But even as the Trump administration shoots down emerging clean-energy technology, it has rushed to secure critical minerals – the raw materials that are crucial to renewable energy and emerging military technology – and the United States has spearheaded a number of actions meant to break China’s hold over the critical-mineral supply chain. Some experts say that the administration’s emphasis on national security is the likely point of its rush for critical minerals. But if the Trump administration stockpiles more of the minerals than the Pentagon uses, or if the mining industries don’t come together in the course of Trump’s second term, others believe that the president’s efforts could ultimately support renewable energy under a future administration.

“Currently, [critical mineral policy is] being deployed to advance a bellicose nationalism,” says Lorah Steichen, research manager at the Transition Security Project, a non-profit that investigates the U.S. and U.K. military industrial complexes as climate and economic threats. “Which is clearly in opposition to a just energy transition.”

On February 2, President Trump and the U.S. Export-Import Bank, or EXIM, announced an initiative called Project Vault – a $12-billion public–private partnership to stockpile critical minerals, meant to insulate the United States from supply shocks. It will consist of $2 billion in private capital and a $10-billion EXIM loan: companies such as Boeing, General Motors and Alphabet are expected to participate in the program and will be able to draw from the stockpile, provided they replenish the material they use.

“In theory, the project can already be used for clean energy,” says Bryan Bille, a policy and geopolitical principal at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Even if the current administration focuses on directing much of the stockpile toward the military, Bille explains, it will still be focused on ramping up U.S. battery capacity to serve the data centre boom.

A few days after the stockpile was announced, the administration held a “Critical Minerals Ministerial” in D.C. with representatives from more than 50 countries, where Vice President JD Vance proposed a special trade zone that would use tariffs to determine price floors and allow participating countries more stable access to critical minerals. The administration recently announced that it would also use AI to set price floors in some cases, specifically when dealing with minerals like gallium – 95% of which the United States imports from China. Because the market is currently so distorted by its single supplier, Peter Cook, a climate and energy analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, explains, AI could help determine the actual cost of producing gallium, which is essential to semiconductors and other electronics.

But whether any of this lasts is dependent on critical mineral policy being codified into legislation, Cook says, pointing to the Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply Act, which is currently in the Senate. “The key is if something like Project Vault is going to be durable beyond a single administration,” Cook says. “I think there’s certainly a possibility for [clean energy and national security stockpiling] to complement each other, instead of cannibalizing each other.”

Currently about 80% of rare-earth imports in the United States come from China, and the Trump administration has worked aggressively to break this market stranglehold through trade deals, taking equity stakes in several mining companies (which have been called into question by Democrats in the House and Senate), holding a summit to secure the AI supply chain, and even defying international law by exploring deep-sea mining in international waters.

But securing minerals alone is not enough to oust China as the world’s rare-earth and critical-minerals heavyweight. The United States still lacks the processing power to mould those minerals from raw materials, and killing the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies squashed a stream of demand, making it difficult to diversify the mineral supply chain, explains Tom Moerenhout, a professor at Columbia University who leads the Critical Materials Initiative at the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy.

“The short-term bottleneck is getting these [processing facilities built],” Cook says. “But the real bottleneck is going to be just overall supply from a geologic perspective.” In other words, even if mines were to be up and running tomorrow, the United States might not have access to a sufficient supply of critical minerals.

To complicate matters, there isn’t an absolute overlap between the minerals needed for green energy and those needed for defence production. Antimony, for example, which the administration has made a point of seeking out, is used in military technology but not solar panels or EV batteries. And, in recent weeks, conservatives appear to have made an abrupt about-face on clean technology, likely spurred by the extreme energy demands of data centres. How this will play out in the long run remains unclear.

Experts agree that building up resilient supply chains and infrastructure could be helpful, should a future administration return the country’s focus to a clean transition. But a robust, domestic network of mining and mineral processing will require a fundamental shift in how we think about and plan for mineral extraction and extractive zones as well.

“Everybody is criticizing China for this dominance, but it was created by the West,” says Raphaël Deberdt, a postdoctoral fellow at Copenhagen Business School who studies mining anthropology. “We offshored industries that we thought were too polluting. The dominance of China in terms of processing is the result of basically 40 years of the West not wanting that done in their countries.”

Nevertheless, an effective green industrial policy, Steichen, of the Transition Security Project, explains, is not just about reducing risk in the supply chain or providing the right incentives, but also minimizing the volume of extraction. “None of that is possible as long as critical-mineral strategy is premised on national security and mineral military expansion,” she says. The data centre explosion has put the need for increased mineral recycling into sharp relief, as the chips and servers required for operation need to be replaced every few years – creating tons upon tons of e-waste, much of which is not recycled.

A 2024 report in Nature Computational Science estimated that the rapid adoption of large language models will generate 2.5 million tons of e-waste a year by 2030. “If we’re using public money, there should also be attention to labour, environmental and community standards,” Steichen says. “As well as some of the potential problems around reinforcing U.S. resource nationalism.” The United States disposes of an enormous amount of critical minerals in mine wastewater, and the Energy Department’s research arm, ARPA-E, is currently working on ways to recover usable material from that waste. But regardless of how many solar panels the United States is able to build domestically, Steichen underscores that a truly effective green industrial policy will require global climate cooperation.

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at grist.org.

The post How Trump’s rush to secure critical minerals for war could (eventually) help the green transition appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Africa’s markets have been pressure-testing what the rest of the world mostly theorizes about: resilience through proximity. The vocabulary is “short food supply chains,” but the practice is older than policy and smarter than jargon: farmer to local aggregator or market to consumer or institution, with 1,000-kilometre detours and very few gatekeepers. A 2025 synthesis of 69 studies across 25 African countries comes to the same conclusion: short chains don’t just move food; they move power, especially when paired with simple digital tools. This isn’t about romanticizing open-air markets; it’s about bargaining power. The shorter the path, the less room for someone far away to set the terms.

“Cash in 24 hours changes everything,” a Kiambu farmer told me, leaning on his pickup as porters shouldered crates toward the scales. “You can buy inputs, pay workers, and you don’t panic-sell.” A platform operator in Nairobi put it even plainer: “We didn’t replace the market – we ride on it.” The digital skin: WhatsApp orders, simple inventory apps, business-to-business produce platforms and mobile money. These tools don’t erase the local chain. They speed it up and make it legible, compressing time between harvest and payment so volatility has less surface area to bite.

