November 2009

Least Developed Countries and DM2009

The DM2009 competition, whose theme was adaptation to climate change, especially how it impacts the poor and vulnerable on the local level, would seem to have been the perfect fit for Least Developed Countries (LDCs), especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa. The poorest countries are expected to pay the highest price of climate change on their human, natural, and economic resources. With generally weak capacity in regional and national government and infrastructure, they would seem to be well suited for the early-stage, community-focused projects of DM2009. In fact, criteria for National Adaptation Plans of Action for LDCs give No. 1 ranking to "a participatory process involving stakeholders, particularly local communities."

But the fit proved less than perfect. The 49 LDCs worldwide produced only 26 of the 100 finalists. Only four were winners -- two from Sub-Saharan Africa (Burkina Faso and Ethiopia) and one each from Middle East and North Africa (Djibouti) and East Asia and the Pacific (Samoa). Five finalists were from the most populous LDC -- Bangladesh, in South Asia -- but none of those was a winner. LDCs Tanzania and Uganda -- two of Sub-Saharan Africa's most populous countries -- had only three finalists between them, none of whom was a winner.

Is it too late for the 22 LDC finalists who didn't pick up crystal globes at the Nov. 13 awards ceremony? Maybe not. According to most recent findings, the 49 LDCs globally aren't making enough progress in pinpointing potential local climate adaptation projects.

What if the 10 LDCs from which the 22 non-winning finalists come took a close look at those projects and considered them for funding in their National Adaptation Plans of Action? Some DM2009 jurors said they had a tough time choosing winners because all the finalists presented strong entries.

Development Marketplace's decision makers are looking at ways to help all the finalists succeed. Aleem Walji, Practice Manager at the World Bank Institute, which includes the secretariat for the Development Marketplace consortium and other innovation platforms, said in a mini-interview on this blog: "I think we have a responsibility to try and support this entire community of finalists. We went from 1,750 applicants to a hundred finalists. What can we do to connect these hundred finalists to everyone who we know who can help them go forward -- funders, capacity builders, past DM winners, each other."

For themselves, their projects, and their countries, the 20 non-winning finalists from LDCs should keep their hope in their hearts.

Indigenous Peoples have been contending with destructive weather like cyclones, flooding, and drought for centuries -- as the development community has sometimes belatedly discovered. Nine of DM2009's winners are projects that tap into that special know-how to help indigenous communities survive the increasingly destructive weather that climate change brings.

Indigenous know-how is invariably practical and low-cost -- like the winner from Samoa. That project would build three traditional Samoan houses -- called fale, for "open house" -- as models of "safer, accessible, resilient, and sustainable housing."

Here's how a fale is built, as described in a fascinating story on the East Asia & Pacific website of the World Bank: The structure is "lashed and tied together with afa -- an organic sennit rope. Afa is made by twisting together the fibers of dry coconut husks. The lashing work is traditionally done by elderly men while women make the thatch for the domed roof of the fale – either from coconut palm leaves or sugar cane." (Photo after recent rain shows 80-year-old Pousea, ceremonial house in Samoa that was restored by DM winner Afeafe o Vaetoefaga Pacific Academy of Cultural Restoration, Research, and Development two years ago.)

The 40 Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and Far East in Russia endure one of the world's most hostile environments. But it is man, not nature, that threatens the very existence of these communities, which have dwindled to about 250,000 people who live in sometimes besieged camps and villages sprinkled across the vast frozen landscape from the Barents Sea to the Pacific Ocean. (Photo credit: EALÁT.)

Deforestation, industrialization, and flooding from hydropower drive Russia's Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral homelands. Illegal fishing, poaching, and the auction of fishing grounds deprive them of their livelihoods. Russia's Indigenous Peoples are, theoretically, protected by federal laws, but advocacy groups say there's no regulatory force to the laws. The collective plight of the communities is grim evidence behind those arguments.

Leading the fight to put teeth in the laws is the Center for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North (CISPN). Its tenacious struggle, which has won it some legal skirmishes in Moscow and at international forums, has now earned it one of the 26 awards given at the Development Marketplace 2009 competition. The $200,000 award will go toward a grassroots project that will help indigenous communities leverage their traditional knowledge with contemporary techniques of communication and advocacy that involve engaging all stakeholders. The goal is a "climate strategy" of adaptation that will finally lead to real, enforceable protection of Russia's indigenous communities.

CISPN Director Rodion Sulyandziga, proudly holding his crystal globe after the Nov. 13 awards ceremony in Washington, said: “It’s a great day. I’m very proud. The most important thing is the Indigenous Peoples’ voice is heard in Siberia and everywhere.”

And then it was back to Moscow for Sulyandziga -- to map the Center's new grassroots fight.

The economic -- as well as human and environmental -- costs of adapting to climate change will hit developing nations hardest -- none harder than those in Sub-Saharan Africa. New World Bank projections have adaptation costs carving out almost 7 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's gross development product annually between 2010 and 2029. That's more than double the cost projected for Latin America and the Caribbean, and more than triple the cost to GDP that would be borne by developing countries in other regions. Yet only 16 of the 100 finalists in DM2009 were from Africa, and only three of them -- from Burkina Faso (anti-desertification), Ethiopia (anti-drought), and Nigeria (anti-drought) -- were among the 26 winners.

Below, from left, photos of winners from projects in Burkina Faso (Thomas Granier), Ethiopia (Mohammad Ehsan Dulloo), and Nigeria (Nnaemeka Chidiebere Ikegwuonu).

Of all the adverse impacts of climate change in Africa, the worst is drought. Already faltering food production in the region could fall by 16 percent long term because of more frequent and intense drier weather, according to recent projections. If that happens, Africa would be even further from meeting its Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty.

With most of Africa's food grown by small farmers, most adaptation projects to protect the farmers against climate change will have to start on a small scale. The implications are as certain as the outlook for drier weather: Africa must become the center of many more projects like the region's three winners at DM2009.

When you browse to Development Marketplace's YouTube channel on the right side, you'll find a rich video buffet from the recent competition. All the finalists talk about their projects -- in one minute or less. There are interviews with the experts, like Marianne Fay, chief author of World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change, and juror Tran Triet of Vietnam, a winning finalist in 2003.

