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Making Sense of the Climate CrisisThe basics of cl imate change past, present, and future – and what i t means for developing countr ies.

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August, 2007 | G | P | M |

LETTER FROM EDITOR

he other day I was in San Francisco and a man approached me asking for money. At that moment for some reason several issues ran through

my mind in a few seconds as I contemplated whether or not I should give him some money or not.

Simply put, these issues split between two sides. Should I give him some money or should I not. The side that was against me giving money, recollected several arguments made by friends and family. The first is not knowing where the money is going to. What if he or she uses it to buy drugs or alcohol? There is no way of knowing if that money was wasted away or used to help in an acceptable manner determined by me.

The other argument against giving money is that there are many charities and organiza-tions that could use that money and demon-strate in a clearer manner that that money is being put to good use. The connection be-tween giving and helping a social issue was more “reliable”. That dollar and that handful of change could be put elsewhere and the social return would be greater.

There are several very logical and legiti-mate arguments to not giving money to people on the street. For those people that use those arguments to support their decision, it makes a lot of sense.

Personally, I have used those arguments to support my decision not to give my change

or my few dollars to someone asking for some help. Honestly, I’ve been pretty inconsistent over the years but lately I have found that I’ve been leaning to the opposite side of the issue.

I started thinking about the arguments for giving money to random strangers. Although, they are less concrete in some ways, they make more sense in others. There’s obviously the argument about what it would feel like if you were in their shoes. But there is a more complex argument that is a very interesting no-tion. The act of giving is a powerful act that needs to be practiced. There is a part of me that feels like the more times I practice giving to the needy at whatever scale the more apt I will be to be giving in all situations.

Basically, practice makes perfect. The more I practice philanthropy at its most basic level, the better I will be at addressing at larg-er more structured levels. Now, I understand that there will be plenty of disagreeing with that notion, but all I can say is it’s worked for me. For the last few years, I’ve been giving change or a few bucks almost every instance when someone asked for it and I honestly feel like there has been a positive change in me and my awareness of the less fortunate and my duty to help.

In the end, either side of this issue has its merits. My only request is that you should try both and see how you feel. You’ll be surprised how much practice makes perfect.

T

Faruk Abdullah, Editor-in-Chief

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Practice makes perfect

| G | P | M | August, 2007

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Co-Founders:Faruk Abdullah

Jeremiah Porten

Editor-in-Chief:Faruk Abdullah

Art Director:Seema Hamid

Contributing Writers:Sierra MartinKevin Ummel

Michael MadsonEliza J. VillarinoBarbara PoelleLaura WinopolJenny Williams

Caya KaadJustin Moresco

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TABLE OF CONTENTSGloba lP rog ressw w w . g l o b a l p r o g r e s s . n e t

G loba lP rog ressw w w . g l o b a l p r o g r e s s . n e t

August, 2007 | G | P | M | 04

Globa lP rog ressw w w . g l o b a l p r o g r e s s . n e t

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover Story

Making Sense of the Climate CrisisThe basics of climate change past, present,and future – and what it means for developing countries.

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05

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A Long Journey Home LiberianRefugees Return With Hope

The Continuing Battle Against MalariaKeeping Focus On Disease Management

Stephen Lewis

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The Fortune at The Bottom Of The Pyramid

34

Microfinance: Purveyor of PeaceUsing The Microfinance Model For Conflict Resolution

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26

23

GlobalGiving: the eBay forinternational philanthropyReturns for the homeland

A KickStart for the FutureBasic Products Enabling Massive Change

23 3126

Features

| G | P | M | August, 2007 05

magine the smudged faces of the children crowded in watching the foreigner demonstrate the product that has the potential to change their l ives forever. Their smiles

authentic and effervescent bubble over as they call “Blanco” the endearing team they call the volunteers at KickStart. The par-ents struggle to conceptualize the ideas for self employment the business solution offers to bring them.

KickStart is a non-governmental non-profit organization whose belief is that by providing low cost technologies in Africa they can empower the poor to overcome the poverty issues that bind them once and for all.

Their mission is providing “The Tools to End Poverty.” They are not just another volunteer mission program here today gone tomorrow but a pivotal point in the l ives of these African fami-l ies.

Today with offices located in Kenya, Tanzania, Mali and San Francisco the founder and CEO of KickStart, Dr. Martin Fisher and COO Nick Moon have developed a strategic plan that has continued to promote l ife changing results since July of 1991.

Since the birth of the KickStart organization over 47,000 new businesses have started with an estimated 800 new businesses started each month. This in effect has totaled over $49 mill ion dollars a year in profits and wages in the l ives of families that had previously done without.