Follow the logic south to northern Tanzania and the system looks different but moves with the same cadence. In Arusha and Moshi, women-led stalls and microprocessors grind maize, smoke fish, blend spices and portion dairy for neighbourhood buyers and institutional kitchens. These aren’t side hustles clipped onto a formal chain; they are the chain that feeds cities. When a truck is late or a road washes out, “five handcarts fill the gap,” a market association leader said. “We don’t wait for permission.” Contingency plans aren’t found in a consultant’s diagram; it’s the woman who keeps a neighbour’s number and a spare cart in case the usual supplier’s son is sick.

Cash in 24 hours changes everything. You can buy inputs, pay workers, and you don’t panic-sell.

— Kiambu farmer

If you want to see why these short chains don’t just endure shocks but metabolize them, watch what happens when everyday demand becomes predictable. Across the region, government-led, home-grown school feeding has turned local purchasing into a weekday ritual rather than a promise: sub-Saharan Africa has added about 20 million children to national programs since 2022, with countries like Benin channelling public orders directly to nearby producers. A school places an order every weekday; upstream, farmers plant to that rhythm, transporters plan routes, microprocessors justify the small capital outlays that make the whole machine hum. A shaded sorting area here, a clean-water tap there, a used chiller bought on instalments. “That daily order turned our stall into a business,” a vendor told me in Moshi. “We hired two more women and finally bought a fridge that doesn’t die on Fridays.”

The objection, predictably, is scale. Where are the volumes? Hidden in plain sight. Day after day, these markets move hundreds of tonnes – some of it visible through platform dashboards, most of it still travelling by phone call and habit. Scale is not a monolith rolling down a highway; it’s accretion: another school on contract, another hotel switching to local suppliers, another ward installing clean water, another women’s group adding a fridge, another pickup joining the dawn queue.

The world keeps searching for resilience in the language of grand designs and silver bullets. Africa’s city-region food systems have been building it in smaller, nearer, more democratic units. Keep the path short. Pay fast. Share the margin with the people who do the work. Give the system a reliable customer. And then, when the shipment doesn’t come, watch the market open anyway.

Shilpa Tiwari is the founder of NoWomen No Spice and Isenzo Group.

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The RV industry, which is dominated by three manufacturers, is the largest U.S. consumer of tropical wood. NGOs operating in Indonesia claim the industry devours 500 giant trees every day. Its preferred hardwood is lauan, which makes light, moisture-resistant floors and cabinets. Lauan is plentiful on the island of Borneo, but activists have found that price-conscious RV manufacturers regularly buy the wood from unethical suppliers who bulldoze forests rather than manage them sustainably. 

Ford’s new ‘Model T’ moment is all about EVs

Last fall, Washington, D.C.–based Mighty Earth and London-based Earthsight invited a team from The New York Times on an investigative mission to Borneo’s interior, home of the Dayak people. They found drained wetlands, ruined landscapes and communities displaced. According to Mighty Earth’s forest commodities director, Amanda Hurowitz, the probe “exposed the destruction of 100,000 acres of orangutan habitat and Indigenous Dayak forest, fueled by Winnebago and other RV companies.”

Most RV makers and suppliers contacted by The Times chose not to comment on the issue. The largest RV company, Thor Industries, which makes Jayco and Airstream products, said it was “not aware” of any deforested wood in its supply chain. 

Hurowitz wants the RV industry to insist on transparency and sustainability in its supply chain. Mighty Earth estimates that buying from responsible lauan suppliers would cost the industry less than US$20 per vehicle. She says Indonesian authorities have worked hard to reduce commercial deforestation, although “a handful of unprincipled companies have attempted to evade forest protections.”

Hurowitz challenges RV owners to demand change from the industry. It shouldn’t be too hard, as the RV industry purports to revere the environment. Jayco, for instance, offers tips on “Making Your Next RV Trip More Green,” such as separating trash, turning down the thermostat and making your own cleaning products. Now it’s time for RV owners to ask the manufacturers to clean up their act.

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That was before the return of Trump, a new wave of trade tensions, and a looming recession. So we asked ourselves this question: has anything changed for Canadian businesses?

We don’t think so – and here’s why.

1. Canada’s biggest buyer – the government – still sets the tone

The federal government is by far Canada’s biggest buyer, and despite fiscal tightening, Canada’s sustainable procurement policy remains in place. It requires federal departments and agencies to integrate environmental and social considerations into their purchasing decisions. With Prime Minister Mark Carney expected to uphold this framework, we anticipate continued pressure on suppliers to demonstrate ESG alignment. This has clear trickle-down consequences, including at the provincial and Crown corporation level, for example with the Ontario Education Collaborative Marketplace (OECM), Ontario’s not-for-profit that helps its public sector (schools, municipalities, etc.) buy goods and services more efficiently. We have been helping OECM develop an ESG strategy since 2022,which led to it including 45 questions related to ESGI (ESG and Indigenous relations) in its supplier evaluation methodology in 2024, among other initiatives.

2. Big corporations are also staying the course

According to our analysis of Canada’s top 15 corporate buyers (shown in the table below) representing an estimated $440 billion in spending, while the depth and maturity of their policies vary, the trend is clear: large Canadian companies are increasingly integrating sustainability into their procurement practices, driven by consumer demand, investor expectations, ESG commitments and reputational risk. Each of the top 15 currently has a sustainable procurement policy in place that includes sustainability criteria in supplier evaluations. It’s never the first or only factor they look at, of course, but it’s a factor. Examples of ESG criteria used in supplier evaluation go from the obvious greenhouse gas emissions and diversity, equity and inclusion practices to waste and water reduction, biodiversity, community investments, risk management and policies.

Sustainability expectations of Canada’s largest corporate buyers

Given the combined purchasing power of these organizations, as well as the robustness and complexity of their supply chains, this is also likely to have ripple effects across the broader Canadian market.

3. Regulation is driving ESG down the supply chain

Bill S-211, now in its second year of implementation, mandates that companies report on how they are addressing forced and child labour in their supply chains. This is not just a compliance issue; it’s a signal that supply chain transparency is becoming a baseline expectation.

The Canadian Sustainability Standards Board launched its first disclosure standards in January 2025, based on the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards. While still voluntary, these standards align with international frameworks and include Scope 3 emissions, which cover indirect emissions from a company’s supply chain and typically represent 90% of companies’ emissions, according to an analysis from McKinsey. Companies that adopt these standards early will be better positioned as disclosure becomes mandatory.

