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Well, this headline only works if Marx was ever gone, if you know what I mean. But no, now he is literally back, and this in no less a becoming space than on the new edition of Mastercard issued by the German savings bank Sparkasse Chemnitz . And this by popular demand , no less. Customers in this East German city were asked to vote on what motive they would like to see on their credit cards – and Karl Marx won hands down! Now, we have to be correct here. Technically, it is not Marx the philosopher who was voted in. The bank’s customer’s in Chemnitz (for 40 years under communist rule it was actually called ‘Karl-Marx-Stadt’) were given a choice of the city’s landmarks, and the humongous Karl Marx sculpture - that survived the zeal to eradicate the GDR legacy - won the competition. It is impressive; I had a chance to check it out last Christmas (see the picture below). So here we are, Marx on a Mastercard. For many this is just hilarious, for some it’s a sad sign of how capitalism has n...

Today we have a guest blog from Jane-Fiona Cumming, A Director at Article 13, on the emerging corporate responsibility issue of 'virtual water'.   Is water the emerging big issue? It certainly should be,  writes Jane-Fiona Cumming . Currently 25% of the world’s population is living in an area of water stress. The combined effects of population growth, increasing urbanisation, and the impact of climate change on upstream resources in areas across the globe will almost certainly ensure that the situation only gets worse. And it is true that water is making its way up the sustainable development agenda.  Millennium Development Goal Target 7.C  calls for a commitment to ‘halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation’. Water is also one of the key issues for the UN’s upcoming  Rio+20  conference. Despite this, there remains a disconnect between attitudes and behaviours in water-rich areas ...