SUSTAINABILITY TLDR NEWSLETTER: EDITION 39

Sustainability TLDR Newsletter: Edition 39

This newsletter gives you highlights of selected sustainability insights that were, perhaps, too long (you) didn’t read (TLDR) or there’s just too much out there to read. The highlights presented cover insights gleaned from a global, regional (African), and national (Kenyan) perspective. Happy reading!

GLOBAL

The State of the World’s Children 2025

It is hard to ignore a report with a title like that. So despite all the exciting happenings with COP 30, I opted to focus on this UNICEF report in this newsletter. Capturing insights from 130 countries, it highlights the state of poverty our children experience (people love to say it takes a village or a community to raise a child – so, our children); worldwide. Because, as the report highlights, children in poverty is not a monetary problem but a (lack of) priority problem. Here are some insights from the report, (access the executive summary):

• Since 2000, there has been significant progress in reducing the number of children living in severe deprivation from 3 of 5 children living in severe deprivation in 2000, to 2 of 5 in 2023. According to UNICEF, for a child to live in severe deprivation, the child lacks essentials for survival and development in at least 2 key areas of 6 essential needs:  education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation, and clean water.

• Progress on reducing child poverty is very fragile; and in fact it stalled in wealthy countries. In the European Union, more than 6 million children in the region currently live in severe deprivation (lacking at least 2 of the 6 essentials for survival and development).

• The education background of the head of household is also a critical factor in child poverty. If the head of the household doesn’t have an education, children facing extreme poverty increase to just over 30%; but if the head of the household has tertiary education extreme poverty falls to just below 6%.

• Child poverty is much more than monetary poverty; it is about multidimensional poverty – as about 20% of the world’s children live in severe deprivation lacking 2 or more of the 6 essential areas: education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation, and clean water. It’s important to remember that a child isn’t supposed to make money for themselves so monetary poverty as a measure is insufficient; and multidimensional measures become more relevant.

• Conflict and fragility is worsening the situation and extreme child poverty rose to about one in two children by 2024; and climate shocks compound this e.g. in 2024, schooling was disrupted for 242 million children in 2024. Displaced and/or refugees are under-counted in poverty measures in hosting countries and deprivation figures making the situation in host countries more complex.

The report urged governments to make ending child poverty a national priority; adopt supportive macroeconomic policy; expand inclusive social protection (regular, predictable cash/child benefits linked to services); expand quality public services; and promote decent work.

Private sector also has a vital role to play in reducing poverty and deprivation of children through:

• Decent work – providing living wages, safer work, family-friendly policies (leave, childcare support) across formal and informal value chains.

• Partnerships for essential services – with local communities, local organisations, and/or governments in WASH, nutritious school meals/food systems, affordable housing and last-mile health/education delivery, particularly in underserved areas.

• Resilience finance and crisis-proofing – innovative financing that aligns capital with child outcomes by supporting climate adaptation and stability in crisis settings

My two cents: I have heard it said that you can learn a lot about a family, community, society by how they treat their children. Can we do better? I think this quote from Maria Montessori sums it up for me: ‘Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future.’

AFRICA

UNECA’s COP30 Implications for Africa’s Climate Priorities

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) produced a report focused on giving an African lens to the COP30 outcomes. This lens made the report a useful insight to include, especially when one thinks of the UN FCC, Executive Secretary’s profound statement: ‘A new economy is rising, while the old polluting one is running out of road.’; and the just and sustainable economic development pathway for African countries and their people. So here are some highlights from the report:

• COP30 delivered an overarching outcome seeking to integrate climate finance, adaptation, just transition, Global Stocktake (GST) follow-up and NDC implementation so that progress in one area accelerates the others.

• COP30 created negotiation entry points for African countries on finance, adaptation accountability, trade safeguards, and Article 6 carbon markets.

• COPP30 reaffirmed obligations of developed countries to provide financial resources to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation.  A two-year work programme was launched to scrutinize implementation of these obligations which is a response to African Group and G77+China calls for a clear space to track this. Loss and Damage funds remain underfunded, which reinforced African calls for predictable, grant-based, polluter-pays finance.

• Adaptation is the bedrock of Africa’s climate action. The UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience was finalized at COP30 and indicators were adopted to track progress on Global Goal on Adaptation. This is a common goal that can ensure an adequate adaptation response in the context of the temperature goal referred to in Article 2: ‘reaffirms the goal of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.’

• COP30 reaffirmed non-discrimination principles for climate-related trade measures, giving Africa a basis to contest unilateral instruments that could undermine industrialization and fiscal stability.

• A Just Transition Mechanism was proposed and is to be operationalized through the UNFCCC and COP30 reaffirmed that clean energy transition was inevitable, and that it will require embedding justice and equity, and ensuring Africa is positioned to secure socially inclusive transitions, green jobs, and financial and technological support for renewable energy expansion.

