The Impact World this Week: 10 October 2025

Global: The world’s first upcycled skyscraper, a new mechanism to guarantee land and forest rights for Indigenous and Afrodescendant Peoples and a breakthrough microplastics filter are among the finalists for the 2025 Earthshot Prize, announced this week. The competition, set up to recognise environmental innovation, awards £1m prizes to winners in five categories; revive our oceans, fix our climate, build a waste-free world, protect and restore nature and clean our air. The five winners for 2025 will be announced at The Earthshot Prize Awards, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday 5 November.

Global: Banks have voted to cease operations at the industry’s main body leading the sector's global effort to cut carbon emissions. Members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, set up in 2021, voted to wind up the group last week. Many big banks had already left the group amid allegations from some US lawmakers that membership breached antitrust regulations and political pressure. The Net-Zero Banking Alliance’s resources will remain accessible to banks seeking guidance on how to set decarbonisation targets. The decision to wind up the group follows a similar move by a climate group for the insurance industry in 2024.

Governments must support social enterprises by creating favourable regulatory environments and offering financial incentives such as tax relief, grants and low-interest loans. That’s the verdict of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy, in a report published last week on the financing mechanisms, policy frameworks and institutional arrangements that have been developed to support social enterprises in different regions of the world. The report says special efforts should be devoted to promoting the development of the social and solidarity economy in the least developed countries, as a tool for sustainable development and economic empowerment. Its recommendations include the creation of a standardised metric for social impact measurement encompassing the social and solidarity economy criteria from the International Labour Organisation definition. 

• Read more: The UN has adopted a resolution on the social and solidarity economy. Here's why it matters

Global: What ethical challenges have prompted new reflections within faith-based investing organisations? How can they reconcile diverse views that make it challenging to find a consensus around values? These are among the questions international non-profit FaithInvest is encouraging organisations practicing faith-based investing to ask in its new report, From Faith Values to Investment, published this week. The report, which outlines best practice on what it calls faith-consistent investing, includes advice on key considerations including how to discern and document faith values; how to integrate them in investment policies and guidelines and best practice governance structures.

• Read more: New £5m sharia-compliant social investment fund launches to reach more underserved social entrepreneurs in UK first

Global: True scale is achieved when social innovations become public goods, integrated into government systems rather than confined to individual organisations. That’s the conclusion of a new report, Pathways to Scaling with Governments: The Journey of a Social Innovator, launched by the One Family Foundation at last week’s Social Innovation Forum in Brussels, Belgium. The report explains why scaling with governments is essential for lasting change, examines collaborative systems change as the foundation for effective partnerships, and identifies key pathways, from policy integration to public procurement, through which innovations can embed within government systems. It also presents practical models demonstrating how such collaborations can expand reach and sustainability. 

• Read our Pioneer Interview with founder of the One Family Foundation Jeroo Billimoria: 'You have to be bold enough to shut something down'

Figure of the week: £9.4m is the amount invested by Big Issue Invest in 2024/25 as the organisation celebrates its 20th anniversary. The impact report of the Big Issue’s social investment arm, published yesterday, showed it invested three times more in 2024/2025 than over the previous year. More than half of Big Issue Invest’s investments in 2024/25 have impacted people living in the most deprived areas of the UK. In May 2025, Big Issue Invest celebrated having made more than £100m of investments since 2005. In the past 20 years, the social investor has supported more than 500 social enterprises, offering grants and non-financial support in addition to investments.

• Read more: Big Issue Invest deploys £100m — what’s next for the UK social investor?

Movers and Shakers

Shān Nicholas is the new interim group CEO of The Joseph Rowntree Foundation-Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust. Nicholas has previously led the Child Poverty Action Group, the Children’s Society, the Refugee Council, the Rayne Foundation and most recently, the RSPC. The appointment follows the departure of Paul Kissack, who is now permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).