Business Solutions to Energy Poverty

Energy is a key driver for economic development and social progress, yet access to sustainable energy services remains a challenge for low-income communities in developing countries. To reach communities that do not have energy access today, new business models, supported by appropriate policy frameworks, are needed.

GDF SUEZ believes that the private sector has an important role to play in designing and delivering innovative solutions to bridge the “energy divide” and support a transition to a low-carbon energy future in the developing world.

The company is active across the entire energy value chain, in electricity and natural gas, upstream and downstream. GDF SUEZ is also helping local communities to access energy through tailor-made solutions and investment in dedicated projects to support access to energy for low-income populations.

In Brazil, the company inaugurated the São Salvador dam in 2009, which will generate enough electricity to supply a city of one million people. 54% of the 10,000 direct and indirect jobs the project created have been filled by local workers and more than 10% of the total investment was dedicated to social and environmental programs, which included relocating displaced populations and protecting fauna and flora. In Estreito, where the company is building a large hydroelectric plant, GDF SUEZ has committed EUR 130 million to social and environmental programs, including access to energy, which will be implemented in collaboration with the local communities.

In Morocco, GDF SUEZ has developed an initiative, through the Group's subsidiary LYDEC, to support electrification in several dozen shantytowns in Casablanca. Prior to the initiative, inhabitants resorted to illegal leaks and network connections, often leading to serious accidents. In the late 1990s, LYDEC set up an innovative partnership with local authorities and communities to provide legal access to a safe and reliable electricity supply system.

The electrification program has allowed more than 30,000 households (amounting to some 200,000 inhabitants) to connect to the electricity supply system under a management approach that uses “street representatives” from the local community to manage and coordinate daily operations and provide technical support to users.

The program has been incorporated into an extensive national project to fight poverty where the aim is to connect more than 145,000 households to essential urban services, including water, waste and electricity, by the end of 2009.

GDF SUEZ is integrating energy poverty issues into its sustainable development strategy, with a declared ambition to “redefine the relationship between people and energy, to make energy a source of progress and sustainable development (energy accessible to as many people as possible, more reliably, consumed more efficiently, and showing greater respect for human beings and their environment).”

Progress Undented by Financial Crises

With the US-led crisis just behind us and another unfolding in Europe, one could be forgiven for becoming pessimistic about our prospects. But at the World Economic Forum’s Global Redesign Summit in Doha last week participants were asked to cast their gaze back over the last 60 years and ask, “How are we doing?” The answer: fantastically well. Sixty years ago, after all, Europe and much of Asia were still struggling to emerge from the ashes of the second world war. China has in the past 20 years achieved what the leaders of the Long March never could have imagined. And in just the past decade, Africa has emerged from decades of turmoil, famine and epidemics to become a promising new centre of growth. Incomes are more evenly distributed than ever. Fewer people proportionately live in poverty, hunger or the darkness of illiteracy than ever before. They have more choices than ever before. And now we stand on the threshold of a revolution in health brought about by bioengineering and nanotechnology. Times may be tough, but we have undoubtedly come a long, long way.

Reaching New Heights for Nepalese Orphans

Ama Dablam (6,859m)
In April, international mountain guides and Managing Directors of MatterhornNepal-GuideSource Treks & Expeditions Ltd, RJ Fleming and Ang Kami Sherpa, climbed Himalayan peaks to raise awareness of their charity to educate Nepalese orphans. The World Economic Forum and Prof. Klaus Schwab supported the project, acting as patron of this awareness raising campaign. The goal of this venture was to expose the fact that 1 out of every 23 individuals in Nepal is an orphan with no access to an education, and to encourage individuals, corporations and organizations to contribute to Education for Orphans of Nepal (EON). Started in 2001 by MatterhornNepal-GuideSource, this charity presently funds the entire living and boarding school educational costs of 11 Nepalese children without families, for a period of 10 years for each child.

The climbs of Ice Land Peak (6,189m) and Ama Dablam (6,859m) in the Solu Khumbu region of the Himalayan range were undertaken in the belief that most individuals, even those who have visited or wish to visit this most coveted tourist destination, are completely unaware of the plight of nearly one million of this country's impoverished yet truly kind-hearted inhabitants. The EON project gives anyone the chance to contribute and directly improve an orphan's life, offering them the choices and hope for the future only possible through an education. EON is a Nepal registered charity; MatterhornNepal-GuideSource absorbs all administrative costs, enabling total contributions to go straight to the children's educational costs.

Obliged to abandon their attempts to summit Ama Dablam due to treacherous conditions and falling ice and rock at about 6,500m, in mid-April RJ Fleming and Ang Kami Sherpa summited Ice Land Peak, and returned safely to Katmandu.

