Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025TBLI Weekly Header

Author: Sam Rubinstein

Your weekly guide to Sustainable Investment

 


TBLI HERO


 
Thomas Ng is a TBLI Hero because he lives the values that others only preach. As the founder of Genashtim, he created a successful, global business by hiring and empowering those most excluded from opportunity—refugees, people with disabilities, and others that society often overlooks. His work proves that inclusive business is not just ethical—it’s effective, scalable, and profitable.

What sets Thomas apart is his unwavering integrity. He doesn’t chase headlines; he quietly builds systems that uplift others.

He has been a long-time supporter and friend of TBLI, generously offering his time, wisdom, and resources to help expand our mission of values-based investing. In a world flooded with impact marketing, Thomas reminds us what real impact looks like. That’s why he’s a TBLI Hero. Thomas has also achieved the highest accolade we can give. He is, as my father would say, a true mensch


 

TBLI Radical Truth Podcast 

 

How to Finance the Energy Transition: Real Capital for a Low - Carbon Future




  

Because it’s something that most investors don’t know that they don’t know; but that often changes everything once you know about it.

In this week's Radical Truth podcast, we are joined by Graham Boyd, the founder of Evolutesix, a venture studio and investor specializing in building ecosystems of future-fit businesses according to Evolutesix's ergodic investment strategy.




Listen to the podcast




This week's Virtual Mixer




 

Meet investors and entrepreneurs who see collaboration over competition. Who build wealth without wealth extraction. They exist!
 

TBLI Virtual Mixer July 25th • 16:00 CET

Non-vampiric capital allocation

More info

TrustVC




 

What if founders could rate investors, and LPs could spot red flags early? That’s the idea behind TrustVC.org, a new TBLI Group initiative bringing sunlight to startup funding. Why it matters:

Too many founders get ghosted. Too many LPs find out too late. TrustVC changes that by: Letting founders review VCs and PE firms Helping LPs identify trusted fund managers Highlighting fair, founder-friendly investors

How to support:

✅ Share TrustVC with your network
✅ Encourage founders to post reviews
✅ Add any missing firms

Just launched: TrustVC.org — the investor review platform VCs never wanted, but founders always needed.

If you’ve worked with investors, please leave a review or add a firm. Let’s bring some sunlight to startup funding

Join TBLI Circle and expand your Impact network

 

 

TBLI Circle

 

Join TBLI Circle — A Community Where Purpose Leads and Impact Grows

If you're tired of extractive networks, shallow conversations, or “impact” in name only, TBLI Circle is your antidote.

This is not just another platform. It’s a curated circle of professionals who believe finance should serve all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

Whether you’re in transition, seeking deeper alignment, or ready to collaborate on work that truly matters, TBLI Circle gives you something rare:
💬 Real relationships.
🌍 Shared values.
🤝 Trusted connections.
⚡ Momentum for your mission.

No ego. No greenwashing. Just people who care.

If you’ve been searching for the right room — this is it.

👉 Join us

The Crown Heights Doughnut: A Brooklyn Kid's Guide to Having It All (Without the Fancy Chart)

 

City Neighborhoods NYC

 

By: Robert Rubinstein


Everything You Need to Know About Economics I Learned on Eastern Parkway





 

You know what I love about economists? They take something perfectly simple—like not starving to death and having a roof over your head—and turn it into a geometric pastry. Kate Raworth comes along with her "Doughnut Economics," and suddenly everyone's going nuts over this circular diagram that looks like something you'd order at Dunkin' Donuts if you were really, really confused about breakfast.

But here's the thing that kills me: I grew up with the entire doughnut economy right there in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and we didn't need a PhD from Oxford to figure it out. We just called it "the neighborhood."
 

The Social Foundation: AKA "What Every Kid on the Block Already Knew"

Let's start with Kate's inner ring—the "social foundation." Twelve basics of life, she says. Twelve! Like she's Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with economic commandments. Meanwhile, every kid on my block in the 1970s could have told you the same thing in about thirty seconds between stickball innings.

Food? Are you kidding me? You think we didn't have food? Mrs. Goldstein on the third floor was pushing brisket on everyone who walked by. "You look skinny," she'd say to kids who clearly weren't. "Eat something." And if Mrs. Goldstein wasn't feeding you, Mrs. Rodriguez next door was shoving empanadas in your face. And if they were both busy, there was always somebody's grandmother making something that smelled like heaven and tasted better than anything you'd get in those fancy restaurants that charge you forty bucks for what we called "Tuesday."