One of my favorites is the medley of welcomes in foreign languages -- 14 in all, one vivid and charming example of how truly global DM2009 was.

(Montage above: Welcomes in Swahili, foreground, Hindi, background/left, and Bahasa, official language of Indonesia.)

A revealing interview at DM2009 was the one of Ian Noble, a top World Bank expert on climate change, and member of the World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change team who was also a DM2009 juror. Noble was questioned by Habiba Gitay, Senior Environmental Specialist at the World Bank Institute, about the big development projects that the World Bank has traditionally fostered and financed and the micro-sized, early-stage or seed projects (up to $200,000 in value) that are part of the Development Marketplace competitions. Noble's answers underscored how the Bank, in responding to the destructive impacts of climate change on the people and natural resources of developing countries, is increasingly thinking small about adaptation projects.

"Ultimately, adaptation is going to be carried out by individual people, households, small communities," Noble answered. "So one of the challenges of the World Bank is to shift out-sourcing to that level. This is a huge, rich body of information flowing into the World Bank from Development Marketplace, especially in the case of this [competition]. With the tension between community-based adaptation and adaptation funding at the national level, a bridge has to be built [between the two]."

Days after climate adaptation projects aiding and led by Indigenous Peoples won nine awards at the DM2009 competition (Nov. 10-13), the worldwide indigenous community took a major step toward becoming a key player in the international climate change debate.

First Peoples Worldwide, with the help of the World Bank's Social Development Department, is setting up an Indigenous Peoples Climate Action Fund in part "to strengthen the capacity of Indigenous Peoples’ communities to influence decision-making and to engage in dialogue on climate change at the national and international level."

The US$10 million Fund will also finance small-scale adaptation projects in indigenous communities, and then seek to scale them "across communties, regions, and countries" -- the ultimate goal of many of DM2009's early-stage finalist projects. The new Fund aims to use indigenous communities' traditional knowledge to launch projects that will buffer the poor and vulnerable against the impacts of destructive weather, conserve their sensitive environments, and improve faltering local indigenous economies -- also the objectives of DM2009 projects.

At a Nov. 18 roundtable in Washington announcing the Fund, World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick offered several examples of how the knowledge and experience of Indigenous Peoples are proving successful in blunting the worst of climate change. In parts of Africa, he said, plantings of Red bush tea can survive the drier climate. In Vietnam, plantings of dense mangroves protect the coastline from the waves of tropical storms.

Taken from http://www.worldbank.org/podcast.

26 Ideas Win Prize at Development Marketplace 2009

The 2009 Development Marketplace has closed its doors, but the effects of that amazing event linger. Saving the people from the effects of climate change was the theme of this yearís event. 26 ideas culled from more than 1 700 proposals from 47 countries could not be more relevant. The grant they received from the World Bank Institute and its partners will help implement their project.

In this edition of On the Move we meet some of the winners as they tell us how they got their ideas to save our planet.

Innovative adaptation projects, like those featured at DM2009, hold enormous potential for blunting the adverse impact of climate change in developing countries, while also helping to reduce poverty and build social value. But to achieve their potential, these projects have to be scaled. Money is important for projects to get beyond their early or seed stage. But money alone isn't enough -- as already succcessful project leaders emphasized at the Nov. 12 DM2009 panel "Taking an Idea to Scale" (photo at right: panelist and competition juror Anne Marie Moeller of Humana People to People India). To succeed, panelists emphasized, innovative projects also have to be firmly planted within their communities, understand local needs, find partners with whom they develop solid cooperation, and be supported with staff who are both dedicated and skilled.

To help put all the pieces together and effectively link adaptation to development on a scale of broad replication, the World Bank Institute is, among other things, reshaping itself as a "knowledge broker" that connects projects with the right people and institutions within the development community as well as with governments. Aleem Walji, the WBI's new Innovation Practice Manager, talks about this in his mini-interview below, as well as in his introduction to the "Taking an Idea to Scale" panel (video link above). There are more details in this WBI statement about the the new strategy under Institute Vice President Sanjay Pradhan.

Aleem Walji is the new Innovation Practice Manager at the World Bank Institute, which includes the secretariat for the Development Marketplace consortium and other innovation platforms. He is former Head of Global Development Initiatives at Google. The peripatetic Walji sat down for this mini-interview as DM2009 was winding up:

Q. Development Marketplace stresses innovation, both in projects it seeks and how they're evaluated. Why is innovation so important?

A. The need for solutions, and fast, is urgent. Business as usual is simply not sufficient. We’ve got to look at new ways of doing things -- things that have worked in one part of the world that may work in another part of the world, or are entirely new. We put out a call to the world, particularly the developing world, to say what are your ideas, what are you doing, what can you do? How can we support you, adapting to a rapidly changing climate? This competition was to shine a light on those ideas.

Q. We hear a lot about scale. What does it really mean?

A. Scale is a term often used and misused. When I think about scale I think about a pathway to reach the maximum number of people possible. It doesn’t necessarily mean an organization has to become extremely large for an idea to scale. It could mean that an idea is adopted by a small organization but relevant and replicated by other groups in other parts of the world. When I think of the Development Marketplace, we want to get to the point where we can connect early-stage ideas to the people, money, and partners who can help see ideas through to execution and grow them to their optimal levels.

Q. What factors are important for success?

A. In many ways we’re really betting on leadership, we’re betting on people who we think are going to deliver an outcome, and are going to be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. The projects will change, they will adapt, they will grow. What we’re really talking about is how do we position our winners to be able to benefit from our support, then really leverage it, along with partners. We want to be connectors in an ecosystem. We want to be connectors in a cycle of growth and scale.

Q. Most of the DM2009 projects came from NGOs and academic institutions. There weren’t very many from entrepreneurs...

A. This is a little bit of concern to me. When you look at the viability of any project it has to have a pathway to sustainability, and commercialization is one pathway. When there are ideas that can be commercialized and have revenue models that can be sustained, that is a very positive sign. For those that don’t, there have to be other paths to viability like public-private partnerships for example. For those that don’t have one or the other, I worry how they will sustain themselves. That's where partnerships becomes key and our role in creating an "enabling ecosystem" of seed funders, debt financiers, equity players, and capacity builders is very important.