If you wish to receive information about EON or contribute to the education of Nepalese orphans, write to info@guidesource.com

Are you swimming against malaria?

This year's World Swim Against Malaria takes place on 25 June. The world's largest participatory swim event features Olympian Michael Phelps this year. World Swim Against Malaria is an initiative of the Against Malaria Foundation. 100% of the money raised during this event buys nets. For more info go to http://www.worldswimagainstmalaria.com/

"We Need to Start Telling the Good News from Africa"

At the World Economic Forum on Africa 2010 that is underway in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, several participants - including both Africans and outsiders - have called for a rethinking of perceptions about the continent. Too much focus is placed on what is going wrong - disease, poverty, corruption, poor infrastructure, among other problems - with too little emphasis on positive developments, they said. The world should hear about how many African economies have weathered the global economic crisis and are set to contribute to global growth over the next decade, how countries have managed to resolve longstanding military and political conflicts, and how business, government and civil society are working together to address public health threats.

"We need to change the stories that we tell about Africa," said human rights activist and social entrepreneur Hafsat Abiola-Costello, 36, the founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), an organization that promotes civil society and democracy in her native Nigeria, and the CEO of China-Africa Bridge, a group aimed at boosting mutual cooperation between China and Africa. (She is the daughter of Chief Moshood Abiola, the Nigerian businessman and president-elect who never took office and died in prison in 1998.) "We need to start telling new stories about the opportunities in Africa, the good news from Africa. Enough about the problems. We all know them. If we start telling the stories about the opportunities, who wouldn't want to take advantage and come to seize an opportunity?"

Hafsat is right. Despite all its progress in recent years, Africa still has an image problem. Perhaps the World Cup in South Africa this summer will help change people's perceptions of the continent. Watch Hafsat and other so-called Young Global Leaders (YGLs) of the Forum who are attending the meeting discuss the enormous potential of Africa in a press conference. And why not post your good news about Africa and tell us about the many opportunities that it has to offer?

Watch live streaming video from worldeconomicforum01 at livestream.com

A Revolutionary Material Engineered to Soak Up Oil, Like a Sponge

Very much in need today, aerogels that "can absorb oil from spills or stop pollutants for ever reaching the environment" are being created. The aerogel sponge is currently being tested and is expected to be able to clean rocks and birds covered in oil. Read about this amazing material in Eric Bland's article in Discovery News.

Advancing Economic Objectives while Demonstrating True Social Responsibility

Pierre Duponchel and his organization, Le Relais, founded in 1984, collect, sort and recycle second-hand textiles and paper. Doing so, the business has created 1,500 jobs in France and Africa for people who have been excluded from society. At the same time, Le Relais has become a major industry, recycling more than 85% of the 60,000 tons of textiles collected every year.

Using the Power of Soccer in the Fight Against HIV and AIDS

"Founded by former professional soccer players in 2002, Grassroot Soccer (GRS) trains African soccer stars, coaches, teachers, and peer educators in the world’s most HIV-affected countries to deliver an interactive HIV prevention and life skills curriculum to youth."

Good News on the Front Page... finally!

The International Herald Tribune of 15 April 2010 actually includes a positive headline: Sharp drop in maternal deaths is reported. Good to read good news on the front page, usually relegated to the back! So the number of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth worldwide is falling. Positive news indeed, even if "some advocates for women's health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause"... Apparently, those working on maternal health were concerned that reporting the declining number of deaths could take away from the problem. Not to be deterred, the journal's editor commented: "My view is that actually these numbers help their cause, not hinder it."

Water Wise

In every region of the world, there are areas of severe water stress. Ten years ago, the Center for Environmental Systems Research at the University of Kassel in Germany released a ranking of countries according to the percentage of territory where water consumption exceeded 40% of supply. The list was topped by Israel and Trinidad and Tobago at 100%, followed by Syria at 99.6%, Nepal at 98.1%, and Kuwait at 97.7%. In Western Europe, the country under the most water stress was Belgium (7th in the world ranking) at 93.9%, with Spain coming second (26th globally) at 72.3%. Other notable countries on the list: India (23rd) at 80.2%, South Africa (28th) at 68.5%, Turkey (29th) at 61.7%, China (36th) at 44.7%, Chile (38th) at 41.1%, the United States (42nd) at 31.3%, the United Kingdom (51st) at 21%, Japan (62nd) at 9.5%, and Russia (70th) at 3.8%.

What this means in human terms is that nearly one billion people do not have access to water and more than 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. This has far-reaching implications for everything from food production to education. About 80% of health problems in developing countries and the deaths of 5 million people a year, including 1.8 million children, are linked to water scarcity and poor sanitation. Africa loses an estimated 5% of GDP annually because of fatalities related to dirty water and the absence of adequate sanitation. Health and nutritional deficiencies are linked to social problems including poor education, skills shortages and rampant population growth.