It is with the belief that self motivation is the defining edge that drives success or failure among private entrepreneurs. In an effort to promote sustainable economic growth and employ-ment KickStart has taken this region by storm.

KickStart begins its quest at the most basic necessity level by researching l ifestyles and tending to the needs of those pov-erty stricken areas and helping to develop tools that enable in-dividuals to procure their own successful result.

KickStart offers many tools from manual seed presses to wa-ter irrigation systems. In addition to the tool itself the KickStart members are also there to provide training and education to the users of their products to ensure a deliberate success.

The manual seed presses to make cooking oil, high pressure building block makers for building construction, manual hand pumps for water irrigation systems, and animal carts to promote transportation of people and services are some of the most pop-ular choices among the African vil lages. With the aid of Kick-Start, organization entrepreneurs are taught to select the best possible tool that would produce the most revenue effectively changing l ives in both short and long term but most importantly creating the momentum to change lives forever.

These small business ventures are the places KickStart has provided substantial improvement to the l ives of those living in far less than livable conditions. Other areas it has produced ef-fective and profitable results are technologies, basic business enterprises, agricultural methods, and additional services l ike structuring shelters, health immunization and care, sanitation, water production, and relief aid.

With ambitious goals set forth in KickStart they have man-aged to implement three major sectors to promote oil processing technologies, micro-irrigation, and building technologies.

In Africa man-power is in relatively good supply. However, electricity and fuel are expensive and in shorter supply. There-fore the accouterments that KickStart is responsible for are most generally manually operated. These durable products are easy to operate and require minimum training.

I

A KickStart for the Future

By Sierra A. Martin

Basic Products Enabling Massive Change

PROFILE

ResearchesMarkets

Designs NewTechnologies

Trains Manufacturers

Markets theTechnologies

Monitors itsImpacts

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5

KickStart...

KickStart takes the following steps to achieve its development goals:

August, 2007 | G | P | M | 06

The oil processing technologies has developed a “Mafuta Mali” oilseed press used for processing cooking oil from sun-flower and sesame seeds. This simple tool has proven to make the grade when taking a staple local product and turning it into a profitable business venture by contract-ing local farmers or growing the sunflow-ers themselves, pro-cessing the seeds turning them into cooking oil and later sell ing them to local stores.

Commercial farm-ing on a smaller scale is also a highly profitable business. Offering the “Money Maker Pump” pro-vides the necessary irrigation enabling the micro-irrigation technologies to pro-duce concurring re-sults.

The business technologies division promotes the affordable construction business. Affordable shelter is made possible wit the development of the “Action Pac” a high pressure stabil ized soil packing process that creates soil and cement blocks. This heavy duty press requires only four workers to produce 500 blocks per day. With the use of one bag of cement and local soil they can produce 100 blocks. These blocks are then sold at a profit and used in production for many types of dwell ings.

Also available is a manual high pressure baler. During the dry months the cattle that produce milk and meat for the locals can become a burden on the farmers. Locating enough food to keep them healthy and producing is particularly challenging. The baler has become a l ife saving device as it produces approxi-mately 80 bales of hay a day allowing the farmers to stockpile the necessary food to keep the cattle in the optimum condition. This also brings a secondary business of sell ing the remaining amounts to other farming families in desperate need for caring for there own livestock.

In 2005 the John Deere Foundation teamed with KickStart and pledged 3 mill ion dollars over the next three years. Robert W. Lane chairman and chief executive officer of the Deere and company commented” It is f itt ing for John Deere, with a long his-tory of advancing agricultural to align with KickStart”.

In the world in which we live our successes are measured by our home, the vehicle that we drive and the size of our bank account. Here the measure of success is barely plausible. It is merely measured in a far less anticlimactic fashion, the success

of 36,000 families l ifted from the deep rooted poverty within the Afri-can region.

Each Summer Kick-Start offers a very few privileged positions of opportunity to intern at its Nairobi, Kenya office. These positions are non-paying in the monetary form but enormous in the humanitarian perspec-tive. KickStart continues to monitor the cost effec-tiveness and impacts of its program. With the help from organizations l ike KickStart many fami-l ies have turned dreams into reality by never los-ing hope and striving for

success of future generations. If you would l ike more information about the KickStart organization you can learn more about them at www.KickStart.org.

PROFILE

KickStart's Impacts To DateOver:• 50,000 new businesses started• 800 new businesses per month• $52 million a year in new profits and wages generated by the new businesses• New revenues equivalent to more than 0.6% of Kenya's GDP and 0.25% of Tanzania's GDP

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| G | P | M | August, 2007




August, 2007 | G | P | M | 08

fter years of warnings from the sci-entif ic community, global climate change has finally entered the

public’s conscience. It is now broadly ac-cepted – even by many traditional skep-tics – that humans are warming the world and the consequences are serious. A re-cent survey found that 85% of Americans consider global warming a threat. But beyond a vague sense of danger, most people know very l itt le about the details of the issue. If the U.S. and others are to mount an effective and sustained re-

sponse to global warming, we must under-stand its basic causes and consequences – and how this information should shape a responsible climate policy.