DM2009 has been drawing attention from climate-change-related and other blogs and websites around the world. In "The Dirt," published by the American Society of Landscape Architects, web content and strategy manager Jared Green -- who was also a juror for the DM2009 competition -- published this post about some of the winning finalists. Green's post was picked up by the Sustainable Cities Collective blog.

Some of the attention came from abroad -- the site the Austrian Network for Information and Communication Technologies for Development and -- in France -- Actualités News environnement.

Climate-L, which is produced by an international team of climate change experts with funding from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, published this article.

I asked New York Times op-ed columnist Tom Friedman to come see our "100 ideas to save the planet" at last week's DM2009 competition. His response was he was on his way to the Amazon, where climate change is accelerating the despoiling of that vast ecosystem and driving its indigenous communities into more povery. A number of DM200 finalist projects from Latin American would attack those ravages.

In his column today, Friedman says bluntly: "My argument is simple: I think climate change is real. You don’t? That’s your business. But there are two other huge trends barreling down on us with energy implications that you simply can’t deny."

For more, here's the column.

The logistics for DM2009 were an intimidating challenge. They involved a nearly five-day production where people, equipment, and props had to smoothly mesh for a combination program and event that would leave the finalists not only better prepared to develop their projects but also happy and content, even if they weren't in the winners' circle. One of the leaders in putting all the pieces together was Vanya Candia of the World Bank Institute. Here's how she confronted the challenge (with Spanish translation):

Los 5 días del evento de la Feria del Desarrollo requirió 10 meses de planificación La coordinación logística de la Feria del Desarrollo implica varios desafíos para los organizadores, se debe coordinar de manera exacta que la gente, el equipo y la utilería estén en el lugar apropiado en el momento apropiado con el fin de producir un buen evento, ayudar a los finalistas a desarrollar una buena presentación de sus proyectos y lograr una grata experiencia para ellos aunque no logren ser ganadores. La persona responsable de unir estas piezas en términos de logística fue Vanya Candia del Instituto del Banco Mundial. Preguntamos a Vanya como ella logro confrontar estos desafíos (incluimos traducción al Español):

Q. When did you begin planning DM2009?
P. Cuando se comenzó con la planificación del DM2009?

A. About 10 months ago.
R. Comenzamos con la planificación como hace 10 meses atrás.

Q. What were the major challenges, and how did you solve them?
P. Cuáles fueron los mayores retos y como los solucionaron?

A. This year it was a challenge to coordinate the interpretation services for several finalists from indigenous communities. Another challenge was to define which device to use for promoting social media as a tool for engaging stakeholders. After researching and analyzing, we decided to go with Flip cams that are affordable and very easy to use. Let me tell you about another example of challenges in terms of logistics. At the end of the first day when all booths were set up we realized that the ones located under the Atrium balcony didn't have enough light in the afternoon so we had to find a solution, after coordinating with GSD [General Services Department of the World Bank], we managed to place light bulbs in each booth.

Click here for a video on Development Markteplace 2009 from The World Bank's News & Broadcasts.

“I came here thinking of my people. I leave here thinking of our planet.”

That's how finalist winner Carlos Daniel Vecco Giove of Peru summed up what DM2009 meant for him. (Vecco was honored for his proposal to aid the Amazonian indigenous populations in his country in adapting to rapid climate change.)

Vecco's stirring words echoed around the floor of the competition, on up to the podium during the Friday, Nov. 13, awards ceremony, where a rapt audience heard Warren Evans, Environment Director of the World Bank, say: "Let me share with you what I heard that one of our finalists who traveled here from far away said this week."

One way or another, the other finalists expressed the same thought -- if not in so many words, then in the potential for their projects to bring innovative but practical climate adaptation not only to their target community but to people and places across regions and countries...to the whole planet.

Development Marketplace awards to winners range up to $200,000 -- to cover what is called "early-stage" or seed development of projects. But after that period -- usually one or two years -- any project, no matter how promising it looks, has to find new funding.

DM2009 juror Tran Triet of Vietnam, a DM2003 winner, talked about projects that seek to transform a community both environmentally and economically -- the ambitious aim of many of the DM proposals, winners and non-winners alike. At the panel on "Taking an Idea to Scale," Dr. Tran said: "A long-term commitment is needed. The social agenda takes time to happen. The normal [Development Marketplace] funding cycle of one or two years would be too short to bring about changes."

Juror Fred Onduri, who is chair of the Least Developed Countries Expert Group with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as head of the Policy and Planning Department of the Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says two years "is not enough." He thinks the national governments of the countries where the winning projects would be developed should fund them in the out years.

Ideas, anyone?

Nnaemeka Chidiebere Ikegwuonu of Nigera was one of the 26 winners at DM2009 with a project that would create a radio drama aimed at educating small farmers on how how to better manage the risk of growing crops in extreme weather that swings from storms to droughts.

While accepting congratulations, Ikegwuonu said, "There is a saying in our local Igbo language, 'To whom much is given, much is expected.' Thanks to this award, within 18 months, small farmers living in southeastern Nigeria will mitigate and adapt to climate change by integrating local knowledge and external technology."

Through a network of 15 radio stations, the series will be able to reach a potential audience of 15 million in southeastern Nigeria. Listener clubs will be able to broadcast feedback through solar-powered radios.

Development Marketplace 2009 Day 3: Taking an Idea to Scale (Panel Discussion):

Development Marketplace 2009 - Day 3: 'Marketplace Interviews: Meet Climate Change Practitioners':

Clutching two crystal globes at Friday's DM2009 awards ceremony was David Manalo of the Philippines, who won with two of his three finalist projects -- one for "bell and bottle" rain gauges to provide an early warning system against storm-caused floods and landslides, and the other to put 2,000 to 2,400 people rural people on the electrical grid through floating hydropower generators.

"I didn't expect this," he said, elated but a bit dazed from his and his projects' double honors. "Winning once would make me more than happy."

Manalo's brother, Eugenio, a partner in the early-warning project, stayed behind in the Philippines to aid victims of recent typhoons. "I will call him, but not right now – he's sleeping," said David, at 1 a.m. Manila time.