Whether it’s Scope 3 emissions or human rights due diligence, the common thread across these standards is the need for visibility beyond tier 1 suppliers – and in some cases, all the way to raw materials. This is a major shift in how companies manage risk and build resilience.

4. Global markets are raising the bar

As Canadian companies look to diversify away from the United States, they’re encountering stricter ESG regulations abroad – not just in the European Union, but also in China and other key markets (1,255 ESG policy interventions have been introduced worldwide since 2011, according to ESG Book research in 2023, and 53 jurisdictions are using or preparing to adopt the ISSB standards, representing 57% of global GDP, according to ESG Book research in 2025). Recent research by the Canadian Climate Institute of the top 10 non-U.S. trading partners shows that countries responsible for buying $142 billion of Canadian goods in 2024 are by and large further along than Canada in terms of climate regulation. This global shift is pushing Canadian firms to embed ESG deeper into procurement and vendor selection.

Even in the United States, where ESG has become politically polarized, companies are still moving forward. According to EcoVadis’s 2025 US Business Sustainability Landscape Outlook, 87% of U.S. companies are quietly increasing sustainability investments, even if they’re not promoting them publicly.

5. Investors, lenders and consumers are watching

Canadian and international investors are increasingly demanding robust ESG disclosures, including supply chain practices. And according to 2025 research by Millani, even though Canadian investors are dialling back communications about their ESG integration activities, that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped. Some Canadian banks and lenders are also requiring ESG information during the lending process. Companies that can’t demonstrate ESG alignment risk losing access to capital or trust.

Recent data for consumers is harder to find, as most studies focus on the impact of tariffs, inflation, et cetera. There was, however, a plethora of studies done on the topic in the past few years, and even as inflation concerns were raging in 2024, according to a PwC survey consumers were increasingly prioritizing sustainability in their consumption practices, as almost nine in 10 (85%) said they are experiencing the disruptive impacts of climate change in their lives.

6. It’s not just about compliance and winning contracts – it’s about value

Of course, overall investments are down, which affects the sustainability sector as well, and companies may hesitate to invest in ESG right now. But at the risk of repeating ourselves, beyond revenue and risk management, having a robust sustainability strategy can:

• reduce costs in the medium to long term (e.g., through energy efficiency or waste reduction)
• improve supplier relationships through transparency, clarity and shared sustainability standards
• enhance brand reputation through a clear, science-backed sustainability strategy
• attract and retain talent by demonstrating purpose and environmental responsibility

In short, ESG isn’t just a reporting exercise – it’s a strategic advantage.

Conclusion: The trickle is now a flow

From winning procurement bids to regulation, investor pressure and global market access, the message is clear: ESG expectations are increasingly cascading down the supply chain. While we understand that tariffs and general uncertainty are probably at the top of everyone’s agenda, suppliers that are able to think long-term and get ahead of the curve will not only future-proof compliance, they’ll win business.

In today’s economy, that’s worth thinking about. If you’re a supplier navigating this landscape, now is the time to act. As someone once said: “Never waste a good crisis.”

Boris Couteaux is principal at ESG Global Advisors, and Gur Simar Preet Kaur is an associate. ESG Global offers a comprehensive range of ESG advisory services for companies and investors.

Disclaimer: AI contributed to the creation of this article, but it was guided, reviewed and fact-checked by ESG Global’s human experts. Please note that the content and material provided in this article is for general information purposes only. It is not to be taken or relied upon as legal advice and should not be used for professional or commercial purposes. The content is subject to change based on evolving regulatory reporting requirements.

The post Amid Trump tensions, does sustainability still matter for Canada’s biggest corporate buyers? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Neo recycles a few dozen tons of high-purity gallium a year, mostly from semiconductor chip manufacturing scrap, at a factory in Ontario. In North America, it’s the only industrial-scale producer of the metal, which is used in not only chips, but also clean energy technologies and military equipment.

China, the world’s leading producer by far, had just announced new export controls on gallium, apparently in response to reports that the United States government was considering restrictions on the sale of advanced semiconductor chips to China. All of a sudden, people wanted to talk to Neo. “We’ve spoken to almost everyone” interested in producing gallium outside of China, Tsianos told Grist.

Since Tsianos started receiving those calls, tensions over the 31st element on the periodic table – as well as the 32nd, germanium, also used in a bevy of advanced technologies – have escalated. In December, China outright banned exports of both metals to the United States following the Biden administration’s decision to further restrict U.S. chip exports.

Now, several companies operating in the United States and Canada are considering expanding production of the rare metals to help meet U.S. demand. While Canadian producers of critical minerals may get swept up in a new geopolitical tit-for-tat should Trump go through with his threat to impose tariffs, U.S. metal producers could see support from the new administration, which called for prioritizing federal funding for critical minerals projects in a day-one executive order. Beyond the United States and Canada, industry observers say China’s export ban is fuelling global interest in making critical-mineral supply chains more diverse so that no single country has a chokehold over materials vital for a high-tech, clean energy future.

“This latest round of export bans are putting a lot of wind in the sails of critical-minerals supply chain efforts, not just in the U.S. but globally,” Seaver Wang of the Breakthrough Institute, a research centre focused on technological solutions to environmental problems, told Grist.

Gallium and germanium aren’t exactly household names. But they are found in products that are indispensable to modern life – and a fossil-fuel-free society. With its impressive electrical properties, gallium is used in semiconductor chips that make their way into everything from cellphones to power converters in electric vehicles to LED lighting displays. The metal is also used in the manufacturing of rare earth magnets for electric vehicles and wind turbines, in thin film solar cells, and sometimes, in commercially popular silicon solar photovoltaic cells, where it can help increase performance and extend lifespan.

Germanium, meanwhile, is used to refract light inside fibre optic cables. In addition to helping form the backbone of the internet, the metal’s exceptional light-scattering properties make it useful for infrared lenses, semiconductor chips and high-efficiency solar cells used by satellites.

There aren’t many substitutes for these two elements. Some silicon-based semiconductors lack gallium, and specialized glasses can be substituted for germanium in certain infrared technologies. Solar cells are often doped with boron instead of gallium. But these two metals have specific properties that often make them the ideal material. When it comes to clean energy, Tsianos told Grist, there are no substitutes “within the material performance and cost trade-off spectrum” offered by gallium.

