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The Hershey Company has announced that 30%of its globally sourced cocoa was independently certified and verified in 2014 - this reflects an accelerated pace for achieving its goal of sourcing 100% of its cocoa supply from certified and sustainable cocoa farms by 2020.

General Electric has launched an up to CAD$1 million ecomagination open challenge to help accelerate emissions-reducing technology development in Canada's oil sands. The Innovation Challenge will target two of the biggest opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil sands: new uses for waste heat and improved efficiency of steam generation.

The potential for new laws governing the use of forest resources this year in Cameroon promises an opportunity to stem the rapid loss of forest in the biologically diverse country. But the changes may ultimately not be what's needed to save Cameroon's forests. Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0625-gfrn-cannon-cameroon.html#w6L2jPe1cgOgqGYr.99

The Boeing ecoDemonstrator 787 has begun flight testing more than 25 new technologies aimed at improving aviation's environmental performance through every phase of flight, according to a recent announcement. The Boeing ecoDemonstrator Program accelerates the testing, refinement and use of new technologies and methods that can improve efficiency and reduce noise.

On Tuesday at COP21, the MIT Climate CoLab announced the launch of a series of online contests to help strengthen the resilience of vulnerable countries to respond to climate-related hazards. The suite of contests are part of the UN Secretary-General's Climate Resilience Initiative: Anticipate, Absorb, Reshape (A2R), a global, multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at accelerating action on the ground to enhance climate resilience of the most vulnerable countries and people by 2020. 

ExxonMobil and other major oil companies, as well as several multinational firms in other sectors, are set to announce support for a tax on carbon emissions as a practical tool for fighting global warming. The firms argue that if energy produced from fossil fuels costs more, it will accelerate the market-driven transition to renewable energy and other sources that produce low carbon emissions.

Two of the world's most iconic food and beverage brands have launched ambitious initiatives aimed at significantly reducing waste and increasing the recycled and biobased content of their packaging. Together, they mark the acceleration of a yearslong war on waste.

Environmental risks, which have grown in prominence over the 13-year history of the Global Risks Report, are an area of particular concern. The Global Risks Report 2018 looks at five categories of environmental risks: extreme weather events and temperatures; accelerating biodiversity loss; pollution of air, soil and water; failures of climate change mitigation and adaptation; and risks linked to the transition to low carbon. All of these risks ranked highly on both dimensions of likelihood and impact.

Despite efforts from Washington to sideline action on climate change, a growing number of Fortune 500 companies are taking increasingly ambitious steps to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, procure more renewable energy and reduce their energy bills through energy efficiency, according to a new report released today from World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Ceres, Calvert Research and Management (Calvert) and CDP.

AkzoNobel has launched the Human Cities Coalition, a multi-stakeholder group that is dedicated to accelerating progress against UN Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. The coalition is comprised of more than 150 stakeholders and 20 partners, including Arcadis, Philips, and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The acclaimed fashion company behind Gucci and Saint Laurent teams with a startup accelerator to find the next big thing in circular, durable and decarbonized fashion.

Facebook and Microsoft partnered with investment company Allotrope Partners to "mobilize" $50 million for sustainable energy efforts in poor communities through a finance facility. By pulling in grants and loans, the Microgrid Investment Accelerator program will fund renewable microgrid projects in India, Indonesia and Africa between 2018 and 2020.

Packaging remains a considerable challenge for businesses looking to reduce their impacts, but innovators such as food-service supplier Eco-Products and Finnish startup Sulpac are helping to accelerate the transition to lower-impact models through cross-industry partnerships and sustainable packaging solutions.

The co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center focuses on furthering behavioral change.

At the University of Miami's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Brian McNoldy and other researchers have been accumulating sea level data from Virginia Key (a small island just south of Miami Beach) since 1996. Over those nineteen years, sea levels around the Miami coast have already gone up 3.7 inches.

The fashion and textile industries continue to make strides towards circular models with the emergence of new resources and technologies that make a sustainable shift easier than ever before. The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute's Fashion Positive Initiative has unveiled a set of online resources designed to rapidly increase environmental and social outcomes in the fashion industry, while the H&M Foundation and The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel have uncovered a new hydrothermal process that fully separates and recycles fabric blends that can then be reused directly without any quality loss.