Development Marketplace couldn't happen without its sponsors, who donated nearly $5 million for this year's event. Here they are, from left, at the Friday morning awards ceremony -- William Ehlers, team leader of the Global Environment Facility; Elwyn Grainer-Jones of the International Fund for Agricultural Development; Danish Ambassador to the U.S. Friss Arne Petersen; Warren Evans, World Bank Environment Director; and Sanjay Pradhan, Vice President of the World Bank Institute.

World Bank climate change specialist Kseniya Lvovsky was a juror for DM2009. Here's what she had to say about the judging process and the quality of the finalists' projects in a new posting to the Bank's Development in a Changing Climate blog. All very interesting, and authoritative, because Lvovsky is leading the Climate Change team in the Environmental Department of the World Bank that is overseeing the implementation of the Strategic Framework on Development and Climate Change. She is also coordinating climate change-related activities across the Bank.

All 26 winners.

Taken from http://www.worldbank.org/podcast.

100 Ideas to Save the Planet

Act one. From villagers to members of NGOs around the world they have come to the 2009 Development Marketplace, a competitive grand program, to help save our planet with innovative ideas. Since its inception in 1998, DM has awarded roughly US$40 million to more than 1,000 projects through global, regional and country-level Marketplaces. Don't miss act 2 on our next "On the Move" podcast!

The Development Marketplace 2009 winners have been announced. Click the banner above to see the 26 winners.

También disponible en Español.

Today is the last day of Development Marketplace 2009 everybody has been looking forward to. The winners will be announced today and the grants awarded!

This ceremony will also be broadcasted in our live webcast - http://wwwr.worldbank.org/dm2009live so make sure you don miss it.

Friday 13.11. (all times GMT -5h):

09:30 am - 11:30 am: Award Ceremony - streaming from Preston: see Sanjay Pradhan (World Bank) and others

If you have any comments, drop a line here or on Twitter (hashtag #dm2009).

One comment that came up in the panel discussion today caught my attention - the participants were looking for ways to stay connected and share experiences and ideas after Development Marketplace 2009.

An easy and convenient possibility to achieve that are social networks.

Social networks are online platforms which give people the ability to register, upload personal data or content and to contact other people. The social network offers possibilities to search members, start discussions, post news articles and form groups.

We created such groups in two very popular social networks, Facebook and LinkedIn. Click on the buttons below to get redirected to our groups.

If you don't have an account at either of these platforms, you'll have to create one before being able to join the groups.

For Facebook:

1. Just fill in your data on the front page and click on "Sign up"
2. Confirm your email-address

For LinkedIn:

1. Fill in your data on the front page and click on "Join Now"
2. Confirm your email-address

And you're ready to go!

So if you are a participant who wants to keep in touch and carry on the conversation with fellow participants or if you are somebody interested in a project and want to get in touch with the project team, just join here.

From mangrove forests to the Amazon Basin to the High Andes, Latin America and the Caribbean are threatened by climate change. And so are Indigenous Peoples who live in these sensitive environments.

So it's not that surprising, perhaps, that of the 100 finalists in DM2009, 39 come from Latin American and Caribbean countries -- 12 from Peru alone.

One of the Peru projects seeks to "blend Western science and indigenous knowledge systems [and] know-how" to help bring buen vivir (good living) to the indigenous community of Potato Park in the High Andes through the development of new tuber varieties resistant to extreme climate conditions.

"Extreme conditions are showing up more often with more force throughout the region," said Alejandro Argumedo, director of the Association ANDES project (in photo at left with researcher Katrina Quisumbing Katrina Quisumbing King and Alejandro Argumedo King). "With global warming we are seeing the emergence of a new climate, and it's coming very fast."

In Belize, "the impact of climate change is exacerbated by a combination of deforestation and tourism that is shrinking the mangrove forests that act as a sponge against storm-caused flooding," said Gregory Ch'oc, executive director of Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management (in photo at right with technical coordinator Lynette Gomez). The indigenous communities of this ecoystem are heavily impacted by the natural and manmade forces of destruction. Ch'oc's group seeks to help one hard hit indigenous district with community-based solutions for forest management that would begin with an inventory of the flora at risk.

YouTube is a service quite similar to Flickr, but for videos. You can upload your videos to this platform, give them a title and description and that way share it with the whole world.

At Development Marketplace 2009 we figured that YouTube would be a great way to introduce the participants to the global audience and include the project teams into the creation of content. Everybody can browse the projects on Youtube and gets an introdcution to these projects by the project teams themselves!

Just try out yourself - the complete playlist is constantly upadted and available at the DevMarketplace2009 channel.

We are still shooting videos and lending participants Flip cams so everybody can film what they want.

We hope that this way our participants' projects are made visible to potential partners and donors.

If you want to contribute, follow the steps below:

One of DM2009's most important cogs is emcee Michael Ciszewski, a consultant at the World Bank who is an organization development specialist who's focus is working with teams. On Thursday afternoon I caught up with Ciszewsk for this mini-interview:

Q. The finalists looked pretty intense at the opening session on Monday [photo below]. Were they?

A. Everybody was uncertain and nervous. Me included. We were all starting out on a brand new journey, although most of the participants have been on their own absolutely incredible journeys.

Q. So your objective was to get them relaxed?

A. I'm probably intially thinking, I've got to get myself relaxed. If I can do that, then they'll settle into the relaxed space they need to be in.

Q. What's your M.O.?

A. There's a huge amount of behind-the-scenes work to make this happen, and the DM2009 team has just been unbelievable, on call for 24 hours a day. Despite all that preparation, when the lights go up, and I'm on the podium, the script only takes me and the group so far. A big part of what makes this work is letting them have the space they need and want. That's hard to do with 200 people in the room. But what we've done is a pretty good job of allowing people to say what they want to say when they think it's time to say it. I'm amazed and impressed how interactive the sessions have been, how willing the participants have been to be present in the room.