Because a little bit goes a long way, the market for both metals is small – and it’s dominated by China. In 2022, the world produced about 640 tons of low-purity gallium and a little over 200 tons of germanium, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In recent years, China has accounted for virtually all of the world’s low-purity gallium output and more than half of refined germanium.

That’s partly because both metals are byproducts of other industries. Gallium is typically extracted from bauxite ores as they are being processed to make aluminum oxide, while zinc miners sometimes squeeze germanium out of waste produced during refining. China is a leading producer of these common metals, too – and its government has made co-extracting gallium and germanium a priority, according to Wang. “It is very strategic,” he said.

China’s dominance of the two metals’ supply chains gives it a considerable cudgel in its ongoing trade war with the United States. The United States produces no virgin gallium and only a small amount of germanium, while consuming approximately 50 tons a year of the two metals combined. A U.S. Geological Survey study published in November found that if China implemented a total moratorium on exports of both metals, it could cost the U.S. economy billions. Weeks after that study was published, China announced its ban.

The ban is so new that it’s not yet clear how U.S. companies, or the federal government, are responding. But the U.S. high-tech manufacturing sector isn’t without fallback options. North of the border, Neo’s facility in Ontario stands ready to double its production of gallium, according to Tsianos. “We have the capacity,” he told Grist. “We’re waiting for more feedstock.”

Currently, Neo’s only source of gallium is the semiconductor industry. Chip makers in Europe, North America and Asia send the company their scrap, which it processes to recover high-purity gallium that feeds back into semiconductor manufacturing. But Tsianos says Neo is piloting its technology with bauxite miners around the world to create new sources of virgin gallium. The idea, he says, is that bauxite miners would do some initial processing on-site, then send low-purity gallium to Neo for further refining in Canada. Tsianos declined to name specific bauxite firms Neo is partnering with but said the company is “making progress” toward making new resources available.

Meanwhile, in British Columbia, mining giant Teck Resources is already a leading producer of germanium outside of China. The firm’s Trail Operations refinery complex receives zinc ore from the Red Dog mine in northwest Alaska and turns it into various products, including around 20 tons of refined germanium a year, according to a U.S. Geological Survey estimate. (Teck doesn’t disclose production volumes.)

That germanium is sold primarily to customers in the United States, Teck spokesperson Dale Steeves told Grist. In wake of the export ban, Steeves said that the firm is now “examining options and market support for increasing production capacity of germanium.”

Kwasi Ampofo, the head of metals and mining at the clean energy research firm BloombergNEF, told Grist that in the near term, he would expect the United States to “try to establish new supply chain relationships” with countries that already have significant production, like Canada, to secure the gallium and germanium it needs. That may be true whether or not Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canadian imports become reality. Tsianos was bullish in spite of the tariff threat, noting in an email that Neo “remains the only industrial-scale and commercially operating Gallium facility in North America.”

“[W]e are committed to continue serving our European, American and Japanese customers in the semiconductor and renewable energy industries,” Tsianos added.

Steeves told Grist that a trade war between the United States and Canada would be “a negative for the economy of both nations, disrupting the flow of essential critical minerals and increasing costs and inefficiencies on both sides of the border.” Teck, he said,  “will continue to actively manage our sales arrangements to minimize the impact to Trail Operations.”

While Canada may be the United States’ best short-term option for these rare metals, farther down the line Ampofo expects to see the States take a  “renewed interest” in recycling – particularly of military equipment. In 2022, the Department of Defense announced it had initiated a program for recovering “optical-grade germanium” from old military equipment. At the time, the initiative was expected to recycle up to three tons of the metal each year, or roughly 10% of the nation’s annual demand. The Defense sub-agency responsible for the program didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment on the program’s status.

There’s another small source of production capacity in the United States. The global metals company Umicore recycles germanium from manufacturing scrap, fibre optic cables, solar cells and infrared optical devices at an optical materials facility in Quapaw, Oklahoma, as well as in Belgium. The company has been recycling germanium since the 1950s, a spokesperson told Grist, calling it a “core and historical activity at Umicore.” Umicore declined to disclose how much of the metal it recycles and wouldn’t say whether China’s export ban will affect this part of its business.

While recycling is able to fill some of the nation’s gallium and germanium needs, there may be a larger source of both metals lurking in sludge ponds in central Tennessee. There, in the city of Clarksville, the Netherlands-headquartered Nyrstar operates a zinc processing facility that produces wastes containing gallium and germanium. A U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson told Grist that the company has previously partnered with Ames National Laboratory’s Critical Materials Innovation Hub to develop processes for extracting gallium, which isn’t typically produced from zinc waste.

In 2023, Nyrstar announced plans to build a new US$150-million facility, co-located with its existing zinc smelter in Clarksville, capable of producing 30 tons of germanium and 40 tons of gallium a year. However, the current status of the project is uncertain, with no timetable to begin construction. A spokesperson for Nyrstar told Grist the company is “continu[ing] to work on and evaluate the business case” for the facility but declined to offer additional details.

Making a business case to produce gallium or germanium is the central challenge for firms outside of China, experts told Grist. As Tsianos of Neo put it, these metals are a “side hustle” that requires major up-front investment for a relatively small amount of extra revenue. Moreover, a bauxite or zinc miner’s ability to produce gallium or germanium typically hinges on the market conditions for the metal it is primarily focused on. That means “if aluminum prices are low or the zinc prices are low, the mine or the smelter might just not operate, even if the world is sort of screaming out for more gallium or germanium,” Wang said.

Still, there’s more economic incentive to produce these metals now than there was a few years ago. The recent geopolitical drama, Tsianos says, has caused a “bifurcation” in the price of gallium. Outside of China, the price of the metal is now “almost double” what it is within the nation’s borders.

“There’s a structural change in the market that has created a business case for outside-of-China production,” Tsianos said. “And it started because of the export control.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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Yet after billions of taxpayer dollars have been invested, the EV industry in Canada is facing headwinds. Chief among these are U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, followed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s equivalent retaliatory tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods starting on February 4, escalating to include another $125 billion worth of imports in three weeks.

For a country with an automotive sector that exports 91% of its parts to the U.S., the threats feel existential. They may also be seen as a betrayal of the centuries-long economic and cultural partnership between two neighbours sharing one of the world’s longest and most porous borders.

