Category: 3. Business

Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon landscapes are at the heart of global food and fiber supply chains and are globally critical for their environmental services. Transforming how they are managed is essential for a sustainable future – for climate, nature and people. The Landscape Accelerator Brazil – LAB is leading this transformation by uniting business, finance, policymakers, and producers to scale regenerative agriculture and land use. This year, the LAB’s journey – from the inaugural Cerrado Summit, to foundational research (check out Cerrado and Amazon assessment) and the LAB Action Plan, to dynamic pre-COP and COP30 events – has set the ambition for scaled investment and regenerative outcomes on the ground in the coming years. 

LAB Action Plan: A Blueprint for Regeneration 

The LAB Action Plan outlines how diverse stakeholders can work together to scale regenerative landscapes across two critical biomes in Brazil: the Cerrado and Amazon. It focuses on three pillars: 

• Blended finance: Unlocking and aligning public and private capital to catalyze regenerative transitions. 
• Metrics & MRV: Developing shared indicators and monitoring systems for transparency and measurable impact. 
• Public policy: Creating enabling conditions through incentives, regulation, and integration with national climate and agricultural agendas. 

Together, these pillars underpin the LAB ambition to mobilize USD $5 billion by 2030 to accelerate regenerative land-use models and strengthen resilience in these biomes, as part of a longer-term investment opportunity approaching USD $100 billion. 

Pre-COP events: building the momentum 

At the pre-COP events, the LAB has been an active platform for convening business leaders, government representatives, civil society, finance stakeholder, and producers to align around regenerative solutions. These dialogues helped shaping the agenda and direction on land-use priorities for the private sector, ensuring that Brazil’s leadership in sustainable land use is recognized and supported globally. 

At the Sustainable Innovation Forum in Sao Paulo, WBCSD, BCG and CEBDS convened over 50 leaders from corporates, finance, MDBs, producers, and civil society to strategize on accelerating blended investment into regenerative landscapes. The roundtable identified two key LAB roles going forward: 

• Macro scale: Support “matchmaking” between investment supply and demand, and advance key systemic drivers of the transition including key policies and digital innovation. 
• Landscape scale: Codify, scale, and replicate successful collective action models, aggregate co-investment, and enhance farmer trust and participation. 

Participants brainstormed actionable opportunities, such as creating a directory of funds, harmonizing eligibility criteria, and integrating MRV & finance unlocks to accelerate regenerative outcomes on the ground. The session underscored the importance of de-risking transitions for farmers and tailoring financial solutions to their needs. 

Later the same day, WBCSD’s Executive Vice President Diane Holdorf represented our collective work in a multistakeholder panel alongside leaders from the International Finance Corporation, WBCSD member Louis Dreyfus Company, the Rwanda Green Fund and a local organic producer. 

This working session in partnership with CEBDS and with participation from the Brazilian Ministries of Agriculture and Environment, the Central Bank, producer associations and other key technical partners showcased LAB’s progress in aligning metrics for regenerative landscapes and MRV guidance tailored to Brazil , highlighting the benefits and challenges of a vision for regenerative agriculture focused on impact instead of practices alone. Key opportunities to explore in 2026 include: 

• Accelerating the Rural Environment Registry (CAR) validation – an important national registry that maps rural properties and their environmental obligations, providing the data needed to verify compliance with the Forest Code and guide conservation efforts – and improving data infrastructure. 
• Setting “carrots and sticks” by identifying key metrics for unlocking public and private investment. 
• Embedding aligned metrics in proof-of-concept projects. 
• Tackling knowledge gaps through coordinated efforts with academia and institutional partners like Brazil’s leading agronomic research body Embrapa. 

What COP30 meant for the regenerative landscapes agenda in Brazil? 

Together, these engagements reinforced LAB’s role as a bridge between global priorities and local action, making regenerative agriculture scalable and investable. 

At COP30, the Action Agenda on Regenerative Landscapes (AARL) underscored the global momentum for land restoration by announcing over $9 billion in private-sector commitments, spanning 210 million hectares and 12 million farmers since COP28. This signaled both the scale of opportunity and the urgency for country-led pathways to translate ambition into impact. 

Brazil’s launch of RAIZ (Resilient Agriculture Investment for net-Zero land degradation) provides exactly that pathway. RAIZ focuses on mapping degraded landscapes, identifying investable restoration solutions, and structuring blended finance to mobilize capital at scale. It offers a practical route to convert degraded soils into productive, resilient land while advancing climate, biodiversity, and rural development goals. 

The LAB plugs directly into this architecture as the implementation engine, showing how RAIZ and AARL commitments can materialize on the ground. As a place-based coalition set to promote coordinated technical and financial support in 2026, the LAB demonstrates how to turn global commitments and national strategies into investable, farmer-centered action. 