Helen Marquard, Executive Director of the SEED Initiative, is visiting Development Marketplace for the first time and is getting inspired by the sense of innovation at the event. She posts:

There are many similarities between the Development Marketplace and the SEED winners. The SEED winners, the 2009 winner in fact we just announced Wednesday (Nov. 11), show how far you can take a good idea, an idea that does not only make business sense but also contributes to the environment and the community. With more ideas like these we can surely face the challenge of climate change.

* * *

The SEED Initiative through a competition every year selects the most promising start-up social and environmental entrepreneurs around the globe. These entrepreneurs are then provided not with money but also with locally tailored support and know-how, to meet their most urgent needs. SEED also introduces them to organisations and companies that could have an interest and assist in scaling up the enterprises. The lessons learned are then collected, analysed, and shared with other entrepreneurs to promote sustainable development more widely.

Looking at the 11 finalist projects he was assisgned to evaluate, juror Fred Onduri says: "I am so impressed. I would give them all a thumbs up. I wish they could all be winners."

Onduri, who is chair of the Least Developed Countries Expert Group with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as head of the Policy and Planning Department of the Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is one of the 40 jurors who took a searching look at the 100 projects that were winnowed from the 1,750 applications proposing early-stage adaptation to climate change. Their goal was to choose up to 25 winners.

Onduri said the winners would have a better chance of long-term success if they were incorporated in the national priorities of the governments of the countries where the projects would be undertaken. "Their funding will carry them for about two years," Onduri said. "That's not enough. Sustainability is very critical."

He also said that the winning projects' chance of ultimate success would be improved if jurors could offers ways to improve the proposals, especially in closing what he called "the sustainability gap."

Onduri and his colleagues used five criteria in their evaluations:

The detailed program of the DM2009 live webcast for Thursday, Nov. 11 (all times are GMT-5h):

11:30 am - 12:45 pm: Taking an Idea to Scale Panel Discussion (more details at http://www.facebook.com/l/36cf1;tinyurl.com/ycakwub).

Host:
- Aleem Walji, Innovation Practice Manager, WBI (photo at right).

Innovators:
- Anne Marie Moeller, DM2006 Winner, Project: Fences for Fuel in Virat Nagar Bloc, Jaipur, India.
- Tran Triet, DM2003 Winner, Project: Ha Tien - Habitats and Handbags, Vietnam.
- Panos Varangis, DM2000 Winner, Access to Finance Advisory group, IFC - Project: Weather-Based Index Insurance, Malawi.

Discussants:
- Valeria Merino, Vice President, Ashoka (photo at left).
- Alana Conner, Senior Editor, Stanford Social Innovation Review.

3:30 pm - 5:30pm: Marketplace Open - 'Marketplace Interviews: Meet Climate Change Practitioners' & Interviews with external experts and World Bank climate change champions:

3.30 pm - 3.45 pm Victoria Tauli-Corpuz Chair, UN Permanent Forum on Indegenous Issues Will be at Info booth-pick-up
3.45 pm - 4.00 pm Nadeem Khouri Int. Fund for Agriculture Dev. (IFAD) www.ifad.org
3.50 pm - 4.05 pm Fred Onduri Chair, Least Developed Expert Group Pick-up at Info desk at 3.30 pm
4.05 pm - 4.20 pm Ed Canton Lemelson Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) www.web.mit.edu
4.20 pm - 4.35 pm Alana Connor Stanford University Focus on innovation and social entrepreneurship
4.35 pm - 4.45 pm Wayan Vota Inveneo www.inveneo.org
4.45 pm – 5:00 pm Valerie D'Costa Program Manager Infodev

If you have questions or comments, drop a line here or on Twitter (hashtag #dm2009). We'll be happy to pass your questions to the finalists.

DM2009 team member Alexandra Humme shares this story:

During our live webcast on Wednesday (Nov. 11) I interviewed Dr. Tran Triet from Vietnam. He is a juror at this year's Development Marketplace. But six years ago, he was one of the finalists and eventually a winner of the 2003 Development Marketplace on Biodiversity. Dr. Tran comes from Phu My Village in Kien Giang Province, a small place located in the southwest corner of Vietnam, close to Cambodia.

Phu My Village is home to 5,000-acre wetland which supports a vast grassland ecosystem of the Mekong River Delta. The Phu My wetland is not only important for bioddiversity

conservation but also provides an economic base to the Khmer ethnic minority who harvest Lepironia (photo at right) for production of woven goods.

In 2003, Dr. Tran, who is working for the Crane Foundation in Vietnam and also is with Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City, presented the "Ha Tien - Habitats - Handbags" project which protects this important wetland by implementing an innovative model that combines nature conservation with improving daily income of local people whose livelihood depends on harvesting natural resources from the wetland.

The project provided skill training to enable local people to make fine handicraft products like hats and handbags from the Lepironia sedge they harvested. The project also assists local community in marketing and selling their products to higher-value tourist and export markets.

With the Development Marketplace award of about US$ 200,000, the project was able to expand its work and eventually

Flickr is a service that allows you to upload your pictures to a server where they are accessible for everybody who wants to see them. The pictures get a unique URL and you can add a desription and title to it. You can even specify which person can be seen on it.

Furthermore it is possible to create sets and groups, to gather pictures around a certain topic. People can also search for pictures with a certain theme - if these pictures are named and described correctly.

So to share our impressions and views with the world Flickr is the platform to use - a picture is worth a thousand words!

Below you can see the pictures of the Development Marketplace 2009 group:

To add some of your own pictures there, follow the instuctions below:

For so long, it's been hard to get conventional media to cover Development Marketplace. Don't get me wrong, there has been some wonderful coverage over the 10 years we have been doing this. But let's face it, these projects from developing countries are small. That's the whole point of DevMarketplace -- we want to find really creative, important ideas when they are small so we can help them grow. So it's been really hard to get the BBC or the New York Times to do big stories.

Flash forward 10 years, and the social media troops are coming to the rescue -- or should I say swarming? Thank you all! The bloggers, tweeters, and social networks are discovering us and lifting us like a wave. Just today, one of the big bloggers on climate change, Bill Hewitt, at the Climate Change blog of the Foreign Policy Association found us and we were so excited to hear what Bill had posted about the competition (reproduced above). He loved it -- because as he points out, living with climate change is going to take lots more solutions from the local level and we need this kind of program to find them. And since you know we love our YouTube channel and our Flips, here's the moment when we found what Bill had posted about us!