Clean water? We had fire hydrants! In the summer, when the super would "accidentally" forget to fix the one on President Street, half the neighborhood would be running through the spray like it was the damn fountain at Lincoln Center. Plus, every apartment had a kitchen sink where your mother would make you wash your hands seventeen times a day. "Germs," she'd say, like they were the Communist Party coming to get you.

Energy? Listen, we had Con Edison whether we wanted it or not. And when the lights went out—which they did, because this was New York in the '70s and the city was basically held together with duct tape and hope—we had candles. And flashlights. And neighbors who'd check on each other because that's what you did. You didn't need a government program; you needed Mrs. Chen from downstairs asking if you were okay and did you need batteries.
 

Education: The University of Real Life

Education? Oh, we had education alright. We had PS 241, where they taught us reading, writing, and how to duck when somebody threw a desk. But the real education happened on the street. You learned economics every time you tried to trade baseball cards. You learned international relations every time the Puerto Rican kids had to negotiate with the Jamaican kids over who got the good spot for skelly. You learned urban planning every time you had to figure out which route home avoided both the crazy dog on Montgomery Street and the construction site where they'd been "fixing" the same pothole since the Eisenhower administration.

Healthcare? Your mother was the entire healthcare system. She could diagnose anything with the back of her hand on your forehead. "You don't have a fever," she'd announce, like she'd just performed brain surgery. And if you were really sick, there was Dr. Patel on Nostrand Avenue, who'd been treating the same families for twenty years and knew everyone's medical history better than they did. Chiropracter in the our building and Dentist two doors down.
 

Housing: Where Everyone Had a Home (Even If It Was Falling Apart)

Decent housing? Look, nobody's saying our apartments were the Ritz. The radiators clanked like they were being tortured by the ghost of Jacob Marley, and the roaches were so big they should have been paying rent. But everyone had a place. Even when Mr. Kowalski lost his job at the Navy Yard, the landlord—who was also from the neighborhood, mind you—worked something out. Because that's what you did. You didn't let people become homeless; you let them become temporarily behind on rent while the whole building figured out how to help.

Income and decent work? My father worked as a tailor and I later in life worked at the post office. My friend Harry's dad drove a snack food delivery truck. Maria's mother cleaned offices in Manhattan. Were they getting rich? Hell no. But they were working, and their work meant something, and at the end of the week there was enough money for groceries and maybe a movie if you were lucky. And when someone lost their job, the whole block became a networking convention. "My cousin works at the plant in Queens," someone would say. "Let me make a call."
 

Culture: Who Needs Lincoln Center When You've Got Eastern Parkway?

And let's talk about something Kate Raworth probably never considered while she was drawing her fancy circles: culture. You want culture? We were surrounded by it, and we didn't have to put on a tuxedo or pretend to understand what the hell was happening on stage.

The Brooklyn Museum was right there on Eastern Parkway—this massive, beautiful building that looked like it was dropped down from some civilization that actually had its act together. Free admission for kids, and even when they started charging, it was still cheaper than a decent sandwich. You could see Egyptian mummies, American paintings, and art from cultures you'd never heard of, all in one afternoon. And the best part? No snooty guards telling you to whisper. This was Brooklyn; if you had something to say about a painting, you said it.
 

Then you had the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where every spring the cherry blossoms bloomed like the whole world had decided to throw a party and forgot to send out invitations. Families would pack lunches and spend entire Sundays there, kids running around like they'd been let out of prison, parents actually relaxing for five minutes. It was like having your own personal piece of paradise, except you shared it with half the borough and nobody minded.

Read full article 

Who Should Pay for ESG Infrastructure?

people using ESG performance tools on their laptops
 
By Robyn Paulekas - ssir.org
 

 

Foundations and nonprofits built the tools that companies now use for ESG reporting, brand credibility, and risk management. Is there a funding model for maintaining these tools so they remain credible, transparent, and financially viable?
 

If you’ve ever bought a chocolate bar, burger (beef or soy), or bottle of shampoo, you’ve probably touched a supply chain linked to tropical deforestation. For years, major food and consumer goods companies have promised to end deforestation in their supply chains, but tracking or documenting progress remained elusive. A crucial step for companies is having a clear view into the environmental impacts of production, and specifically, if the Amazon or other sensitive biomes were cleared as part of the process. Companies previously had plausible deniability: Understanding the risk from their supply chains was often unknowable. That changed with the advent of Global Forest Watch, and later Global Forest Watch Pro (GFW Pro), a forest monitoring and risk assessment tool designed for companies and financial institutions.