This requires some understanding of our planet’s climatic history. It also re-quires that we grasp the basics of the rel-evant science and what it tells us about the necessary scale and speed of our re-sponse. Most importantly, it requires that we understand the probable effects of a changing climate. In particular, we must

be aware of how climate change wil l im-pact different regions and populations around the world. As we wil l see, most of the short-term consequences of cli-mate change wil l center on the poor of the developing world – not the culpable so-cieties of the developed North. An effec-tive response must acknowledge that we should address global warming not only out of self-preservation, but also because of a moral obligation to assist those who wil l – and already are – suffering the most from human-induced climate change.

Making Sense of the Climate Crisis

The basics of climate change past, present, and future – and what it means for developing countries

By Kevin Ummel

A

ENVIRONMENT

| G | P | M | August, 2007

Looking back: The turmoil of past climate change

For much of Earth’s history, climate change was likely spurred by a handful of natural events. These included dra-matic “accidents,” such as volcanic erup-tions and coll isions with asteroids, as well as more gradual changes, including the movement of continents and natural variations in sunlight. For the past mill ion years, the last of these effects – slight changes in sunlight due to predictable patterns in Earth’s orbit – appears to ex-plain the onset of ice ages at 100,000 year intervals. In periods of greater sunlight, the Earth is relatively ice-free. But as the planet’s orbit slowly shifts over time, less sunlight is absorbed and the glaciers of the North and South Poles creep to-ward the equator.

Although the underly-ing changes in sunlight are extremely slow and subtle, the climate record exhibits plenty of sudden transfor-mations. In fact, Earth’s climate often behaves l ike a l ight switch – going from on to off, l ight to dark, hot to cold in a geologic blink of the eye. This phenom-enon is caused by “tipping points” and resulting “feed-back loops” that magnify small, init ial trends in cooling and warm-ing, causing dramatic changes in short periods of t ime. One particularly power-ful feedback loop involves the world’s ice. Glaciers and polar ice act as giant mir-rors, reflecting sunlight back into space. But as ice melts, more and more of the sun’s heat is absorbed by exposed land and water. As a result, temperatures rise, the ice melts even more quickly, and the warming process speeds up.

About 14,500 years ago – as the plan-

et was emerging from the most recent Ice Age – small increases in sunlight pushed the climate to a tipping point, and this feedback loop kicked in. In the warming and melting that followed, the oceans rose 200 feet and temperatures increased to nearly current levels. But this warm-ing trend was suddenly disrupted by the breaking of a North American ice dam, which flooded the North Atlantic Ocean with the water of melting glaciers. The influx of freshwater disrupted powerful currents that transport warm water north-ward from the tropics. Temperatures fell precipitously as this oceanic “heat pump” slowed, and ice age conditions returned to Europe for another 1,300 years.

Once enough freshwater had refrozen into glaciers, the North Atlantic currents reemerged, and the climate “switched” yet again. The underlying trend in sun-light regained its prominence, pushing the climate past crit ical t ipping points, and pull ing the planet into another period of rapid warming – this time increasing average temperatures in southern Green-land by 10°C in less than a human life-time. The historical record suggests that such upheaval is the rule rather than the

exception; Earth’s climate system has of-ten been prone to sudden and dramatic shifts brought about by small changes. By 8,000 years ago, however, all this f ierce seesawing had given way to relative calm, and the death throws of the last ice age were replaced by warmth and stabil ity – a climate in which humans have since thrived and multiplied.

The crystal ball: Predicting changes to come

If the skies above us are any guide, our climate looks set to undergo substan-tial change. The most tell ing metric is the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) and

other so-called “greenhouse gases” (GHGs) trap heat that would otherwise make its way into space, warming the plan-et in the process. Although the details of the relationship between global temperature and CO2 are complex, the ob-served pattern is simple: as one increases, so does the other. Over the 8,000 years prior to the Industrial Revolu-tion, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere ranged be-tween 260 and 285 parts per mill ion (ppm). After burning carbon-intensive fossil fuels for just 200 years, humans have increased that f igure to 380 ppm. This is 25% higher

than the peak level over at least the past 800,000 years. Figure 1 shows trends in global temperature, atmospheric CO2, and fossil fuel emissions over the past 150 years. When scientists analyze this data, they find that the known “natural” drivers of temperature – l ike changes in sunlight or volcanic activity – cannot ac-count for the observed increase. Only by including human emissions from fossil fuels and the clearing of forests can the historical upward trend be explained.

