On June 10th, GreenMicrofinance’s William Yager, Director of Sustainable Microenterprise Development, participated in the panel, “How MFIs and Their Clients Can Have a Positive Impact on the Environment,” moderated by Muhammad Yunus at the 2009 Latin America-Caribbean Regional Microcredit Summit in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Upon his safe return, Bill imparts his experience and reflections from the conference:
GMf: What are some of the key underlying ideas reinforced by the Colombia Summit?
WY: This particular context was not emphasized during the conference, but kept coming to mind as I listened to a truly remarkable succession of presenters. The background data are stark and unforgiving – the absolute number of poor is actually growing, since more than nine out of every ten births occur in what we know as the "third world"; to call it the "developing" world is, in most cases, truly euphemistic. Global aid programs are overwhelmed. In the wake of the global economic crisis perpetrated by the rich, giving has been reduced dramatically. The poor suffer inordinately in such an atmosphere and have no power to affect their fate. Income (if there is any) is down and prices are up drastically. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider, illustrating decisively the human capacity for delusion and short-term self-aggrandizement.
Nevertheless, microentrepreneurship, and the enabling support of microfinance institutions, has emerged from the periphery to the mainstream, not only contributing substantially to country economies but also contributing immeasurably more to human well-being.
GMf: How do you see microenterprise development as a tool in combating global poverty and having a positive impact on the environment?
WY: As outlined elsewhere, microenterprises have the potential to enhance self-esteem, intellectual development, discipline and a spiritual connectedness, as well as economic self-sustainability. For those who may not have the entrepreneurial bent, there is the new potential of employment in successful and hopefully growing enterprises.
This phenomenon of microenterprise as a powerful tool in combating global poverty was given significant impetus by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank. We were indeed privileged to have Professor Yunus as a plenary speaker at several sessions and especially to have him as the chair of our panel on "How MFIs and Their Clients Can Have a Positive Impact on the Environment." The audience was swelled at least as much to be in his presence as to absorb more on the topic.
Professor Yunus, in his characteristically succinct style, said that our polluted environment is "a mess" created by humans, and in need of human innovation to solve the problem.
Consequently, the relevance of the mission of GreenMicrofinance is undeniable.
GMf: What thoughts do you have now as you reflect on meeting those at the conference who are dedicated to microenterprise development as an answer to ending poverty?
WY: On reflection, I would leverage that diagnosis to include global poverty as well. The greed and thinly disguised motivations of the wealthy have continued to marginalize and exploit the poor. The inescapable conclusion is that the stubbornly elusive solution to poverty lies within the human capacity not only for compassion and empathy, but perhaps more importantly for the justice and empowerment that can come from microenterprise development.
Beyond hope, the tangible implementation of real progress was palpable in this group of dedicated people from all over the world. The conference participants seemed to be bathed in a vision for the future – that poverty could actually be eliminated. Their reported experience on the ground was striking, yet they actually entertained the feasibility of ending the phenomenon, having existed for all of recorded history, called poverty…
The unleashing of the human spirit and tapping of fundamental human potential will leapfrog anything that anyone thought possible. What a gift to be sitting among over a thousand of like-minded individuals, from at least 47 countries, many of whom experienced over long periods of time, in the trenches working directly with the poor, with all the frustrations and realism that test anyone’s idealistic commitment! The Summit was goal oriented, experienced, realistic, and without platitudes – inspiring.
A thought-provoking read that reminds us to dig deeper, and empathetically, when we contemplate the intricacies of the poor's role in microfinance. The Poor and their Money: Microfinance from a twenty-first century consumer's perspective by Stuart Rutherford is revised and available at http://tinyurl.com/maz43h
Read the summary below, as printed on their site:
"The Microfinance revolution is usually considered to have been led by the NGOs, donor agencies, and more recently banks who offer poor people financial services. But what can we learn from the ways that poor people already manage their money? What are the essential elements that they prize so much that they are willing to pay high interest rates to money lenders, or spend time and energy setting up elaborate savings clubs? The poor and their money emphasizes the pivotal role of savings in the lives of the poor, and in so doing overturns the common misconception that they are 'too poor to save'. Building on the huge acclaim that followed its first publication, the second edition of The Poor and Their Money brings readers up to date with microfinance developments in the twenty first century, including India's self-help group movement, village banks, and microfinance on Wall Street. It also describes the most detailed accounts to date of poor people's day-to-day financial strategies - their financial diaries. The book's clarity and avoidance of jargon make it appealing not only to microfinance students and practitioners, but to general readers as well."