With a few clicks, sustainability officers or those involved in purchasing could overlay satellite-based alerts with sourcing regions and supplier lists. For the first time, the company had a credible, near-real-time view into where deforestation might be creeping into its supply chain. The tool didn’t just help them avoid risk—it helped them act. A company could adjust procurement practices, flag non-compliant suppliers, and look more closely at suppliers that raised concerns. The platform became a quiet but essential component of their Environmental Sustainability and Governance (ESG) strategy.

A similar transformation is unfolding at the intersection of the seafood and insurance industries. A global marine insurer, skeptical about exposure to illegal fishing claims, joined a pilot of Vessel Viewer, a platform leveraging Global Fishing Watch data to help insurers evaluate the risk of insuring fishing vessels engaged in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Suddenly, the insurer has easy access to information about IUU risk by integrating vessel movement data, port activity, and suspicious vessel registration practices. For a few companies, the platform has become a significant tool in streamlining the underwriting processes while aligning with the company’s commitments to sustainability and ocean governance.

Over time, skepticism of corporate sustainability and ESG commitments has grown, driven in part by concerns over greenwashing, misleading claims, and gaps between intent and action. At the core of many of these concerns are questions of data reliability and measurement challenges. ESG data so far has been voluntary, often beginning with the companies themselves, and is difficult to measure. Although tools like GFW Pro, Vessel Viewer, and others aren’t a perfect solution, many of them address key data gaps, provide standardized metrics, and support transparency.

This kind of sustainability infrastructure is becoming indispensable for companies making evidence-based environmental claims. But the tools that enable these claims were not built by the private sector. They were seeded, nurtured, and scaled by philanthropic foundations and NGOs. As companies increasingly rely on these platforms for marketing, regulatory compliance, and risk mitigation, a key question emerges: Who should pay for the sustainability infrastructure that companies are using to measure, improve, and report on their ESG performance—and can they do so in a way that is sustainable for the tool developers and preserves the objectivity these tools were built on?

From Philanthropic Investment to ESG Infrastructure

GFW Pro and Vessel Viewer didn’t appear overnight. They emerged through years of investment and iteration by mission-driven organizations responding to global challenges—and a gap in corporate accountability.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) launched Global Forest Watch in 2014 to provide open-access forest monitoring based on satellite imagery. It is designed to equip NGOs, journalists, and governments with data on deforestation hotspots. As demand for corporate action on deforestation grew, WRI recognized that companies needed tailored tools and launched GFW Pro in 2019. Built on the same core data, GFW Pro allows companies to monitor deforestation within customized sourcing areas and securely assess risk without exposing proprietary supply chain information.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Norwegian government, and other private philanthropy initially supported GFW’s development, believing that open, independent data could shift corporate behavior. Funding followed from USAID, UK AID, GIZ (Germany’s main development agency), and GEF (a multilateral environmental fund).

The platform is free to use and the information publicly available—a deliberate choice to promote adoption and encourage broader accountability via civil society pressure. Previously, when asked about deforestation linked to a supply chain, companies could often legitimately claim that they “couldn’t know.” The advent of these transparency tools suddenly made that information public, both for the companies and the organizations concerned with environmental destruction.

Read full article 

Iranians asked to limit water use as temperatures hit 50C and reservoirs are depleted


A taxi driver crouches with a water bottle splashing his face as other drivers watch on.

By: Shah Meer Baloch - The Guardian
 

Public holiday announced in Tehran as government tries to grapple with deepening water crisis

Iranian authorities have asked people to limit water consumption amid severe heatwaves and a water crisis across the country.

Iran is experiencing its hottest week of the year, according to the national meteorological service, with temperatures exceeding 50C in some areas.

On top of the extreme heat, the country is in a serious water crisis. Iran has been in drought for five years, with rainfall even lower this year. The minister of energy, Abbas Aliabadi, announced last week that negotiations to import water were under way with Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The country has hundreds of dams, built from the 1950s onwards but the drought has significantly reduced their output. This, as well as problems with infrastructure and the heatwaves, has led to power cuts across the country.

A spokesperson for the Iranian government, Fatemeh Mohajerani, announced over the weekend that this Wednesday had been made a public holiday in the capital’s region due to the enduring heatwaves.