The question for every community and every country that is confronted by water stress is how to improve access and to manage the limited supply. The numbers suggest that for a third of the world’s population the situation is bleak – many areas including parts of the developed world are heading for permanent drought. If people do not become more savvy and resourceful about water management, the result could be conflict. Water scarcity has already led to violence in hotspots around the world, notably in South America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Could disputes over what many now call “the new oil” lead to full-blown war?

There is no way to answer that dire question, but a recently published book by San Francisco-based water expert James Workman has offered a glimpse into what a world of permanent drought might be like and how we can deal with it. In Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought, Workman chronicles the conflict between the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the government of Botswana when water supplies were destroyed and deliveries to reserves stopped and how the Bushmen have managed in a hard-scrabble world of dryness. In a compelling account of his interaction with the Bushmen in 2002, Workman write of how he witnessed “the predicament of a thousand indigenous people suddenly forced to submit, die, or adapt once again to the Great Thirstland.”

Workman draws lessons from the Bushmen’s predicament for Americans and others who face a future of permanent drought:

“To be sure we will not soon abandon eBay or Wal-Mart to hunt and gather in foraging bands. Nor should we feel the need to. Yet the Bushmen code of conduct may help us escape a Hobbesian or neo-Malthusian nightmare. Prepared for extreme deprivation, Kalahari Bushmen chose the hard responsibility of a dry reality over a government-dependent fantasy of water abundance. Outside of their reserve the so-called civilized world found that for all our military might and Internet bandwidth, certain things still lie beyond our grasp. We discover we cannot ‘regulate’ barren rivers and depleted aquifers any more than we can ‘regulate’ our climate, clouds, or rain. Out here, while elected leaders kneel to pray for a thundershower that will provide temporary relief, the increasingly dry hot wind whistles through the thorn trees in the central Kalahari and whispers the ancient secret those last defiant Bushmen never forgot.

"We don’t govern water.

"Water governs us.”

In the epilogue to the book, Workman offers a shot of optimism to counter the widespread pessimism typical of anybody aware of the world’s water predicament. Scarcity need not lead to conflict, he argues. “If our competitive demand for scarce water drives us apart and escalates tensions, this same finite supply of freshwater is also itself what ultimately drags us back and binds us together. We may not like the rule of increasingly scarce water, but at the same time we cannot escape it.” A fundamental principle of adaptation that Workman learned from the Bushmen: “not to organize and mobilize physical resources to meet expanding human wants, but rather to organize human behavior and society around constraints imposed by diminishing physical resources.”

The Bushmen, as Workman demonstrates throughout his engaging book, base all their choices - from what and how much to eat to what kinds of medications to use - on their need for water, their need to live. They accept interdependence and organize networks to exchange and share water resources within bands of Bushmen and between them. “Conservatives call these informal markets, while liberals see a reciprocal system of egalitarian barter,” Workman explains. “Regardless of ideology, such exchanges emerge only when a society collaboratively agrees to define and defend a water resource that could be divested. Rain belongs to everyone and everything, but Bushmen honored long-standing individual and group rights to water resources: a sip-well, a pan, a buried and labeled water canteen, a field of tsama melons, a grassy hunting territory favored by eland or gemsbok, a wild cluster of fruit or water-filled trees growing along a seep line. Extending rights beyond kin to strangers not only reduced short-term hostility and resentment but also helped expand an informal safety net of grateful recipients – a reliable form of drought insurance.”

Workman asserts that the principles that guide the Bushmen in coping with water stress in Thirstland can be adapted to life in a place as far removed from the Kalahari as California. If they ran America’s waterworks, “what would the Bushmen do?” he asks. His answer: manage water by allocating to each person enough for drinking, cooking and sanitation and then letting individuals trade any of their allotment with others, depending on whether they need more or less. An independent water consultant, Workman is not surprisingly promoting just such a community-based scheme where he lives. He believes that such a mechanism would make people realize the true worth of water and would inevitably lead to more conservation and reduced demand. The frugal could provide for less thrifty friends or family – or sell their surplus to the wasteful.

This market could be instrumental in heading off water-related disputes, concludes Workman. “By redefining water as an owned and tradable right that turns costly conflict into symbiotic cooperation, security analysts suggest that exchanges like those among Bushmen could alleviate national security tensions over border-crossing aquifers and streams from the Rio Grande and Colorado to the Great Lakes and Columbia, perhaps even in the Middle East. In other words, land-locked Botswana could learn from the Bushmen living within its dry heart how to break the quiet siege imposed by rival African states surrounding it.”

Pick up a copy of Workman's book - great reportage and a rich source of fascinating wisdom from the Bushmen of the Kalahari for coping with our water-scarce future.