Shortages are a window on to the challenges facing the post-pandemic world economy. This article originally appeared in the Financial Times.

It’s a sign of the times. In China, teachers are gobbling up the leftovers from their students’ lunch plates, on the spot. Their diligent economising follows an exhortation by President Xi Jinping that the nation needs to reduce food waste, in part to increase Chinese food self-sufficiency.

Last weekend I drove through the Skokie Lagoons, just north of Chicago. They are both beautiful and manmade, created literally from the sweat of the Great Depression. Four million cubic tons of soil were removed to form a series of lagoons from the existing marshlands. It was one of the largest public works projects of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, employing thousands of men, including three African-American construction companies. Started in 1933, the project took until the beginning of the US entry into World War II in 1941 to complete.

Sustainable investment focused on a "Green Recovery" is being widely discussed as we envision the post-Covid world. What are the promises and pitfalls of ESG for investors?

On Wednesday, July 8th at 4 pm CDT, in advance of the ministerial-level Clean Energy Transitions Summit in Paris, EconVue hosted a webinar with economist David Maywald, a leading specialist in the field of ESG and infrastructure investment based in Sydney. He was joined by EconVue colleagues with expertise in these subjects, including Marsha Vande Berg and Robert Madsen. 

Asset owners are at the apex of the global investment community and many are focused on and in the vanguard of sustainability investing movement. They are an important part of a reallocation of capital to long-term investments in those companies with a credible vision for mitigating risks associated with the really big megatrends and their potential for undercutting long-term competitiveness and value creation.

Yesterday Peter Navarro declared that the US-China trade deal was dead in the water, which his boss quickly walked back on Twitter. In a world of global threats, should bilateral disputes remain our focus, or are we wasting precious time? As I wrote for the G7 Research Group:

Well before Nike or Starbucks was even a glimmer in the eye of their founders, a little-known economist sat down at his desk in the 1950s in America to write why he believed companies are obliged to be responsible citizens.