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New Indigenous Fund Has Local Focus -- Sound Familiar?

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Sun, 11/22/2009 - 14:26

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 E. 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.

Innovation Needs More Than Money to Succeed

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Sat, 11/21/2009 - 10:07
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 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 on Development Marketplace

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Thu, 11/19/2009 - 17:03

Aleem Walji is the new Innovation Practice Manger 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.
 

Blogs, Other Sites Follow the DM2009 Story

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Thu, 11/19/2009 - 16:50

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.

Tom Friedman to Climate Change Deniers

Submitted by Edith Wilson on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 14:20

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.

For the 5 Days of DM2009, 10 Months of Planning

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 06:38
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.

Words That Echoed Across DM2009 Competition

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Mon, 11/16/2009 - 08:33

“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.

DM2009 Winners Face More Funding Hurdles

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Sun, 11/15/2009 - 16:05

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?

Sponsors Who Made DM2009 Happen

Submitted by Tom Grubisich on Fri, 11/13/2009 - 20:10

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.