Looking ahead: LAB’s path forward 

At COP30, the LAB and its members and partners demonstrated the power of systemic collaboration to align local investment and action with global climate and biodiversity goals. By connecting people, policies, and investments, the LAB is making regenerative landscapes scalable and investable, turning ambition into action and setting a blueprint for the path ahead and for others to follow. 

Learn more about our work on our website and reach out to Matt Inbusch (inbusch@wbcsd.org) to explore collaboration opportunities. 

Jamie Oliver is to revive his Jamie’s Italian restaurant chain in the UK, more than six years after the celebrity chef’s brand collapsed.

Jamie’s Italian is poised to be relaunched in the spring, starting with a restaurant in London’s Leicester Square.

Oliver’s return to the UK restaurant scene is being backed by Brava Hospitality Group – the private equity-backed group that runs the Prezzo chain – which intends to relaunch the brand across the UK.

“As a chef, having the chance to return to the high street is incredibly important to me,” he said. “I will drive the menus, make sure the sourcing is right, the staff training, and ensure the look and feel of the restaurant is brought to life in the right way.”

Jamie’s Italian was first launched with his mentor, the chef Gennaro Contaldo, in Oxford in 2008. The brand was expanded to about 40 sites at its peak, before a series of restructuring programmes started to reduce the number of locations from 2017.

Two years later the now 50-year-old was forced to call in the administrators after a sales process that sought to bring in new investment into the business proved unsuccessful.

In an email to staff at the time, Oliver blamed “the well-publicised struggles of the casual dining sector and decline of the UK high street, along with soaring business rates”.

Oliver’s return comes at a time when the hospitality industry faces several challenges including soaring food inflation, increasing wage costs and lacklustre trade as consumers rein in spending on non-essentials amid higher household bills.

“In theory it’s not the easiest time to return but conversely, I think it’s the perfect time,” Oliver said. “I believe the mid-market needs excitement, surprise and delight and that’s exactly what I am planning on delivering.”

The failure of Jamie’s Italian in 2019 resulted in 1,000 job losses.

After the collapse of the UK business, the Jamie’s Italian brand continued to operate overseas and it has more than 30 restaurants in 25 countries. Overall, Oliver still has about 70 restaurants around the world run by franchise partners.

Ed Loftus, the global director of Jamie Oliver Restaurants, said the partnership with Brava “marks an exciting next chapter” for the group in the UK.

“Our priority is making the first location exceptional,” he said. “The public will ultimately determine how quickly and how far we grow.”

Financial filings released in October showed that Oliver and his wife, Jools, paid themselves £2.5m in dividends for the second year in a row, as pre-tax profits at their core media and restaurant empire slumped.

Pre-tax profits at Jamie Oliver Holdings (JOH) fell by £1m to £2.4m last year. This was despite a 6% rise in sales to £28.6m, helped by an increase in restaurant income after the November 2023 opening of his first directly run restaurant since the collapse of his UK empire.

JOH includes Oliver’s media interests such as TV production, books, endorsements, his cookery school and his restaurant, as well as franchise income from the overseas outlets, fees for promoting the supermarket Tesco, and royalties from products bearing his name.

Rolls-Royce Submarines has signed an innovative contract with industry experts Assystem, AtkinsRéalis and Frazer-Nash to boost collaboration and gain benefit from the unique nuclear capabilities of each company.

The new Capability Assured Strategic Partnership (CASP) backs UK based businesses and represents a step forward in bringing together nuclear capability to better support the UK Royal Navy’s submarines programme and the wider Defence Nuclear Enterprise.

With a value of up to £400m, this strategic alliance represents one of the largest single supply chain contracts in the history of Rolls-Royce Submarines. Having worked with all three partners for over 20 years, they are uniquely placed to support its future growth ambitions in advanced nuclear technologies.

It represents a long-term commitment from the partners to deliver the collective engineering capabilities, nuclear expertise, and other professional services that Rolls-Royce can utilise to meet growing demand from the Ministry of Defence, and beyond.

In March 2023, it was confirmed that Rolls-Royce Submarines would provide all the nuclear reactor plants that will power new attack submarines as part of the tri-lateral agreement between Australia, the UK and US.

This increase in demand from the Ministry of Defence and the AUKUS agreement means Rolls-Royce plans to double the footprint of its Raynesway site in Derby to support both UK and Australian defence programs. Delivering the Defence Industrial Strategy, the build of new manufacturing and office facilities will create more than 1,000 skilled roles across a range of disciplines, including manufacturing and engineering, plus hundreds more across the supply chain.

Rolls-Royce has powered the UK Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines for over 65 years and is the only private company in the world with the nuclear capability to manage reactor design, manufacture and decommissioning within one single entity.

Fabian Klein of Pinsent Masons said the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) should confirm that the impression considered to be left on consumers by trade marks should be assessed by looking at what they might confer about the characteristics of goods or services those marks cover in tandem with what they might also confer about the companies behind them.

Providing that clarification would account for the different legal functions of a trade mark, he said.

