Emmanuel Faber, chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board, at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, 17 January 2024. (World Economic Forum/Boris Baldinger)

🧮ISSB chair Emmanuel Faber: ‘There’s global demand for a unified accounting language’ Helping investors see which companies are resilient enough to withstand climate change is Emmanuel Faber’s driving principle. The chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board, which plans to set up shop in Geneva next year, talks about the move and why ESG has fallen out of fashion.

💰US pays $827 million in mandatory UN dues but still owes about $4.2 billion. The cash injection follows months of UN secretary general António Guterres warning that the organisation was running out of cash. It also coincides with the appointment of a Trump nominee to head the World Food Programme. Washington is reportedly planning to send an additional $1.1bn to the UN peacekeeping budget.

🗝Developing countries unite over need for binding contracts with Pharma at pandemic talks. Negotiators meeting this week to discuss the contentious pathogen data-sharing system say they want more legal certainty, but the European Union has dismissed the demand.

🇻🇪Rights abuses persist in Venezuela despite Maduro's removal, UN experts say. The Human Rights Council’s independent fact-finding mission said Caracas’s repression machinery continues to operate despite some positive advances under interim president Delcy Rodríguez, including the release of some political prisoners and an amnesty law.

💉Despite funding cuts, global fund sustains progress against HIV, TB and malaria. Countries supported by the fund put more than a million more people on antiretroviral treatment, sustained tuberculosis treatment and distributed 34 million more insecticide-treated mosquito nets in 2025 than the previous year, despite steep cuts to global health by the United States.