Ideas welcome on how we can do more to help all these 100 ideas get the audience they deserve -- and how we get them to the people who need them in China, India, Brazil, and many other countries dealing with the same difficult challenges of a changing climate.

This is just a short resumé of what has happened today (Thursday, Nov. 11) and yesterday in the blogsphere and on social media in relation to Development Marketplace 2009.

Our aim was to reach a broad audience with the web 2.0 tools we are using, such as Twitter or Facebook. Also, we wanted to encourage our participants to share their projects with the world, using platforms such as Youtube or FlickR.

So far we are quite content -- here are some blog posts about this event:

ICT4D.at on Development Markeplace 2009
Ashoka Tech - At the World Bank's 2009 Global Development Marketplace
Bill Hewitt of the Foreign Policy Association on Development Marketplace 2009
IFAD - A Marketplace of Ideas
Rohit Bhargava - 100 Ideas To Save The Planet

Furthermore we gathered a lot of video footage from the event, live webcast and even self-made by the participants and organizers on the Development Marketplace 2009 Youtube channel.

Here is a video of Tuesday's opening of the event:

The following post was submitted by Tom Pesek, Liaison Officer of the International Fund for Agricultural Development:

Speaking to participants at the 2009 Development Marketplace, it’s hard not to be optimistic about the future. There are 100 finalists from nearly 50 countries here at the World Bank in Washington. They are all participating in this year’s global grant competition, which is focused on climate adaptation.

These social entrepreneurs were selected from over 1,700 applicants. Taken together, their projects represent “100 ideas to save the planet and its people from the effects of a changing climate.” This may seem like quite a tall order, but among these innovators, no challenge seems too great. In fact, one wonders how the DM jurors will manage to select which up to 25 project proposals most deserve to be funded.

Agriculture is where climate change, food security, and poverty reduction intersect. In addressing the challenge of food security and climate change, we face the inter-related challenges of doubling food production by 2050, adapting agricultural productivity to shifting weather patterns, and minimizing agriculture’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, while maximizing its potential to mitigate climate change. We will need substantial new resources, new ideas, and new ways of doing business to address these challenges.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development believes that the Development Marketplace is an excellent platform for scouting and collecting new ideas from diverse sources, fostering innovative solutions, and developing partnerships in support of climate change adaptation. (Photo of IFAD exhibit above.) That’s why we were so pleased to be one of this year’s sponsor. In addition to contributing to the grants, we will be offering our experience and technical advice to the winners over the next two years.

Twitter is a great tool for sharing your thoughts, commentsk and questions with interested people around the world. You can follow your favourite organization (e.g. World Bank, United Nations, ...) or public person (e.g., Bono, Oprah Winfrey, ...) directly and also start conversations with people around the world about a certain topic.
We at Development Marketplace are using Twitter this year for the first time to keep in touch with the participants and webcast viewers and to inform everybody interested on what's going on here. Our account is http://twitter.com/worldbankdm .
To be sure everybody knows where to find news about Development Marketplace, we use a "hashtag" which we attach to every message we send - it's #dm2009 . You can also see recent posts on the box at the right side here on the blog.

Yesterday we aready got great response from many people and today we will Twitter on! If you want to join the converstation follow the instruction below.

Get started with Twitter:
Just go to http://www.twitter.com and create an account:
1. Click on the button saying "Sign up now"
2. Chose a username, password and give your email address
3. You will get a mail to confirm your email address
4. You are ready to tweet! Just log in and write your questions and comments with the hashtag "dm2009" in the textbox and click on update

To get general updates on WB Development Marketplace 2009, follow the World Bank Development Marketplace channel and the hashtag "#dm2009" on Twitter.

Here's what's happening on the DM live webcasts today (Wednesday, Nov. 11) and Thursday (Nov. 12):

Wednesday

11:00 am - 11:15 am: Daniel Mira, Environment Department, Latin America region, World Bank.
11:15 am -11:30 am: Edward Cameron, Social Development Department, World Bank.
11:30 am - 11:45: John Garrison, EXT, World Bank, focus on civil society, and Helen Marquard, SEED Inititaive.
11:45 am - 12:00 pm: Interview with finalist on Index-based rainfall insurance in Indonesia.
12:00 pm - 12:15 pm: Jim Koch, Santa Clara - Global Social Benefit Incubator.
12:15 pm - 12:30 pm: Ian Noble, World Bank expert on climate adaptation.
12:30 pm - 12:45 pm: Fred Ondun, U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
12:45 pm - 01:00 pm: Mara Bun, Green Cross.
1:00 pm - 1:15 pm: Warren Evans, Director, Environment Department, World Bank .
01:15 pm - 1:30 pm: Marianne Fay, Chief Economist, Sustainable Development Network, World Bank (photo at right).

Jim Morehouse

DM2009 is a lot of hard work, but on Tuesday night, finalists and other participants had a couple of hours to relax at a reception. The welcome was given by Michele de Nevers, Senior Manager of the World Bank's Environment Department.

The musical highlight was a performance by Jim Morehouse, playing his American Indian flute. Morehouse was invited to perform by Habiba Gitay, Senior Environmental Specialist at the World Bank Institute. Gitay met Morehouse at a climate change discussion at the Soka Gakkai International-USA Buddhist Culture Center in Washington.

Morehouse told the Tuesday night audience about the 3,000-year-old history of the six-hole American Indian flute. A player for 13 years, Morehouse said, "The hardest thing is getting over the fear of making a mistake." Judging from his audience's reaction, he made no mistakes Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, it's back to work, with the 40 jurors of DM2009 beginning their morning-and-afternoon evaluations of the 100 finalists' projects.

It's very important for all finalists to be at their booths by 10 o'clock Wednesday morning. That's when the jurors will begin making their rounds and continue until 3 in the afternoon.

The jurors will go round in pairs. Each finalist will be interviewed twice.

So, set your alarm, grab that coffee, or tea, or whatever, and get yourself to your booth on time.

And knock out those jurors. They'll want to know all the technical stuff behind your project, but they'll be looking for your passion, too. Show it!