Klein was commenting after advocate general Nicholas Emiliou issued his non-binding opinion in a trade mark case that has come before the CJEU – and ahead of the CJEU issuing its formal judgment in the case in the months ahead.

The case referred to the CJEU involves a dispute that has arisen in France over trade mark rights asserted in relation to, among other things, luxury leather accessories. The dispute, which has reached the French Supreme Court, is between rival manufacturers Fauré Le Page Paris SAS (FLP Paris) and Goyard ST-Honoré SAS (Goyard).

FLP Paris was established in 2009, but Goyard claims that a trade mark the company has registered gives consumers the misleading impression that company was established in 1717 and that, as a result, the goods it produces that are covered by the mark are made according to the know-how of a centuries-old company and are of a certain quality. Goyard has argued that this runs contrary to French and EU trade mark law.

EU trade mark law provides that applicants should be refused registration of trade marks that “are of such a nature as to deceive the public, for instance as to the nature, quality or geographical origin of the goods or service”. Where trade marks of that kind have already been registered, they are liable to be declared invalid.

The Fauré Le Page brand is centuries old. The ‘Fauré Le Page’ trade mark previously belonged to a company called Maison Fauré Le Page, which was dissolved in 1992. Maison Fauré Le Page had sold leather accessories in Paris since 1716. FLP Paris acquired the mark in 2009 from the company that it was transferred to when Maison Fauré Le Page dissolved.

Subsequently, FLP Paris registered further trade marks for ‘Fauré Le Page 1717’ and one of its sister companies began selling leather goods bearing that branding in a shop in Paris and within a department store. Goyard asked the French courts to declare the Fauré Le Page 1717 trade marks invalid.

Goyard was initially unsuccessful with its court action in France, but in 2021 the Paris Court of Appeal sided with it. Fauré Le Page appealed against that judgment before the French Supreme Court, which has now asked the CJEU to help it resolve the dispute by clarifying how EU trade mark law is to be interpreted. To help the CJEU in that task, advocate general Emiliou was assigned to examine the legal questions the case raises and issue a non-binding opinion. That opinion was published last week.

According to advocate general Emiliou, EU trade mark law is to be interpreted as meaning that the inclusion, in a trade mark, of a year which may be understood by the public as indicating the year of establishment of the trade mark’s proprietor, when that is not the case, cannot, in itself, lead to the invalidity of that mark.

Instead, Emiliou said, a trade mark can only be declared invalid on the basis that it deceives the public if it is “of such a nature as to deceive the public as to a characteristic of the goods or services that it covers and must constitute a sufficiently specific designation of that characteristic”. He added that any circumstance external to the mark itself or the list of goods and services covered by it, as presented at the time of the application for registration, should not be taken into account in that assessment. This includes the actual year of establishment of the trade mark’s current owner, he said.

Klein said the opinion “does not consider the full range of functions that a trade mark serves”.

“It is standing case law that the primary function of a trade mark is to indicate the origin of the goods, and thus to link it to a specific economic operator,” Klein said. “Besides that, it is acknowledged that a trade mark also has a quality function and an advertising function. True, the provisions prohibiting deceiving trade marks focus on elements of the goods or services themselves, not the company behind it. However, a comprehensive trade mark system needs to consider all different trade mark functions, including during the registration phase. I am therefore not fully convinced that the characteristics of the goods or services can or should be separated from the characteristics of its commercial origin.”

“This seems like an artificial separation that consumers would not make – especially not in the area of luxury goods where prices are rarely justifiable by the characteristics of the goods alone, separated from the company and its reputation,” he said.

Klein said that, in Germany, even if the courts took the same view as advocate general Emiliou, the use of brands such as the trade marks at issue in this case might be liable to challenge under unfair competition laws.

He said: “Unfair competition laws prohibit the conveying of false information about the company behind the product. So, even if Fauré Le Page were able to keep its trade mark, the use of the ‘1717’ element of that mark on its products could be prohibited on the grounds of unfair competition.”

“This is a moment of significant growth in power demand,” says Kara Succoso Mangone, the head of the Sustainable Finance Group at Goldman Sachs. “At the same time, we continue to hit record levels of global investment in the energy transition, which includes renewable projects as well as newer, innovative technologies.”

This megatrend is bringing fresh urgency to the development of groundbreaking energy technologies and longstanding alternatives such as nuclear and geothermal power. It also underscores the critical need for significant investment in the grid, both to address aging infrastructure and to support load growth from a variety of energy sources, including renewables.

Rising power demand is also driving the need for financing solutions to support the rollout of projects up and down the supply chain. We spoke with Mangone about the opportunities and challenges in this new era.

What types of energy sources are being procured to meet the accelerating demand for power?

We are seeing a broad range of approaches to sourcing energy. For many of our clients, there is an opportunity to support this rise in energy demand with traditional sources. That could be existing resources like natural gas in some markets.