“In light of the continued extreme heat and the necessity of conserving water and electricity, Wednesday … has been declared a holiday in Tehran province,” she wrote on X.

Hussain Hassan*, in his late 50s, said that it is so hot in Tehran and the sun is so fierce he feels unable to walk in direct sunlight. He said: “I feel the skin is going to burn. [My] shirt gets wet so quickly and I prefer to take shower twice a day at this age amidst severe heat. Thank God, there is no water crisis where I live.”

He added that in some parts of Tehran, authorities had reduced water supplies to manage the crisis. “I have heard from people that cutting water supply has resulted in water outages lasting at least 12 hours and more,” he said.

According to the climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, the southwestern Iranian city of Shabankareh recorded temperatures of 52.8C over the weekend, potentially the hottest temperature of the year so far (a reading of 53C in Kuwait has not been confirmed). Meteorologists at Metdesk in the UK reported a temperature reading of 51.6C in the southwestern border town of Abadan on 17 July, and 50.3C was recorded in nearby Ahwaz on Monday.

The city of Tehran reported 40C on Sunday rising to 41C on Monday. Hassan said: “It feels more than 45 degrees Celsius. It is so hot.”

For Hassan, the biggest worry is the brewing water crisis as the reservoirs are depleting and the Karaj dam, which provides water to Tehran province, has hit its lowest level.

Human-caused climate breakdown is making every heatwave in the world more intense and more likely to happen. Some, such as the extreme heatwave in western Canada and the US in 2021, would have been all but impossible without global heating.

Paying the People: Liberia’s Novel Plan to Save Its Forests

 
A mother and child in Sinoe County, Liberia, where a pilot project will pay villagers to protect their forest.

By:  Fred Pearce - 
 

Plagued by illegal logging and corruption, Liberia has been losing its forests at an alarming rate. But its new strategy to make direct payments to communities that agree to prohibit cutting and protect their trees is seen as a potential model for other developing nations.

Illegal logging and deforestation are on the rise in Liberia, home to almost half of West Africa’s surviving tropical forests. Corruption is rife, and cocoa farmers from neighboring Ivory Coast are invading protected forests, while schemes to reward conservation by selling carbon credits from intact forests have repeatedly failed to get off the ground. 

But there is new hope. Rural communities own two-thirds of the country’s forests, and a disarmingly simple scheme now being launched by the country’s leading environmentalist will pay those communities up front in cash, if they agree to banish loggers and protect their trees. 

The novel plan “breaks a logjam that has prevented conservation and land reform initiatives from taking hold in Liberia for decades,” says David Rothe, a development consultant and former policy advisor to the British government. “It is the most hopeful plan I have seen,” says Saskia Ozinga of the European forests NGO Fern. 

If it works, both long-time observers of tropical-forest policymaking say that it could have important lessons for other countries that are losing their forests. It could even become a model for a new approach to helping protect some of the world’s most critical stores of carbon in tropical forests, which will be the focus of international climate negotiations later this year. 

After being founded as a state for freed American slaves in 1822, Liberia escaped European colonial rule. Today the thinly populated country’s forests are the heart of West Africa’s last remaining biodiversity hotspot — home to endangered chimpanzees, Diana monkeys, and most of the 2,500 pygmy hippos surviving in the wild.

In theory, Liberia could have a thriving bioeconomy based around sustainable harvesting of its forests, ecotourism, and international funding for forest conservation. But 20 years after a ruinous civil war, and despite plenty of foreign aid for rebuilding, the country’s forests are today in a poor state, the logging industry is ill-managed and often corrupt, and its people are among the world’s poorest, ranking 177 among 193 countries in the UN Human Development Index. 

Liberia’s state institutions, including its Forestry Development Authority (FDA), have a “veneer of good governance that successfully conceals… widespread corruption,” a review conducted for the European Union concluded in 2022.  “The very elements of state capacity that international donors have spent millions on supporting… are wielded in service of fraudulent ends,” found Gregory Coleman, a former and current inspector general of the Liberia National Police, and Benjamin Spatz, a former special advisor to its government now at the University of Cape Town. The “manipulation of formal processes,” the review noted, amounted to “economic gaslighting.”

An EU scheme to decriminalize the timber trade by using barcodes to track logs from the forests to export markets was extensively subverted under a former managing director of the FDA. Up to 70 percent of the country’s log exports were made “off the books,” according to a dossier compiled by the British government.