At 3:30 p.m. this afternoon (Washington time), we'll be interviewing 16 randomly selected finalists.

The interviews will be taking place today (11/10) from 3:45 to 5:30 p.m. Washington time. Be sure to check the live webcast. If you miss the webcast, the interviews will be on the Development Marketplace YouTube channel, and also be archived on the webcast page.

The specific finalist projects for the webast are:

1.    Mapuche Forest Model Aims to Cut Greenhouse Gases and Avoid Deforestation in Chile. Booth 15
2.    Empowering Indigenous Communities to Build Resilience Against Climate Change in Peru. Booth 17
3.    Innovative Strategies for Sustainable Management of Communal Reserve in Peru. Booth 23
4.    Rice Farmers Look to Fish Farming to Cushion the Impact of Climate Change in the Philippines. Booth 30
5.    Mobilizing Community Journalists for Participatory Disaster Risk Management, Book 35
6.    Floating Gardens and Granaries Seen as Solution for Flood-Prone Communities in Laos. Booth 37 (wild card)
7.    Carbon Credits to Help Smallholder Farmers Improve Income and Sustainability in Uganda. Booth 47
8.    Recuperation of Water Systems on Vulnerable Pre-Hispanic Andean Terraces in Peru. Booth 51
9.    Index-Based Rainfall Insurance to Help Plant More Productive Harvests in Indonesia. Booth 55
10.    Strengthening Upstream-Downstream Linkages for Climate Change Adaptation in Nepal. Both 61
11.    Reducing Risks for Biodiversity Conservation Using Adaptive Fire Management in Bolivia. Booth 69
12.    Promoting Low-Cost, Flood-Resilient Shelters for Vulnerable Rural Villages in India. Booth 72
13.    Strengthening Disaster Preparedness of Southern Leyte with SMS Technology. Booth 79
14.    Rate-and-Shame Project Would Raise Media Pressure on Public Officials in Ukraine. Booth 89
15.    Earth-Roofed Housing: Cheap, Sustainable Shelter to Face Desertification in Burkina Faso. Booth 93
16.    Media Access and Education for Climate Change Adaptation and Risk Reduction in Bangladesh. Booth 95

If you want to find out more about these projects, go to Slideshare or the DM Event Guide.

If you have questions or comments, drop a line here or on Twitter (hashtag #dm2009). We'll be happy to pass your questions to the finalists.

Graeme Wheeler, who is spearheading the World Bank's mission to develop and share knowledge and innovation, gave a big boost to Development Marketplace at the opening session of DM2009 this morning (Nov. 10).

Addressing the 100 finalists in the global competition (photo at left), Wheeler, who is the Bank's Managing Director, Operations, linked DM with the Bank's recent Global Innovation Days. Graeme Wheeler, Managing Director, World Bank

"These two events -- Global Innovation Days and Development Marketplace -- will be the two cornerstones of our partnering in knowledge and learning....It's extremely valuable that the thematic focus of this year's Development Markeplace is climate change adaptation.....Climate change is the largest externality challenge of our time. It is the most difficult public policy problem faced by the current generation of policy makers and policy advisers."

Wheeler also said, "In the World Bank Group, we see knowledge as the key element of our corporate DNA....Loans alone cannot solve the the development challenge. What makes value is our ability to create, find, and deliver innovative solutions to our clients."

Almost needless to say, innovation is key to DM 2009.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is only a few weeks away and climate change negotiators are working day and night to identify the common ground for an agreement.

I see three key issues in the negotiations:

1.    Setting of tar Friis Arne Petersen, Danish Ambassador to the U.S. gets by developed countries for greenhouse gas emission reduction.
2.    Commitment by developing countries to actions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
3.    Financing of adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.

These are very difficult issues, but let me state the obvious: We cannot compromise on our ambitions to limit man made global warming to a maximum of two degrees centigrade, and thus have a good chance to adapt to the consequent impacts.

Science is very clear on this point: If we continue to increase the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we are bound to pass a number of critical tipping points that may lead to dire consequences. And it is also clear that we can halt or change the trend. It is doable and indeed profitable compared to the cost of inaction, the cost of doing nothing.

My aspiration for Copenhagen is simple: We must conclude a binding agreement that will set the world on the path to limit global warming to a maximum of two degrees.

The DM2009 YouTube channel invites video submissions from project finalists, sponsors and organizers, visitors to the competition, and anyone around the world who is interested in DM2009 or climate adaptation. If you would like to share something with the DM2009 community, either about the theme of climate adaptation or an interview you did on the floor, upload your video to YouTube and tag it with "dm2009." If you are lucky, maybe we'll feature your video on the DM2009 blog or show it in public during the event. Shoot away!

Hurricanes, typhoons, and flooding -- some of the extreme weather conditions that the finalists tackled in their projects -- upset the plans of several international competitors to come to the DM2009 competition in Washington.

The longest delay was encountered by Nidia Matamoros (photo at left), a member of the Miskito indigenous group in Nicaragua, whose home was flooded by Hurricane Ida. From start to finish, Matamoros logged 102 hours from the time the first leg of her flight was originally scheduled to leave Managua's airport -- Nov. 5 -- to her arrival at Reagan Washington National Airport at 1 a.m. Monday morning, Nov. 9.

'I'm proud, I'm excited, I'm happy," Matamoros said at the orientation session that opened the four-day DM2009 program Monday afternoon. "This is the first time the Miskito communities have participated so fully in such an event."

Summing up her marathon journey, Matamoros said, "It's too much. I need a siesta."

The project she's working would would establish Maya Nut "food forests" in Miskito communities to produce up to 5 million pounds of food worth US$3 million to improve the nutrition of as many as 2,500 Miskito children. It would also restore wild game, including deer and fish, and protect 30 miles of rivers from flooding and erosion.

* * *

Philippines finalist Eugenio Manalo decided not to accompany his project's team to Washington so he could stay behind and work on relief for those hit by four typhoons in the late summer and early fall that caused extensive flooding and loss of life.

Belize finalist Lisel Alamilla, facing poor road conditions in the southern part of her country, had to arrange for a flight via a chartered single-engine Cessna from Punta Gorda to Belize City's airport to get her connecting flight to Miami. She produced a handwritten receipt for reimbursement.

