works

    When catastrophe strikes, who responds first, and how? A plain guide to the world's largest humanitarian network, spanning more than 191 countries.

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  • Hunger Relief

    World Food Programme

    What hunger really is, and what drives it

    From conflict to climate shocks, the UN food agency explains why hundreds of millions still go without enough to eat.

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Insights

What does the limitation of capitalization mean in the Creative Society

Our current economic system is basically just a pursuit of “profit maximization”. It gave birth to countless problems in the world: poverty, hunger, slavery, violence and wars.

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Want to go green? Here’s 20 fun facts about sustainability

Let’s delve into what we can do to nurture our stunning natural surrounds with 20 facts about sustainability to help us support the land that gave us life.

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How India’s Fishermen Turn Ocean Plastic Into Roads

In an innovative project, fishermen in Kerala collect ocean plastic for recycling, cleaning the ocean in the process.

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The Polar Imperative

WHOI researchers tackle big questions in a melting world

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Does the ocean produce oxygen?

It’s easy to think of the world’s forests as the planet’s “lungs.” Trees pump out oxygen—the same stuff we breathe in. The bigger the tree the more oxygen it releases. But most of our breathable air doesn’t come from land. It comes from the world’s oceans.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world and is located between Hawaii and California. Scientists of The Ocean Cleanup have conducted the most extensive analysis ever of this area.

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Understanding the lesser-known human causes of climate change

The evidence for climate change worldwide is plentiful. Records show an average global temperature rise of over 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century, contributing towarming oceans, shrinking ice sheets, retreating glacier cover, decreased snowfall, and more.

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What Lies Beneath Melting Glaciers and Thawing Permafrost?

Across the planet, ice is rapidly disappearing. From mountain tops, the poles, the seas, and the tundra. As the ice melts, it’s exposing new surfaces, new opportunities, and new threats — including valuable mineral deposits, archaeological relics, novel viruses, and more.

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Is the Great Barrier Reef making a comeback?

The world’s largest reef saw record growth after years of bleaching, but it’s not out of the woods yet

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What is Sustainability? How Sustainabilities Work, Benefits, and Example

In business and policy contexts, sustainability seeks to prevent the depletion of natural or physical resources, so that they will remain available for the long term.

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How Climate Change Impacts Water Access

The water cycle is part of our everyday lives, but climate change may have dire consequences for everyday water access.

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Ask an Amazon Expert: Why We Can’t Afford to Lose the Rainforest

Scientist and National Geographic Fellow Dr. Thomas Lovejoy is leading a charge to combat deforestation and protect the Amazon.

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WHAT IS SUSTAINABILITY AND WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT?

Sustainability is the ability to exist and develop without depleting natural resources for the future.

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WHAT DOES “SUSTAINABILITY” MEAN IN BUSINESS?

A growing number of organizations are integrating sustainability into their business strategy—realizing they can do well by doing good.

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What Is Climate Change?

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions.

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