Microcredit: Global Microcredit Summit unites world leaders to slash poverty

This week's Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax announces new to lift half a billion people out of extreme poverty by 2015, according to press release by The Microcredit Summit:

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA – World leaders including Queen Sofia of Spain, President Zelaya of Honduras and Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus were joined today by microcredit lenders, international banks, UN agencies and more than 2,300 delegates from around the world, to launch the Global Microcredit Summit 2006, an international conference that aims to contribute to the eradication of worldwide poverty by setting two new, bold measurable goals for global microfinance.

“The goals laid out this weekend in Halifax could potentially lift more than 500 million people out of extreme poverty by 2015,” according to Summit organizer Sam Daley-Harris. “Succeeding will require renewed effort and some new players, but if the commitment demonstrated in fulfilling earlier goals is matched, I have every confidence we’ll be successful.”

Established during this week’s Summit, the Microcredit Campaign’s two new goals are to: (1) ensure 175 million families have access to credit, and (2) help 100 million of the poorest families move above the $1/day threshold by 2015.
Speaking at the Summit’s opening ceremony, Microcredit Summit Campaign Director Sam Daley-Harris remarked on the progress made toward the Summit’s original goal, set in 1997, of reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest families with microloans. “113 million families took out microloans last year and 82 million of those families were among the world’s poorest when they did.” Daley-Harris said, “We’ll likely hit our original goal of reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest with a microloan by the end of this year; one year late, but still a remarkable achievement!"

Read the entire press release: Global Microcredit Summit

Check out the Global Microcredit Summit Campaign

Categories: poverty, changemakers, microcredit, microfinance, innovation, social entrepreneurs

Microfinance: Yunus vs. Omidyar in The New Yorker

Connie Bruck published a very good article on the current state of microfinance in the 30 October New Yorker. It details the gulf between two approaches, roughly exemplified by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus and eBay-founder Piere Omidyar. Omidyar argues that microfinance needs a dose of commercialization to build it into a profit-making sector, while Yunus sticks to the belief that "anyone, provided the means, can become self-sufficient--even successful" through his model of small loans.

It's a curious debate and I suspect there is room for both aproaches. Yet, thinking about Omidyar's for-profit approach may provide a better means toward sustainability for social entreprenuers. (See my article "Drayton's Conundrum" on the Social Entrepreneurs Group at Gather.com

Read the full article by Connie Bruck: "Millions for Millions"

Categories: poverty, changemakers, microcredit, microfinance, innovation, socialentrepreneurs

Climate Change: New Climate Report From Merrill Lynch and WRI

Merrill Lynch’s automotive research team, in collaboration with World Resources Institute’s Capital Markets Research team released a report this week titled "Energy Security and Climate Change: Alternatives for the Clean Car Evolution."

The report presents a framework for understanding the regulatory and market dynamics driving the demand for more fuel efficient and less polluting automobiles, and highlights investment ideas that are levered to this long-term theme.

The report is the second in an annual series produced by Merrill Lynch and WRI focusing on energy security and climate change in the auto sector.

Worth a look: Energy Security & Climate Change

Categories: climate change, global warming, poverty, economy

Climate Change & Poverty: Wangari Maathai wants to plant a billion trees

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- The United Nations and Africa's Nobel laureate, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, launched a project on Wednesday to plant a billion trees worldwide to help fight climate change and poverty.

Kenya's Wangari Maathai, who in 2004 became the first African woman and first "green" activist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, urged people from the United States to Uganda to plant trees to combat global warming and to make a long-term commitment.

"Anybody can dig a hole, anybody can put a tree in that hole and water it. And everybody can make sure that the tree they plant survives," she said on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting on climate change in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

"There are 6 billion of us and counting. So even if only one-sixth of us each plant a tree, we will definitely reach the target (next year)," she told reporters.

Read the full story at CNN.com

Categories: climate change, global warming, poverty, economy

Climate Change: UK Climate Group Responds to Stern Report

The Stern review, released on October 30th, stated that failure to tackle climate change could cost the world up to 7 trillion dollars, and leave 200 million people as refugees amid drought or flood. The Climate Group, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change, has just released its commentary and analysis of the Stern report.

The group identifies the key message from the report,

the most extensive analysis carried out to date on the economics of climate change, is that the costs of taking action now (likely to amount to approximately 1% of GDP) are far outweighed by the costs associated with adopting a ‘wait and see’ attitude.

This macro-level analysis showing that taking early action to combat climate change is an economically sound course of action is backed up by much of The Climate Group’s work at the micro-level, which has shown how companies from a range of sectors have made significant emissions reductions and made or saved money in the process.

Steve Howard, The Climate Group’s CEO, said “The Stern Review provides clear evidence to support what many businesses, governments and the public have known intuitively for years; cutting carbon emissions is the only sensible course of action, both environmentally and economically.”

For The Climate Group's response and a link to the Stern report: Climate Group

Categories: climate change, global warming, poverty, economy

Climate Change: Climate Talks Begin Today in Nairobi

Reuters/Planet Ark reports this morning on the UN Climate talks, which begin in Nairobi and will run through the 17th of this month:

NAIROBI - Spurred by a UN warning that Africa risks catastrophic damage from global warming, UN talks in Nairobi from Monday will seek to ease deep rifts over how to widen a fight against climate change beyond 2012.

Delegates at the 189-nation Nov 6-17 talks will try to find ways to widen the UN's Kyoto Protocol, capping emissions of greenhouse gases by 35 industrial nations until 2012, to include outsiders such as the United States, China and India.
"An essential challenge in the future is to create a mechanism that everybody will want to be part of," Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference on the eve of the talks by 6,000 delegates.

He said no final breakthroughs were likely at the Nairobi talks in fixing a plan beyond 2012 for fighting warming that could spur more floods, droughts, spread disease and raise sea levels by almost a metre (three feet) by 2100.

The talks will separately try to aid Africa and the rest of the developing world to adapt to climate change -- with everything from drought-resistant crops to better flood protection.

A report issued on Sunday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said Africa's vulnerability to climate change was "even more acute" than previously believed.

It said that the number of people in Africa at risk from coastal flooding would rise to 70 million by 2080 from 1 million in 1990 and that 25-40 percent of habitats could be lost. Cereal crop yields could fall by 5 percent by 2080.

"There is a very urgent need to move now" to help Africa to adapt, de Boer said. Kenyan Environment Minister Kivutha Kibwana will open the talks on Monday.

ACT NOW

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) urged citizens around the world to act to cut greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, rather than wait for negotiators.

"It is happening today and everyone across the planet can act now to do something about it," UNEP head Achim Steiner said.

At the talks, European nations will try to push the United States and developing countries to get more involved in restraining the growth of greenhouse gases.

Washington pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying caps on emissions would cost US jobs and that the plan wrongly left developing nations out of targets for 2012.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in London on Friday to work to build a strong international alliance. A British report last week warned of apocalyptic long-term costs of ignoring climate change.

Of the top four emitters of greenhouse gases -- the US, China, Russia and China -- only Russia is bound by Kyoto.

Read the full story here: Nairobi Climate Talks


Categories: climate change, global warming, poverty, globalization