• An open coalition for better cooperation around carbon markets regulation worldwide was championed by Brazil and adopted titled: Declaration on the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets. This coalition and focus on cooperation provides the possibility for African countries to strengthen guidance, capacity; and importantly, platforms for African countries to develop domestic carbon pricing systems as well as region-specific carbon pricing systems.

I want to close out the insights from this UNECA report highlighting some areas of strategic opportunity for business leaders in line with just and sustainable economic growth for Africa:

• Invest in workforce transition plans e.g. reskilling/upskilling, apprenticeships for youth and women, mobility support) for sectors and communities that will be disrupted by the transition (e.g., fossil-dependent value chains, high-carbon industry, climate-exposed agriculture).

• Embed social protection and worker safeguards e.g. at a minimum ensure compliance but aim to go beyond the living wage commitments, stronger health and safety standards, fair contracting in supply chains, and avoid having informal workers and MSMEs bear the brunt of transition costs.

• In all community investment initiatives design-in community benefit and consent models from the start; ensure communities see tangible and fair gains and social conflict risks will drop.

• Build local value addition by jointly investing with government and financiers in green industrialization, SME supplier development to spread gains and reduce inequality, raising inequality is an enabler to civil unrest and conflict.

• Future-proof competitiveness and strengthen business resilience by decarbonizing operations and supply chains, improving product traceability, sustainability due diligence in supply chains and ESG data systems. Become active in your industry associations to engage policy makers to ensure fair, responsible and Africa-relevant climate-trade rules.

My two-cents:New economies can definitely arise across African countries that deliver prosperity for their citizens – after all, human and economic development in Africa is in its ‘early’ stages; and as Africans are often reminded, their countries are developing or ‘under-developed’. Developing smarter, better is possible (in principle). BUT it requires political will that puts the long-term benefit for citizens first; business leadership that ensures responsible outputs and value chains for Africa’s sustainable future; and citizens’ willingness to hold leaders and decision-makers accountable for the roles they have been employed to do.

KENYA

The Inequality Crisis and Great Divide in Kenya

Oxfam recently published its inequality report for Kenya, Kenya’s Inequality Crisis – The Great Economic Divide. Unfortunately, growing inequality is a disturbing trend across the world; the wealthy few are getting wealthier and more people are getting poorer. Oxfam’s global report titled Takers Not Makers, provides disturbing insights on unjust poverty and unearned wealth of colonialism.

Kenya’s inequality crisis is deepening even as the economy has grown—fueling a widening gap between a small wealthy elite and the majority of households facing higher prices, precarious work, and strained public services. Extreme poverty rate in Kenya is at 46%, with 7 million more people pushed into extreme poverty since 2015, despite average 5% real economic growth over the last decade. Inequality has also become a governance and stability risk as highlighted by the civil protests that recently took place in the country. While Kenyans likely already sense this, here are some insights from the report:

• The richest 125 Kenyans hold more wealth than 77% of the population (about 42.6 million people), and CEOs in the largest firms earn vastly more than typical workers (e.g. 214x a teacher).

• Food costs are 50% higher than in 2020, and inflation hits low-income households harder, this includes Nairobi too.

• In 2024, 68 of every 100 shillings collected in taxes went to debt repayment—about twice the education budget and nearly 15 times the national health budget. Spending per-pupil primary (in real terms) is now about 18% of its actual value in 2003.

• Kenya’s labour market is highly informal (approx. 85%), and as the government relies on regressive consumption taxes, this means poorer households pay a higher share of income in tax. Women earn KES 65 for every KES 100 earned by men.

Inequality will create an unstable business environment and limit business growth and resilience. Private sector in Kenya, needs to be part of solving the inequality crisis:

• Deliver living-wage pathways, close gender pay gaps, limit extreme pay ratios, and expand decent work standards into value chains.

• Grow SME and youth supplier development, innovate to develop new products/services for low-income markets that solve their challenges (shared value, new market opportunities), and invest in women’s economic empowerment – the other 50%.

• Strengthen tax transparency and compliance, avoid harmful exemptions/race-to-the-bottom incentives. The private sector needs to bring their resources (people, financial, and more) partner with the government (with safe guards) to develop public-service delivery innovations that expand equitable access to health, education, and social protection.

My two-cents: In December 2025, a report called The People’s Audit: From hustle to hardship was published by the Okoa Uchumi movement founded by The Institute for Social Accountability in Kenya. The report aims to light the ‘reasons’ why Kenya’s economy is crumbling with debt…bad governance, theft, corruption, state capture, conflict of interest, etc. As the publishers aptly point out ‘Kenya does not have a revenue problem; it has an expenditure problem..’  Sleep with one eye open.