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The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has partnered with the Climate Bonds Initiative to help scale up the corporate green bond market.

The European Commission's recent assessment of the Paris Agreement on climate demonstrates that businesses and investors are crucial to implementation of the goals and the transition to a low-carbon economy. 

HP has committed to powering its global operations with 100 percent renewable energy - and says it plans to reach the 40 percent renewable electricity mark by 2020 - because, as Nate Hurst, HP's chief sustainability and social impact officer says, "both cost-effective and low carbon sources of energy are essential to the future and the growth of HP's business."

Copenhagen, Johannesburg, and Singapore are among the stars of a new report that touts better transportation, buildings and waste management to generate massive savings

Cities could save a collective $22 trillion and vastly reduce global emissions by embracing green building, better infrastructure and other environmental measures, researchers say. "Becoming more sustainable and putting the world -- specifically cities -- on a low-carbon trajectory is actually feasible and good economics," said Seth Schultz, a researcher for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. 

China is building ecocities in droves. Dozens of these green-branded, new frontiers of urbanism are already in an advanced state of development, and upwards of 200 more are on the way. In fact, over 80 per cent of all prefecture level cities in the country (the administrative division below "province") have at least one ecocity project in the works. Over the coming decades, it has been estimated, 50 per cent of China's new urban developments will be stamped with labels such as "eco," "green," "low carbon," or "smart".

Natural capital valuation offers water companies a powerful tool to identify sustainability challenges, engage stakeholders such as the chief financial officer and drive innovation in low-carbon technologies, a recent meeting of water industry executives concluded.

Today at COP21 in Paris, LCTPi unveiled updates on each focus area. Here are the highlights from some key focus areas:

Over the last 12 months, challenges around addressing sustainability issues have featured consistently in global headlines. Despite mixed political messages about our transition to a low-carbon future, the private sector has continued to drive sustainability up the business agenda; from Science Based Targets (SBTs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to increased investor scrutiny over Non-Financial Reporting. Here are eight key topics from around the world which will likely shape sustainability during 2018.

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.

BSR launched the Sustainable Fuel Buyers' Principles, a guiding framework created by the members of BSR's Future of Fuels initiative to "build the market for low-carbon fuels, ensure progress toward a sustainable set of fuel options, and create opportunities for partnership and collaboration." The inaugural corporate signatories include Amazon, HP, IKEA, PepsiCo, UPS, and Walmart.

The International Panel on Climate Change has already warned of irreversible damage linked to greenhouse gas emissions and called for an 80-percent reduction of power-sector emissions by 2050. "We decided to go a little further."

Deforestation in the world's largest rainforest jumped 29 percent over last year, representing a sharp increase over the historically low deforestation rate seen just five years ago and the highest level recorded in the region since 2008, reports the Brazilian government. The numbers, released by Brazil's National Space Research Institute INPE on Monday, show that 7,989 square kilometers of rainforest were destroyed between August 2015 and July 2016. The loss is equivalent to an area 135 times the size of Manhattan or the combined land mass of the American states of Connecticut and Delaware.

Here are the clean energy trends that will matter in 2015:  - Moves toward 100 percent renewables will expand - Energy storage will carve out a competitive advantage - Low-cost oil could affect clean transportation, but not clean electricity - Other regions will follow New York's fracking ban