In “The Library of Babel,” Borges talks about the infinite nature of information and knowledge, because of its endless combinations. The information the Nam Theun 2 (NT2), the hydropower project in Laos which aims to generate revenues for poverty reduction following principles of social and environmental sustainability, offers a lot of angles—but thankfully, not infinite—from which to see the same piece of information over time.

So in this post I’d like to remind you of some key sources of information, like these websites:

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.

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.

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.

Senator John Kerry’s recent speech to World Bank staff, which a colleague reported on earlier, was clear and powerful. He said that the development challenges of the 21st century cannot be delivered by international financial institutions with 20th century structures and priorities. He could have not have started his speech better that he did—with a call for the governance of these institutions to reflect today’s transformed global economic landscape and a merit-based staff selection system from bottom to top.  

In our work and experience at the World Bank, we see significant links between the three main challenges that Kerry outlined (empowering women, enhancing food security, and addressing climate change). Even as my agriculture colleagues focus on the nexus between climate change and food security, there is mounting evidence of a disproportionate burden on women from climate-related risks. 

Just as Asian economies started to recover from the global recession, policymakers and markets have started to worry about unwarranted asset price increases. While the worries are global, especially in the case of stock markets, the risks of asset prices bubbles seem particularly high in Asia, where abundant liquidity is driving up prices of all sorts of assets, from Hong Kong and Singapore real estate to Chinese art.

Where is the liquidity coming from? Capital inflows have received a lot of attention lately. Financial capital is flowing into Asia, attracted by the continent’s relatively good economic prospects. More important, for most economies, is a dramatic easing of domestic monetary conditions since late 2008 that has fueled domestic liquidity.

In part, the easing of monetary conditions in Asia was deliberate, a policy response to sharp weaker growth. However, some of the easing of monetary conditions was not deliberate. Economies with an exchange rate somewhat or completely fixed to the US dollar and fairly open capital markets are “importing” the loose US monetary policy. In some economies, those imported monetary conditions sit oddly with domestic economic conditions. In many Asian economies, spare capacity is much smaller than in the US and cyclical unemployment much lower.

The Republic of Maldives is the smallest country in all of Asia. It consists of 1,190 islands in 20 atolls spread picturesquely over 900 km in the Indian Ocean. Of these, 199 islands are inhabited and have a population of slightly over 300,000 people. The highest point of land is 2 meters or about 6 feet above sea level. Rising seas caused by global warming will simply overrun the islands, and the Maldives will cease to exist.

Mohamed Nasheed has been President of the Maldives for just over a year. During his tenure, he has been very outspoken about raising awareness of the potential disaster facing his country and his people if the world does not wake up – and wake up quickly – to the looming dangers of climate change. At the Summit on Climate Change convened by the United Nations in September 2009, President Nasheed pleaded with the world community that “…if things go as business as usual, we will not live; we will die. Our country will not exist.”

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.
 

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.