The gap between theory and practice in the protection of Liberia’s forests has long been huge. Since the end of the civil war in 2003, successive governments have pioneered enshrining in law the traditional rights of rural communities to their forest lands. Some 68 percent of the forests are now under community control. 

But the system has repeatedly been “hijacked by rapacious logging companies,” says David Young, a consultant on forest governance and formerly of the NGO Global Witness. Complicit government officials have repeatedly duped local leaders into signing agreements on behalf of their communities that hand over logging rights to their forests. Most commercial timber production today comes from community forests, but the promised jobs and royalties rarely materialize. 

An EU scheme to decriminalize the timber trade by using barcodes to track logs from the forests to export markets was extensively subverted under a former managing director of the FDA. Up to 70 percent of the country’s log exports were made “off the books,” according to a dossier compiled by the British government.

The gap between theory and practice in the protection of Liberia’s forests has long been huge. Since the end of the civil war in 2003, successive governments have pioneered enshrining in law the traditional rights of rural communities to their forest lands. Some 68 percent of the forests are now under community control. 

But the system has repeatedly been “hijacked by rapacious logging companies,” says David Young, a consultant on forest governance and formerly of the NGO Global Witness. Complicit government officials have repeatedly duped local leaders into signing agreements on behalf of their communities that hand over logging rights to their forests. Most commercial timber production today comes from community forests, but the promised jobs and royalties rarely materialize. 

A new threat to Liberia’s forests is being posed by poor cocoa farmers from neighboring Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer. Media reports estimate that as many as 25,000 Ivorian cocoa farmers, many of them expelled from protected forests in their own country, have crossed the 450-mile border between the two countries since 2018, leasing forest land from poor Liberian forest communities. More migrant farmers are reportedly arriving from nearby Burkina Faso.

Read full article 

What makes up the modern social enterprise?

 
Young co-workers team talking during startup - Happy people planning a new project in creative workplace office - Focus on right top men - Technology, entrepreneur, marketing concept

 

By Roseann Kelly - Irish News
 

What is a social enterprise, exactly? In this socially conscious age, when the corporate vocabulary is awash with acronyms such as ESG and CSR, there is a greater focus on how organisations impact the economy and society more broadly.

In this rush to orient business closer to people and purpose, the true meaning of a social enterprise has perhaps been overlooked.

Or worse, lumped into the category of business buzzwords that do little to capture the far-reaching capability inherent in an enterprise that puts social first and foremost.

Taken out of context, the phrase ‘social enterprise’ might sound abstract to anyone outside of the business sphere.

Perhaps they have a vague notion that these enterprises sit somewhere between charity and the traditional business model but are unsure of their full remit.

A social enterprise is defined as a ‘trading business selling goods and services to achieve a social or environmental goal’.

More to the point, it is an enterprise built on the principles of working day and daily to impact change, reduce economic inequality, enhance environmental sustainability, transform lives and ultimately solve problems at the root.

Social entrepreneurs want to change the conditions that create inequality or injustice in the first place.

As an umbrella group of social enterprises, we are dedicated in the mission to help create a prosperous, inclusive economy for Northern Ireland.

The WiB Group now impacts more than 250,000 people across Northern Ireland and beyond through empowering networks and training programmes.

Through Women in Business, Diversity Mark, Timely Careers and the Centre of Learning, The WiB Group is committed to driving positive change through connections, accreditations, employment opportunities and skills development.

Moreover, we are continually striving for sustainable, systemic progress that leaves its mark and ultimately makes a positive impact.

Working collectively towards an economy built on the pillars of inclusion and prosperity is imperative.

Across our four social enterprises, The WiB Group is very much at the coal face.

Together we are addressing the acute needs for bespoke support, raising the bar for workplace equality and inclusion and delivering tools and training to equip women returning to the workforce.

Today, social enterprises make up around 3% of businesses globally, and notably, one in two are founded by women, flipping the traditional gender gap in entrepreneurship. However, challenges remain.

Many are young, underfunded and undervalued, particularly here in Northern Ireland.

Retaining talent while managing tight budgets, not to mention balancing mission and business realities, is a constant battle.

Nevertheless, these challenges are worth it in the long run as we push forward to a better future.

Empowered by a business model that consistently strives for meaningful impact and transparency.

The modern social enterprises are defined by this purpose, all in the name of enhancing the common good within the world of business.

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