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To assess shareholder involvement, I poured through the social and environmentally related shareholder proposals of 2015 using two terrific resources: Ceres and the Manhattan Institute's Proxy Monitor 2015 Scorecard.

The interactive report, produced in partnership with Trucost, features: our ninth annual State of Green Business report, This year's report continues our tradition of taking the pulse of corporate progress in sustainability, in the United States and around the world.  * The top 10 trends for 2016 * Video interviews with key sustainability leaders * 30+ metrics assessing the environmental performance and progress of nearly 2,000 companies

In an effort to help companies use safer chemicals, the Clean Production Action (CPA), has released the next version of the GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals Hazard Assessment Guidance, adding information for using the GreenScreen List Translator as a first step in identifying hazardous chemicals in products.

As part of its CanopyStyle initiative, environmental NGO Canopy has released an updated and expanded edition of its Hot Button Report, a ranking of eleven viscose and rayon producers that represent 70 percent of global viscose production. The report is the first tool of its kind to enable fashion brands and retailers to robustly assess producers' impacts on the world's forests, as well as their leadership in forging solutions to eliminate endangered forest fiber from the rayon and viscose supply chain.

More than 70 different technologies are available to improve the efficiency of a trucking fleet. These include changes to powertrains and chassis, low-rolling-resistance tires, and enhanced tractor aerodynamics. Finding the right mix to improve a specific fleet can be daunting. Carbon War Room partnered with the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) to publish a series of Confidence Reports-objective assessments of the fuel efficiency savings of these technologies. The reports were cited by U.S. EPA in its Greenhouse Gas Pollution Prevention rule-making proposal. 

The report ranks 171 nations in terms of their risk. It has two components: the exposure they face from extreme events like typhoons, drought and earthquakes, and their ability to deal with those catastrophes, or their vulnerability. Sea-level rise is a key driver of the assessment. Many of the top 10 nations facing high risks are located along coastlines.

Bees, butterflies and other pollinators are increasingly under threat from human activities and countries must transform their agricultural practices to ensure global crop production can meet demand and avoid substantial economic losses, the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity heard today. According to the global assessment on pollinators produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 75 per cent of our food crops and nearly 90 per cent of wild flowering plants depend to some extent on animal pollination, which is the transfer of pollen between the male and female parts of flowers to enable fertilization and reproduction. Without pollinators, crops such as coffee, cacao and apples would drastically suffer, and changes in global crop supplies could increase prices to consumers and reduce profits to producers, resulting in a potential annual net loss of economic welfare of $160 billion to $191 billion globally.

"Global Forests Report 2016" (CDP) finds that up to $906 billion in revenue at companies analyzed is at risk due to deforestation; a quarter of these companies' revenues are tied to commodities linked to deforestation. However, the report finds that only 1 in 5 of these companies are assessing risks associated with deforestation beyond a six-year horizon.

Following the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse that killed 1,134 people in 2013, Fashion Revolution and Ethical Consumer were compelled to demand more transparency from the fashion industry. To help the public learn where their clothes came from and how they were made, they began publishing the Fashion Transparency Index assessing top selling global brands. Levi's, Inditex, H&M, and adidas were among the top scorers in 2016.

Climate change is already hitting America hard, according to a new study, leading to water shortages in dry regions, heavy rains in wet regions, more frequent and severe heat waves, worse wildfires, and forests die-offs. "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the National Climate Assessment warns

 cracks are beginning to appear in the shareholder value edifice and are leading to a renewed examination of the factors that should shape investor decisions. Three factors are driving this re-assessment.