Adding to these international headwinds are three other obstacles within the EV industry: 1) high costs, 2) limited battery range and 3) sparse battery charging infrastructure. These concerns continue to affect firms here in Canada, with big automakers like Stellantis juggling high inventory, slow sales and falling revenue.

These challenges have sparked skepticism about the future of EVs in Canada and whether the federal and provincial governments’ multi-billion-dollar investments in the industry are wise.

Canada needs to consolidate its EV innovation ecosystem by integrating the upstream of its domestic supply chain assets with the downstream of its technology commercialization and adoption.

– Charles Conteh and Tia Henstra

As researchers who study Canada and other countries’ innovation policy initiatives amid breakneck changes in technologies and markets, we argue that Canada has every reason to ratchet up its commitments in the months and years ahead.

Along with artificial intelligence, EVs represent the emergent frontier of advanced manufacturing in the digital age. Winners of this innovation race will stand to dominate the global market for the foreseeable future.

Canada has every reason to be optimistic about EVs

Despite current challenges, EVs remain the future of the automotive sector. Even conservative estimates suggest that by 2040, around three-quarters of new car sales will be fully electric globally.

Canada’s position in the EV industry is stronger than recent news coverage indicates. The country ranked first among 30 countries in a 2024 EV battery supply chain report, outperforming even China. This ranking reflects Canada’s vast reserves of critical minerals essential for EV battery production and its burgeoning battery manufacturing sector. Over the past few years, Canada has attracted significant investments from manufacturers like Umicore, Northvolt and Volkswagen-owned PowerCo.

Canada has reasons to be optimistic about EV and energy storage demand. While concerns about U.S. protectionism loom, Canada’s commitment to zero-emission vehicles ensures fiscal incentives and policies that will likely boost short-term demand.

On the environmental, social and governance front, Canada outperforms many of its global competitors in battery manufacturing. Though by no means perfect, the country’s climate change policy ambitions, clean electricity grid and commitment to sustainable mining position it as a global leader in the EV space.

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Canada’s robust innovation ecosystem for advanced manufacturing is another key strength. A prime example is the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network (OVIN), which commercializes advanced automotive technologies and manages the development, testing, piloting and uptake of transportation and infrastructure technologies. The network operates seven regional technology development sites across Ontario, including in Waterloo, Hamilton, Windsor-Essex, Durham and Toronto.

By serving as a bridge between government, industry and researchers, OVIN has become a model for multi-level governance, with projects jointly funded by the federal and provincial governments and close working relationships with municipalities. As the EV industry navigates economic and policy challenges, initiatives like OVIN are crucial for driving long-term growth and competitiveness.

Canada must calibrate and consolidate its EV ecosystem

While Canada’s automotive innovation ecosystem is generally robust, it requires some calibration to overcome current challenges and claim the next frontier of the global EV race.

In particular, Canada needs to consolidate its EV innovation ecosystem by integrating the upstream of its domestic supply chain assets with the downstream of its technology commercialization and adoption.

In other words, this means getting more critical minerals to market and making sure a substantial portion of the materials mined in Canada are processed and used domestically to build batteries and vehicles, so the entire EV production cycle benefits Canada’s economy.

Such an endeavour will require Canada to establish the right policies, regulations and financial support to tap into its vast reserves of critical minerals to supply the country’s battery plants.

It is the presence of these reserves that made Canada attractive to the automakers in the first place. Leveraging them wisely will be critical for the country’s long-term success in the EV industry.

Charles Conteh is a professor of public policy and administration at Brock University.

Tia Henstra is a research assistant for the Niagara Community Observatory at Brock University.

This story first appeared in The Conversation; it has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

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Republicans call this the “parallel economy,” a platform where conservatives can support their own. Or as Seifert put it on a 2022 podcast: “Stop giving money to people that hate you.”

“Meet your new favorite brands,” boasts PublicSquare’s website: brands such as Carnivore Snax (a “meat potato chip”), StopBox USA (handgun storage); Nobiesse (natural cleaning products – read that name again); Prepper gold and silver bars; and Promised Grounds coffee (“done the right way. The Christian way”). PublicSquare also operates its own baby-product brand, EveryLife.

By mid-2023, PublicSquare claimed a million users, and big money was circling. Donald Trump Jr. invested and brought along Wall Street banker Omeed Malik of 1789 Capital. They helped the company go public at $23 a share. Despite their help, the stock price of “America’s marketplace” closed the first day at $21.

Stop giving money to people that hate you.

– Public Square founder Michael Seifert

Since then, the stock price has fallen by as much as 90%. PublicSquare’s results for the nine months ending September 30, 2024, showed a loss of US$44 million on revenue of just $16 million. At the same time, the company fired 35% of its staff as part of a restructuring that Seifert claims will reset the company as an e-payments powerhouse. So far, MAGA’s economic clout has underperformed. 

PublicSquare’s Trustpilot rating of 2.6 out of 5 (“Poor”) hints at other problems. Companies trying to advertise on the site say that it takes their money and delivers zilch. Worse, some patriots complained that their purchases actually originated from overseas. “I can only guess from where,” said one. 

But by early December, word had spread that Donald Trump Jr. was joining the board of the “woke-free” retailer, after which PublicSquare’s shares spiked briefly. Trump Jr. is reportedly focused on building a “cancel-proof” economy. There is no denying the anti-woke agenda is gaining ground.

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At least, that is what leaders in Quebec are banking on, as the province gears up to assume an axis position in the world’s electrified transition. Quebec’s riches have long been on display. One of the mining capitals of the country, accounting for one-fifth of Canada’s mineral production, it has baked into its bedrock the precious elements coveted in the electric vehicle boom – graphite, nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum and the showstopper: lithium. And increasingly, the provincial and federal governments have been pouring money into the rest of the supply chain, with investments like the one slated for the green fields in Saint-Basile-le-Grand and McMasterville, a short drive from Montreal.  

Here, Swedish climate-tech giant Northvolt has plans to build a “gigafactory” the size of 318 football fields that the federal government calls the cornerstone of a unique integrated battery production line in Canada. With more than $7 billion in investments and incentives, the first phase of the project at “Northvolt Six” will have an annual cell production capacity of 30 gigawatt hours and create up to 3,000 jobs in the region. They will be making what Ottawa has called “the world’s cleanest batteries,” at a rate of one million per year once the plant is fully operational.

