Five breakthrough innovations from across Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and North America will each receive a $250,000 award and participate in a strategic new collaborative to focus on systemic solutions to complex sustainability challenges.

The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing (the Institute) today announced the inaugural cohort of its Sustainable Solutions Collaborative (the Collaborative), an initiative to identify breakthrough innovations that address systemic change to support sustainability. Spanning Africa, and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America, the five winners will participate in a bespoke yearlong strategic collaboration with the Institute where they will tap into the full range of Morgan Stanley’s expertise, networks and resources to help them achieve scale. Each winner will also receive an award of $250,000 to increase the impact and reach of their initiative.

Each member of the Sustainable Solutions Collaborative was selected for developing a breakthrough concept aimed at solving critical global challenges. The five inaugural participants of the 2021 Sustainable Solutions Collaborative come from a diverse group of organizations and backgrounds:

• Mpharma, a Ghana-based health tech startup is revolutionizing the drug supply chain in Africa taking the tools that make ecommerce convenient and profitable to make healthcare accessible and affordable.
• MySOC, a project of Skidmore College and Michigan State University, is harnessing unprecedented amounts of diverse data types to answer foundational questions about soil carbon to create a new market in partnership with farmers truly committed to sustainability.
• Siklus is tackling the nexus of poverty and plastic waste in Indonesia, remapping the relationship between consumers and producers to prove that affordable and convenient doesn’t need to mean throw away.
• SunCulture, based in Kenya, is bringing together innovations in inclusive finance, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture to help small holder farmers in Africa be more profitable and more sustainable.
• Trees As Infrastructure, Trees As Infrastructure, an open source platform by Dark Matter Labs, based in the UK and operating across Europe, is establishing nature as a critical part of urban infrastructure, alongside bridges, roads and rail, enabling it to be investable, profitable and sustainable.

“Each one of these initiatives, which range from commercial to nonprofit, has developed remarkable innovations. Through the help of the Collaborative, they have the potential to create the systemic changes needed to create a more sustainable future,” said Audrey Choi, Chief Sustainability Officer and CEO of the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. “We admire their creative thinking and dedication, and look forward to working with them to help bring their solutions to scale.”

For this award, the Institute engaged a diverse network of sustainability thought leaders and practitioners from across a wide variety of industries and sectors to make anonymous nominations. Morgan Stanley received over 150 highly qualified nominations and carried out a rigorous selection process to identify the innovations with the greatest potential for systemic impact that would also benefit from deep and sustained engagement with Morgan Stanley. This initial cohort represents the first in an on-going effort to support systemic, sustainable thinking, with additional potential efforts focused on specific topics or geographies as appropriate. Morgan Stanley is beginning the process of identifying the next cohort of members who will join the collaborative as the effort builds a growing, diverse set of systemic innovators seeking sustainable solutions at scale.

To learn more about the Sustainable Solutions Collaborative and the winning teams, please visit here.

About Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is a leading global financial services firm providing investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. With offices in more than 41 countries, the Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals. For more information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.

About the Institute for Sustainable Investing

The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing (The Institute) builds scalable finance solutions that seek to deliver competitive financial returns while driving positive environmental and social impact. Founded in 2013, The Institute creates innovative financial products, thoughtful insights and capacity building programs that help maximize capital to create a more sustainable future. For more information about the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, visit www.morganstanley.com/sustainableinvesting.

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Disclosures

The returns on a portfolio consisting primarily of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) aware investments may be lower or higher than a portfolio that is more diversified or where decisions are based solely on investment considerations. Because ESG criteria exclude some investments, investors may not be able to take advantage of the same opportunities or market trends as investors that do not use such criteria. Diversification does not guarantee a profit or protect against loss in a declining financial market.

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