Practical Action Publishing (formerly ITDG Publishing) The Schumacher Centre for Technology and Development, Bourton on Dunsmore, Rugby, www.practicalactionpublishing.org
We want to hear your comments on the book!
Two of our recent pieces -- the CGAP article "Microfinance and the Environmental Bottom Line" and GMf Director of Communications Betsy Teutsch's column on improved cookstoves -- have been included in MicrofinanceFocus' special environmental issue this year!
You can download the entire issue from MicrofinanceFocus' homepage, www.microfinancefocus.com, or access the PDF by clicking here. The CGAP article is on page 19, Betsy is on page 24.
Many thanks to Vikash Kumar, Managing Editor & Executive Director of MicrofinanceFocus, for taking great interest in GreenMicrofinance and coordinating our participation in this issue; Betsy for all your tremendous input and contribution to both these insightful articles; again to CGAP and Sara Yamaka; and everyone else for their support.
To refresh your memory, below is the beginning of the cookstove piece:
Backyard BBQs Meet Improved Cookstoves
Betsy Teutsch, Director of Communications, GreenMicrofinance.org
Last Sunday's supplement ran an ad which really stuck with me -- so much that a few days later, I went back to my recycled newspapers to confirm my recollection: Walmart is selling spiffy, stainless steel backyard BBQ gas grills for $298. Such grills have long been a suburban status symbol of macho domesticity, much evolved from the little kettle-style charcoal burning versions of my childhood. My first shock was that they're so cheap (thank you, China) that all elite symbolism has passed. Now average people with backyards who shop at discount stores can afford this luxury and fuel it with a tank of propane gas, advertised for $17.82.
My second reaction is looking at this snazzy item through the lens of third-world cooking; in my role as Director of Communications for GreenMicrofinance, I have learned a great deal about life without the infrastructures we in North America take for granted. GMf's mission is to bring clean energy, environmental benefit and poverty alleviation to the world's two billion people without access to modern energy systems. Most of these households cook over foraged wood or dung in open fires; given population expansion, this requires ever more time to gather since close-by supplies are exhausted. This is not exactly Martha Stewart's domain. Not only is the direct burning of wood, dung and crop residue extremely inefficient, it is highly polluting, resulting in respiratory disease as well as black carbon emission. It's exactly the kind of outdoor "campfire" that in the affluent world has been replaced first by kettle barbeques and, as we all became more affluent, gas grills.
Slightly better-off families in the developing world can afford LP, liquid petroleum - generally all imported and way beyond the means of a Bottom of the Pyramid family. So the type of grill Walmart is selling is actually a high-end third-world stove. The irony, of course, is that for Walmart's customers, this is not a primary cookstove. It is just for recreational warm weather backyard barbeques. The indoor range, gas or electric, serves that duty.
One breakthrough for perpetually impoverished developing world households is improved cookstoves, paired with gas produced by a family's biodigester. A slightly higher-tech version of composting, these cisterns have a seal so the waste which is dumped into them is processed anaerobically. Within a month or so, the biodigester yields methane gas along with very rich fertilizer. There are hundreds of different types of stoves being designed and marketed in the developing world. While very simple, they accomplish a great many improvements. They consume less fuel, making them less expensive to run. They utilize locally produced gas (ideally the "in-house" product!), eliminating the time required foraging for wood and dung. And since they are more efficient, they produce less pollution, resulting in improved health...
|
Who's Online
We have 161 guests online
Add GMf to your network
|
Blog
Summary Report by Betsy Teutsch
Grass Makes Better Ethanol Than Corn (4575)
Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities (2442)