But big questions loom over Quebec’s battery bet, amid an energy landscape that appears to be shifting by the day. A recalibration of the explosive growth projected for electric vehicles is forcing companies such as Northvolt to shrink their global operations, even as competition from neighbouring Ontario to attract EV business grows. While protectionist tariffs against more affordable Chinese-made EVs will affect how quickly Canadians make new mobility choices, the energy transition is nonetheless moving full steam ahead in Quebec, where EV adoption is among the highest in the country.  

“Getting a car manufacturer in Quebec was not my objective,” says Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s former minister of economy and energy, in an August interview, expressing a divergent path from that of Ontario, which includes EV assembly. 

Fitzgibbon, who resigned his post in September, travelled to Japan, South Korea and China in 2019 – when “the word ‘battery’ was not in Quebec’s vocabulary” – with a goal of understanding how the Asian powerhouses had secured a head start in the EV race. He came back focused on leaning into Quebec’s competitive advantage. “My objective was: how can we transform here in Quebec our critical minerals, as opposed to what had been happening before, which was to export it on a raw basis,” he says. “We’re setting up a kind of ecosystem.”  

The provincial government touts itself as the first in the country to develop a critical minerals strategy, which it first released in 2020. At the moment, there are 25 mines in varying stages of economic evaluation or exploration to produce the minerals needed for energy transition. That’s on top of the one graphite mine, one lithium mine and two mines already extracting combinations of nickel, copper and cobalt. Quebec’s strategy is buttressed by circularity, mining the “urban mine” of used, recalled or damaged batteries that are piling up around us. In June, doors opened on the province’s first critical minerals extraction plant, by Lithion Technologies, located on the outskirts of Montreal and one of the first in North America. Once fully operational, the facility will have the capacity to shred 45,000 EV batteries per year. 

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Beyond the precious elements in its soil, Quebec’s ample hydro power – at what the minister calls a “very reasonable” price – offers companies the chance to build sustainability into their business models.  

Of course, it’s not just about access to cheap green energy. In the race to secure a place in the EV transition, governments around the world have been pushed to provide hefty incentives to lure investment (or block competition, like the 100% tariffs on Chinese-made EVs by Canada and the U.S., and lower ones in Europe). Canada and Quebec have been matching the kind of production support available under the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act for the Northvolt battery line, topping out at $4.6 billion. In addition, Quebec has earmarked $3.46 billion in loans, subsidies and equity investment for 15 battery projects so far. Among the recipients of the funding is a cathode factory by General Motors and South Korea’s POSCO Chemical, in Bécancour, slated to be another battery hub, or “battery valley,” near Trois-Rivières. Construction on a third joint cathode venture, also in the Bécancour area but this time between Ford, Korea’s EcoPro BM and SK On, was recently put on hold.   

Strategy speedbumps

For all its green transition promise, the efforts are not without controversy. Fitzgibbon’s resignation unleashed a wave of criticism over how the Coalition Avenir Québec government was handling energy policy, with Conservative Party of Quebec leader Éric Duhaime calling its strategy of focusing on electrification and battery production “a very risky bet, potentially even already a failure.”  

The Northvolt project, due to its scope and degree of public investment, has garnered the most scrutiny thus far, especially from environmental groups and Indigenous communities that say the government has circumvented the rules and failed to properly consult and evaluate the project. Local residents have raised concerns about the potential environmental impacts, in particular on the Richelieu River, which is a source of drinking water for some 300,000 households and a biodiverse habitat with protected fish stocks. In more extreme examples of opposition, vandals have driven nails and metal bars into trees to prevent forests from being cut down and planted incendiary devices made of bottles filled with flammable liquid on the site. No one has been injured, but it’s put the community on edge and caught company and government officials off guard.  

“It’s really a case about how the government and minister of the environment take decisions about big industrial projects,” says Marc Bishai, a lawyer with the Quebec Environmental Law Centre (Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement, or CQDE). The group has filed a lawsuit challenging the provincial government’s decision to make a change to its environmental assessment rules, thus exempting the first phase of the plant from a comprehensive impact assessment, known in Quebec as a BAPE. A court denied CQDE’s bid to halt the felling of thousands of trees on the 170-hectare site. “The government is denying the public the ability to participate in the decision, which normally happens in Quebec,” Bishai says.  

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake has also taken Quebec and Canada to court for allegedly breaching their duties to consult, both in terms of approval of the Northvolt project and, in the case of Quebec, over destruction of wetlands.  

Fitzgibbon denies that the rules were changed for the Northvolt project, although in March, Environment Minister Benoit Charette told the media that an environmental assessment at that juncture would have delayed approval and jeopardized Quebec’s chances to secure the gigafactory. He insisted the company will nonetheless have to satisfy the province’s stringent environmental standards.  

Navigating headwinds

On the streets of the picturesque village of Saint-Basile-le-Grand, community members raise concerns about potential environmental risks from the factory, while also expressing interest in the employment opportunities the complex would generate. Long-time residents such as Annie Chabot, a 57-year-old educator, say the issue has been divisive. Chabot wishes the government had undergone a more extensive environmental assessment. “But I’m not against the project,” she says.  

Northvolt is facing other headwinds. With the projected growth of EVs slowing in the near term, driving companies such as Ford to reevaluate their plans, the company announced in July that it was undergoing a “strategic review,” prompting a flurry of media coverage speculating that Northvolt Six was in peril. The Swedish company has repeatedly stressed that it remains committed to Quebec, most recently in September, when it announced a slate of closures and mergers for several sites around the world, Northvolt Six not among them. Potential revisions to the timelines of the Quebec facility and others “will be confirmed during the fall, along with any further necessary cost-saving actions,” the company said in a statement.  

As long as we still want to decarbonize the planet, this is a very sound strategy.

 

—Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s former minister of economy and energy

Fitzgibbon says delays are to be expected. The evolving technology may affect how quickly EVs are adopted but not if they are, he maintains. “As long as we still want to decarbonize the planet, this is a very sound strategy,” he says.

Quebec, which has a track record of leading environmental policy in Canada, has shown its commitment to the electric transition through consumer policy, too.  Since 2012, Quebec has offered a healthy rebate for the purchase or lease of an EV. And it has paid off. Quebecers are buying far more EVs than the rest of the country. Electric vehicles had a 21.5% chunk of the vehicle market in the province in the second quarter of this year (compared to 9.9% in Canada overall and 8% in the U.S.). In announcing its decision to phase out the financial incentive for EVs by 2027, the Quebec government said the industry no longer needs that extra help.  

