Nestlé and Mars have pledged to take steps to ensure their pet food supply chains are free of human rights abuses and illegally caught seafood, according to Greenpeace.

Kraft Heinz Co., rebuffed recently in its bid to buy Unilever, is investing $200m in an expanded corporate social responsibility program that includes a pledge to fight malnutrition and decrease its environmental footprint.

The United States will launch a competition in the coming weeks to find projects that will reduce modern slavery, which by one estimate affects nearly 46 million people around the world, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced last week.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) wants to improve its response to disease outbreaks by increasing visibility in supply chains.

In 2008, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel gave half a million dollars to a Google engineer named Patri Friedman, the grandson of economist Milton Friedman. The money was to establish the Seasteading Institute, which aims to spearhead the development of politically autonomous, floating "seasteads" in unregulated international waters. This was to be the beginning of a long experiment in civilization building. It also turned out to be the origin of many, many puns.

Researchers at the University of Kent are teaming up with the South African National Biodiversity Institute to raise funding that will enable the launch of a radio frequency identification-based solution to protect rare and endangered plants from poaching.

The scale and duration of the protests that have unfolded here over the fall and winter by those determined to block the Dakota Access oil pipeline have created endless logistical challenges.

Fashion giant Ralph Lauren Corp, whose designs are sashayed on Hollywood's red carpets, has unveiled plans to trace wood pulp used in its clothes to avoid buying from regions destroying forests or violating human rights.