The total award pool for winners in the DM2009 competition has risen to $4.86 million. That means that Development Marketplace now expects to fund up to 24-25 projects among the nearly a hundred finalists from 47 countries. Another $600,000 will directly benefit the finalists -- mainly the winners -- by supporting knowledge exchange, technical assistance, dissemination of results, and project evaluation.

The Global Environment Facility continues to be a major partner for DM, adding $2 million this year onto its previous $5.6 million given to past competitions.

***

Visitors to the event, which opens tomorrow, Nov. 10, and continues to Friday, Nov. 13, will be able to video scenes from the floor and immediately upload their files with Flip cams that will be loaned out from the DM desk. (DM communications leader Edie Smith tries out the pocket cam as the exhibition takes shape in the Atrium of the Main Complex of the World Bank Group.)

The DM2009 competition has three sub-themes:

Resilience of Indigenous Peoples Communities to Climate Risks.
Climate Risk Management with Multiple Benefits.
Climate Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management.

This is how the finalists' projects break down by sub-theme:

Some 28 million members of Indigenous Peoples live in Latin America, many of them in poverty and prone to flooding and other weather extremes caused or exacerbated by climate change. A number of finalist projects aim to give Indigenous Peoples in Latin America a cushion against weather extremes.

Here's a sampling of the projects:

In Mexico, ITESM at Tecnologico de Monterrey seeks "to help people from Tutuaca, Otachique, and Conoachi communities in Chihuahua through a biocultural rescuing program to maintain native maize genetic diversity facing climate change needs, including validation and verification mechanisms to preserve their diverse maize races."

In Peru, an organization of women from four communities in the High Andean region proposes "to recover ancestral knowledge and techniques to mitigate the effects of cold spells, reducing the vulnerability of 2,758 comuneros belonging to 551 families in the district of Palca."

In El Savador, Instituto para en Rescate Ancestral Indigena Salvadoreno (RAIS) seeks to "recover, divulge, and make people aware of the knowledge of 100 wise indigenous women regarding the properties and interpretation of the language of both climate and earth as a support tool to prevent climate-change risks."

The world's poor are those most exposed to climate change that often brings drought, flooding, and other extreme weather.

DM2009 finalist projects aim to protect the most vulnerable from these disasters, while also helping them to develop economically. Overall, such initiatives are called "linking adaptation to development."

In Mozambique, droughts keep about 500,000 people in chronic food insecurity, and indications are that dry periods aggravated by climate change will stretch out beyond the current "hunger period" of October to January.

Helvetas Mozambique, one of the finalists, describes what happens:

"Without access to quality seeds, subsistence farmers practicing rain-fed agriculture continue recycling grain that has been exhausted after generations of cultivation, producing poor yields. Subsequent storage losses cause 22 percent of rural households to run out of stocks and suffer from food shortages during the..'hunger period.'"

To break this cycle, Swiss-based Helvetas proposes what it calls a "zero-emission fridge" consisting of low-cost storage facilities run by community-owned seed banks that "distribute quality seeds of improved crop varieties and serve as a social safety net to benefit 10,000+ rural households -- focusing particularly on the most resource-poor and vulnerable groups" (photo at left).

DM2009 will be go multimedia in a big and global way during the Nov. 10-13 exhibition. The event will be held -- physically -- in the Main Complex of the World Bank Group in Washington, but you can be completely connected from anywhere in the world.

Some things that will happen, and are already happening:

Finalists, sponsors, and visitors will be able to borrow Flip camcorders at the DM2009 kiosk to record what's going on and upload their videos at the kiosk to DM2009's YouTube channel. (In photo at right, DM2009 communications leader Edie Wilson shows World Bank External Communications Web Managing Editor Angie Gentile how to do it.)
DM2009 will livestream video of the event -- here for Windows Media and here for Flash -- and upload interviews with finalists to the DM2009's channel on YouTube.
There are various DM2009 accounts at Twitter that can be followed, and the DM2009 blog will carry their Tweets during the event.
DM2009 participants and visitors can also share events photos at Flickr and Slideshare, links at Delicious, connections at LinkedIn, and all kinds of info/images at DM2009's Facebook site.
This blog will be an online event central where participants and visitors can published their reactions -- in text, images, and video.

The 100 finalist proposals for DM2009 were selected from 1,755 international applications through a rigorous two-stage assessment process guided by the principles of fairness, transparency, and consensus. Nearly 200 experts from the World Bank Group and a range of other organizations volunteered their time to serve as assessors, each reviewing 20 to 35 proposals.

Each proposal was evaluated by a minimum of three assessors from a diverse range of backgrounds. Assessors individually read an assigned batch of proposals and then, grouped in teams of three to five, narrowed down the number of proposals through discussion and consensus. At least one person in each assessment team participated from outside the World Bank Group to ensure a varied perspective.

Proposals were evaluated against the criteria of innovation, results, project design and organizational capacity, sustainability, and growth potential. Special emphasis was placed on innovation, as DM's foremost interest is to find new, creative and innovative approaches to weather-threatened settlements and agriculture, especially in developing countries.

The top 10 finalist countries were: Peru, Philippines, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Kenya, Ecuador, India, Nepal, Cambodia, and Colombia.

Pre-Copenhagen meeting in Barcelona earlier this year The ninth annual Development Marketplace Global Competition takes place in the midst of international debate and negotiation about how to mitigate the causes and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The event is an integral part of the efforts on climate change within the World Bank Group and complements the Pilot Program on Climate Resilience, part of the Climate Investment Funds operated by the multilateral development banks.

A comprehensive, enforceable agreement on controlling global warming that doesn’t penalize developing nations is the goal of world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen on Dec. 7-18, 2009. Leading up to Copenhagen was the two-year Bali Action Plan agreed to in December 2007.

There are two ways to respond to climate change – adaptation and mitigation. The responses are not an either/or. Both are necessary. Adaptation, as early as the short term, can cushion people and places against the impacts of extreme weather, including drought, heat waves, flooding, and rising sea levels. Mitigation, over time, can slow down manmade global warming, which has been identified by many scientific studies as a major cause of extreme weather.

November 2009

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