I'm reblogging a post from Nathaniel Whittemore, the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University. Cool stuff.
This week is the first Global Entrepreneurship Week, a celebration of creativity, innovation, and inspiration designed to connect young people around the world and spark fires of entrepreneurship to solve big problems and create new opportunities.
Launched by Make Your Mark and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurs, the week brings together literally thousands of organizations holding events around the world. In the United Kingdom, for example, more than 600 partner organizations are hosting more than 3,000 activities.
The week is particularly focused on introducing the Millennial generation to the idea of entrepreneurship and enterprise. For example, events held yesterday included:
a debate called "In the Current Economic Climate, Can Entrepreneurs Change the World," as a part of ChainReaction,
a video conference about entrepreneurship and the Millennium Development Goals between Ghanian university students and California Polytech State University,
a debate about entrepreneurship and the local environment in Porto Alegre in Brazil
I'll be posting videos and commentary all week. You can follow along here or check out some of the main sites aggregating content from around the world:
Unleashingideas.org - the main site for Global Entrepreneurship Week, where you can see the full variety of activities happening around the world
the Kauffman Foundation's page for GEW, which includes "Daily Dispatches" with some of the most interesting happenings
Energy is a basic human need and underlies all economic and social activity. It is an "indispensable element of sustainable human development," according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). "Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment."
And yet, today, according to a 2005 UNDP study, Energizing the Millennium Development Goals, "millions of households in the developing world still lack access to safe and reliable energy and pay high prices for poor-quality substitutes. Moreover, poor people spend much of their income on energy, more than a third of household expenditures in some countries."
That would be bad enough were it the only impact, but poor households, especially women, also "devote a large portion of another important asset, their time, on energy related activities--women and young girls spend upwards of 6 hours a day gathering fuelwood and water, cooking, and agro-processing."
Worldwide, around 2.4 billion people still use solid fuels, including wood, dung, agricultural waste, and coal to meet their household energy needs. Cooking and heating using open fires or traditional, inefficient stoves results in health-compromising indoor air pollution, and causes up to 1.6 million deaths every year, according to the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University in Houston. Most of those deaths involve women (60 percent) and children under five with acute respiratory infections.
In some countries, Baker Institute researchers claim, "this neglected health risk is to blame for 3.7 percent of all deaths, making it the most lethal killer after malnutrition, unsafe sex and lack of safe water and adequate sanitation."
Worldwide, according to sources familiar with the situation, two billion people live without any access to modern energy supplies and about 1.6 billion people live without access to electricity.
It's a vicious cycle: poor households do not have the resources to obtain cleaner, more efficient fuels and appliances; so they rely on solid household fuels and limited, often inefficient appliances, which in turn reduces the potential for economic development and affects their health and productivity, keeping them from making their way up the poverty ladder.
One can argue that achieving many of the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015 is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without addressing the need for increased access to cleaner, affordable, and safer energy.
Researchers at the Baker Institute conclude that, "In order to halve the number of people living on less than $1 per day, there is a concomitant need to reduce the number of people who lack electricity services by some 560-600 million." Their price-tag for providing electricity services to these people? Around US$200 billion.
It's kind of a no-brainer: Better energy services can reduce workloads and indoor air pollution, potentially generate income for poor households, and lead to greater environmental sustainability, encouraging better natural resource management and improved water quality.
Microenergy or small, distributed energy generation may be the key to providing energy services to the global poor. Small-scale solar installations are now affordable for application in most rural, developing countries. Wind turbines, geothermal, and more efficient biomass or biogas stoves can reduce the impact of indoor air pollution and forest degradation.
As microfinance has revolutionized the access of financial services to the poor -- by no means is that revolution complete -- so, too, can microenergy help leverage the rural poor out of their vicious cycle of poverty.
And just as there is a ladder out of poverty, there is a corresponding ladder of energy (see diagram above). Increasing energy access to the world's rural poor can contribute to reducing global poverty. Indeed, you can't reduce rural poverty without it.
(Diagram Source: IEA Analysis, World Energy Outlook 2002)
Dr. Hans Rosling rocked the house at TED in 2006 with his sportcaster-like presentation of data on human development trends (see embedded video below).
It really is quite a fascinating presentation; watch him describe trends in life length and family size like it's the Kentucky Derby. Wow.
Hans Rosling's TED Talk is really more like, what can I call it, a "datashow":
Rosling has also taken a look at CO2 emissions trends and finds that some humans emit much more than others.
For example, while "the total CO2 emissions from China are almost as big as those from United States, the emission from a single American is more than 6 times those from a person in China."
In the end, Rosling concludes, what "China needs is an environmental friendly way of producing electricity that is cheaper than coal." Don't we all?
You can find more GapCasts and information about Dr. Rosling's data at: gapminder.org
This week I'm attending the Salzburg Global Seminar conference, "Toward a 'Green Revolution' in Africa?"
"Toward a 'Green Revolution' in Africa?" is an Initiative of the Salzburg Global Seminar, the Institute of Development Studies and the Future Agricultures Consortium.
The title is posed as a question, which of itself is an interesting statement.
I like that it's a question, because it implies the seminar organizers are not wedded to one idea or one approach to what ails Africa.
It also implies that there are lingering questions about whether a "Green Revolution" is what's needed in Africa.
A healthy skepticism is important when people come together in dialog about issues as important as the health and future of the African continent and its people. I admire the seminar organizers for sticking that question mark in the title.
At the heart of this question are two overarching additional questions:
1. How can new interest and investment in African agriculture be used to bring about real and sustainable change; and
2. How can these efforts be aligned strategically with other investments and development activities (be they from private donors, public aid, or private business) and new strategic alliances and partnerships be created to ensure success?
As the conference organizers write in an Overview provided to participants: "There is a clear need for a new vision for agricultural development in Africa that can deal with the complexities of agriculture in diverse settings across Africa and meet the conditions necessary to achieve more equitable benefits for Africa’s farmers. But whose vision should this be?"
The conference brings together "diverse stakeholders, from within Africa and beyond, who are experts (in their given areas), leading thinkers, change-makers and are, or can influence, senior decision-makers."
At last count, there are 90 participants from government, business, academia, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), "who will explore a set of issues of vital concern to the future of agriculture in Africa, and, indeed, to Africa’s development agenda."
We'll be asked to "devise the conceptual framework within which a new agricultural development agenda in Africa can be set and implemented, and to recommend specific actions," including "recommendations for policy adjustments, streamlining practice, and creating strategic alliances."
It will be interesting to see what the outcomes of the sessions will be. For now, I'm really looking forward to this dialog, both as a learning experience and for what I think I can contribute in terms of linking agriculture to biodiversity health, social entrepreneurship, and investments.
Click here for more on the Salzburg Global Seminars.
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