For Normand Mousseau, director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal and a co-chair of the Quebec Commission on Energy Issues in 2013, the success of Quebec’s battery bet is far from clear. He says that there is no obligation for manufacturers such as Northvolt to source their critical minerals from Quebec, so the fully integrated supply chain may not be realized. And he thinks the province missed a critical opportunity to link the energy transition to intellectual property.

 “There was no demand from these industries to invest in any research and development in Quebec. And it’s the same in Ontario,” he says, referring to large government subsidies for EV and battery plants. “We’ve seen it with Hyundai and GM. They set up shop here, and after a few years they leave, because there is nothing that ties them in terms of higher value.” 

 Still, he acknowledges that time is of the essence as the world races to decarbonize, and “you can sit on the side and wait until you have a perfect investment, or you take bets.” 

While some supply chain investments may look shaky, others, such as the Lithion Technologies battery recycling facility, are powering ahead. It’s already processing recalled or end-of-life car batteries. “We want to be able to create the circular economy so that the batteries we produce are the greenest possible batteries,” says CEO Benoit Couture, echoing the provincial government’s larger goal.  

It’s an important cog in Quebec’s aspirations, however they materialize. Regardless, the EV economy will keep driving forward.

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires–based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

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Palm oil companies in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of the commodity, cleared 30,000 hectares (about 74,100 acres) of forest last year to make way for plantations, up from 22,000 hectares (54,400 acres) in 2022. These increases mark the end of a declining trend that began after the record 227,000 hectares (561,000 acres) — an area nearly twice the size of Los Angeles — of deforestation in 2012.

France-based TheTreeMap used plantation concession data from Greenpeace to identify 53 companies behind the plantation expansion and resulting deforestation, of which 20 had cleared carbon-rich peatlands.

The single biggest deforester was the company Ciliandry Anky Abadi (CAA), whose three subsidiaries deforested 2,302 hectares (5,688 acres) across their concessions.

A recent investigation by The Gecko Project has linked CAA to Indonesian conglomerate First Resources, a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world’s largest association for ethical palm oil production. The investigation alleges that First Resources used “shadow companies” to circumvent sustainability standards while still presenting an image of environmental accountability as it adopted a zero-deforestation pledge in 2015.

According to the investigation, companies controlled by the group have cleared more than 95,000 hectares (235,000 acres) of forest since First Resources announced its zero-deforestation pledge.

TheTreeMap also identified deforestation in the concessions of a group of companies known as New Borneo Agri (NBA) or the Sulaidy Group, also allegedly linked to First Resources. These purported ties led to a complaint being lodged against First Resources at the RSPO in 2021.

In the latest development in the case, in January this year a coalition of Indonesian civil society organizations submitted further allegations against First Resources, using fresh evidence collected by The Gecko Project’s investigation.

“Documents obtained in the course of The Gecko Project’s investigation provide strong evidence that First Resources Ltd. is in breach of the current RSPO Group Membership rules which require the compulsory registration of corporate groups under one membership,” the coalition said.

The ongoing complaint against First Resources is the first to test the robustness of the 2020 RSPO Membership Rules, and is still in the deliberation phase, which means a formal investigation hasn’t yet commenced.

“It is hoped the new evidence will be considered by the Independent Investigator in their forthcoming investigation,” the CSOs said.

First Resources has denied operating any shadow companies.

“It is pivotal for us to highlight factual inaccuracies in the report, and we would like to state that First Resources does not have any ownership stake or hold any management roles in CAA and NBA/Sulaidy Group,” the company told Mongabay in an email.

“First Resources has not purchased any palm oil products from CAA and NBA/Sulaidy Group, and will not buy from any company that is not in compliance with our Policy on Sustainable Palm Oil. Therefore, First Resources cannot be held accountable for the actions or inactions of CAA or NBA/Sulaidy Group.”

Responding to the multiple complaints at the RSPO, First Resources said it remains fully cooperative throughout the process.

“Furthermore, it is crucial to convey to our stakeholders that this process will now undergo an independent investigation,” the company said. “This step is taken to ensure a thorough, fair, and unbiased examination of the matter at hand. Thus, First Resources kindly request all parties to respect the ongoing process and await the result before drawing conclusions or making any claims.”

A fifth of total national emissions

Zero-deforestation pledges like those made by First Resources have been credited with the decade-long decline in deforestation driven by oil palm plantations. Known in the industry as NDPE policies, for “no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation,” they’ve been widely adopted by producers, traders and consumers of palm oil following public pressure and campaigns by environmental NGOs and consumer groups.

Historically, deforestation for plantations in Indonesia was concentrated on the island of Sumatra, which today is the country’s palm oil heartland. But the surge in deforestation in the past two years has been mostly on the islands of Indonesian Borneo and Papua.

Crucially, a third of the 2023 deforestation, 10,787 hectares (26,655 acres), occurred on peatlands, a carbon-rich landscape that, when cleared and drained, becomes highly susceptible to fires. These can burn for weeks on end, fueled by the combustible peat soil, releasing vast volumes of greenhouse gases in the process.

Data from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) show that oil palm plantations were the largest contributor to deforestation in Indonesia between 2021 and 2022, resulting in annual GHG emissions of 200 million metric ton.

Indonesia’s total emissions for 2022, not including from the land-use sector that covers plantations, was 1,240 million metric ton, a record high, according to data from the European Commission.

“So emissions from the palm oil [industry] is around a fifth of Indonesia’s emissions,” said Herry Purnomo, CIFOR senior scientist and deputy country director.

He said the challenge that the industry faces at the moment is how to reduce its emissions through protecting forests while at the same time developing the economy of palm oil-producing regions in Indonesia. To start tackling this question, CIFOR has developed a platform called the Simulation of Indonesian Palm Oil Sustainability (SIPOS), which allows users to assess the trade-off between economic development, emissions reductions, and social benefits.

The platform can calculate the amount of emissions produced by the plantation industry, and the increase in emissions for a given increase in production output and income for smallholder farmers. The identified increase in emissions can then be offset or even reduced through various interventions, such as a moratorium on peat and forest clearance, boosting the productivity of smallholders, or buying carbon credits.

EU deforestation regulation

Beni Okarda, a senior research officer at CIFOR, said that the SIPOS platform could also be used by stakeholders to measure the impact of the European Union regulation on deforestation-free products, also known as the EUDR.

The recently adopted law bans imports into the EU of agricultural products that come from deforestation and illegal sources, with the aim of ensuring that products consumed within the EU market aren’t contributing to deforestation or forest degradation anywhere in the world since 2020.

The law applies to seven commodities — beef, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood — and the producers and traders of these commodities have to carry out due diligence throughout their supply chains before being allowed to trade these products in the EU market.

In Indonesia, there are concerns that the regulation will disproportionately affect smallholder oil palm farmers, who account for a significant share of the country’s total palm oil production. Abetnego Tarigan, the deputy for human development in the office of the president’s chief of staff, cited government data showing that 15.7 million independent smallholders would have their livelihoods affected by the EUDR.

CIFOR’s Herry said Indonesia could actually benefit from the EUDR, but only if the country addresses the issues still plaguing the industry, such as illegal plantations in forest areas and the ongoing rate of deforestation. He noted that the cutoff date of 2020 makes it easy for Indonesia to comply, given that only 1% of oil palm production in Indonesia since then has taken place on deforested land, according to CIFOR data. This compares with 14% since 2010, and 54% from 1995 to 2000.

“We can achieve sustainable palm oil,” Herry said. “It’s OK to still have lots of work to do, seeing as how other countries aren’t much better than us [on sustainable palm oil]. So we have to be confident since we have achieved a lot, such as declining deforestation.”

This story first appeared on Mongabay. Read the original article here.

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The tool, NatureHelm, provides a subscription-based platform where large corporate entities or individual landowners can track significant species and ecosystem markers on their properties. The platform also provides analysis of how factors are changing over time and recommendations to improve biodiversity outcomes. NatureHelm plans to launch this month.

“[Tracking biodiversity] is no longer something that is a nice thing; this is going to become regulated,” says Debbie Saunders, a conservation ecologist and founder of NatureHelm. “It’s quite revolutionary for me. I used to go bird-watching for my job, and all of a sudden, I feel like I can help create positive change at a global scale.”

The new push toward better accounting for biodiversity comes in part from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adapted by the United Nations in December 2022. Its targets include “30 by 30,” which aims to protect 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030. The plan also has a target to place 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration plans. Already, the EU has formally adopted rules requiring that companies prove their products aren’t causing deforestation or forest degradation.

Saunders’s idea for NatureHelm came from a decade of working with her other for-profit company, Wildlife Drones, which sells aerial drones that can track radio-frequency wildlife tags. In working with biologists and conservation organizations, Saunders saw just how much data new technology was collecting — images from camera traps, animal tracking paths, satellite measures of tree cover, bioacoustic surveys — and yet that this information was rarely used to measure the health of whole ecosystems. When the EU adopted the Kunming-Montreal Framework, she saw an opportunity to put all of that data to good use.

Take, for example, a hypothetical coffee grower with a small farm. Upon subscribing to NatureHelm, the company deploys an algorithm that scrapes global databases and scientific papers about the region, looking for significant local biodiversity targets. This could be an endangered bird that needs protection, an invasive rat that could be targeted for removal, or local pollinators known to be key for coffee plants.

As managers begin tracking any of these measures — say, conducting surveys, placing bioacoustic monitors, or installing camera traps — they can automatically upload or manually add their findings to their individual portal. Graphs and charts will show how metrics change across space and time. Every year, subscribers receive a report of how biodiversity indicators on their lands have changed and, ideally, in response to conservation actions.

NatureHelm also offers consulting to any customers who want to learn how to deploy new technology for monitoring.

“Wherever possible, we want to empower them to do the work themselves, because that’s the most affordable and sustainable way.” Saunders says. “And it means that they’re really engaged in it as well.”

In addition to smallholder farms, the company is targeting its services to large corporations, which might track the same metrics across their supply chains, especially as new regulations come into force. NatureHelm is currently a venture of Wildlife Drones, but Saunders says they plan to split it off as its own company within the coming year. The company recently hired Julia Haake, a French economist and chair of the European Association of Sustainability Agencies, as its director, bringing on experience in the European market.

“We are not going to be the database of all biodiversity data; there are already massive organizations building really amazing databases that people can access, but those are still just the data,” Saunders says. “There are no insights with that. There’s no meaning for people. They need something that they can relate to, and so a big part of this is just that pulling-together of things.”

This is one of the appeals for the company Aluan, which produces virgin organic coconut oil from Indonesia and is an early partner of NatureHelm. Aluan has multiple conservation projects across 300 smallholder farms, including restoration projects for several species of sea turtle and the re-release and monitoring of locally important birds, including two subspecies of white-rumped shama (Copsychus malabaricus). While Aluan currently sells its coconut oil to some large companies, including U.K.-based Lush Cosmetics, it’s actively looking for more buyers attracted to its conservation credentials.

“We’re already collecting quite a lot of data from rangers in the field, but we’re not presenting that well at all,” says Luke Swainson, Aluan’s co-founder. “One of the big things we’re looking at is a way to bring that data together and present that in an interactive way.”

Vince Heffernan, another early subscriber and the owner of Moorlands Biodynamic Lamb, a 1,214-hectare (3,000-acre) sheep farm in New South Wales, Australia, says he also has active conservation programs, such as planting trees to create habitat for migrating birds, like Latham’s snipe (Gallinago hardwickii) and the rainbow bee-eater (Merops ornatus). He says having data from NatureHelm proving the impact of his work could help him sell to more conservation-minded buyers. But he also sees the potential for it to improve the system more broadly.

“Banks seem to be absolutely thrilled at the idea of running ads talking about a better greener world, and I’d like to hold them to account by saying: ‘If you want a better greener world, when a client like me can prove [that’s] what I’m doing, shouldn’t you therefore give [me] a better rate of interest on my mortgage?’” Heffernan says. “I think it’s the opposite of greenwashing — it’s adding integrity to the processes, and that’s what we all want. We want to buy products and deal with banks that walk the talk.”

This is, ultimately, Saunders’s big vision: ensuring that there’s transparency in biodiversity accounting, and to see that transparency leading to change.

“What I want to see is that biodiversity uptick,” she says. “I want to see people improving their lands, and to be part of that change. To think beyond a Band-aid, and actually improve things, is so badly needed.”

This story was originally published on Mongabay.com. Read the original story here.

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