09

F i g u r e 1 : C l i m a t e C h a n g e T r e n d s O v e r 1 5 0 Y e a r s *

18 5 0 1 87 5 1 9 0 0 1 92 5 1 95 0 1 9 7 5 2 00 0

Lower -- Standardized Scale -- Higher

Te mpe ra tu r e A tmo s p he r ic CO 2 Fos s il Fu e l CO 2 Emis s io ns

* Trends based on standardized, 5-year moving averages. Temperature data from Thorne et al. (2005). Atmospheric CO2 data from the Law Dome ice core up to 1955 (Etheridge et al. 1998), and Mauna Loa, Hawaii from 1958 on (Keeling and Whorf 2005). Fossil fuel CO2 emissions data from Marland, Boden, and Andres (2006).

ENVIRONMENT

August, 2007 | G | P | M |

Assessing the future impact of global warming requires some idea of the prob-able climatic changes to come. The most advanced computer programs, known as global circulation models, use mil-l ions of variables to mimic the behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. By running the models forward in time and varying the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere, we can anticipate probable changes. Across a variety of models and emissions scenarios, there is wide agree-ment that:

• Average temperatures wil l continue to increase.

• There wil l be both more rain and more droughts.

• Sea levels wil l continue to rise.• Extreme weather events wil l increase in frequency and intensity.• Tropical cyclones wil l increase in intensity.• Oceans wil l become more acidic.

These are not all of the probable de-velopments, and some uncertainty sur-rounds the l ikely magnitude and speed of these projections. But the direction of the changes is not in doubt. More than 2,500 scientists and 130 governments support these and many other findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC) – a group whose conclu-sions represent the consensus of the sci-entif ic community. Although these climate trends are global in nature, the degree of impact can vary by geographic region. For example, greater warming wil l occur out-side the tropics than within, and rain wil l increase in high latitudes but decrease in sub-tropical regions (areas just outside the tropics).

In terms of the human impact, the greatest effects wil l be felt in commu-nities lacking the resources needed to adapt to a changing climate. The abil-ity of people to cope with dramatic envi-ronmental change varies greatly around the world. To be sure, both rich and poor societies depend – often to a degree we cannot appreciate – on the environmen-tal goods and services (food, water, oxy-gen, etc.) that our climate provides. This observation alone demands that we take climate change seriously. But it is just as evident that physical resources, mate-rial wealth, and effective governance are unequally distributed around the world. These are crit ical assets when it comes to dealing with the consequences of cli-mate change.

Existing inequality and poverty wil l hamper efforts to cope with a changing

climate and wil l l ikely be exacerbated by the environmental, social, and economic stresses to come. Strained natural re-sources, subsistent food supplies, inef-fective polit ical systems, l imited access to insurance, population pressure, confl ict, disease, and local ecological and geo-graphic vulnerabil it ies are all examples of phenomena that can be magnified by the broader consequences of climate change. No society wil l go unscathed, but it is in-creasingly clear that the world’s poorest populations – overwhelmingly those in developing countries – face the greatest risks, especially in the short-term. The probable impacts are extensive, and we cannot cover them all here. What follows is an attempt to identify the most worrying trends, beginning with Earth’s greatest force: the oceans.

Oncoming oceans: The threat of sea rise

As the planet warms, so do the oceans. And just as the air in a balloon expands on a hot day, the oceans expand as they absorb more heat. This phenom-enon alone has contributed to the ma-jority of sea level rise in recent years. A more ominous and potentially destructive long-term threat, however, is the melting of land-based ice. The glaciers of Green-land and Antarctica contain enough wa-ter to increase sea levels by 23 and 200 feet, respectively. Although there remains some debate over the rate at which these ice masses are melting, research by a team of scientists from the University of Texas suggests that Greenland is losing its ice sheet at three times the rate ob-served just f ive years ago.

At the opposite end of the world, mul-tiple studies have found that the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning by several meters per year. Evidence gathered from the Larsen B ice shelf – which abruptly disintegrated in early 2002 – suggests that future melting may be accelerated as

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ENVIRONMENT

Los Angeles Smog

| G | P | M | August, 2007 11

melt water bores down to the bedrock, al-lowing ice sheets to slide into the ocean. If parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet were to slip into the sea – even without melting – the displaced water would raise sea levels even more quickly than at pres-ent. One of America’s leading climate sci-entists, James Hansen of NASA, recently pointed out that if the rate of ice melt were to double each decade, sea levels would rise by 5m (16 feet) in this century. We cannot accurately predict the rate of fu-ture melting and this projection is best taken as a worst-case scenario, but it highlights the potential danger posed by a warmer world.

The local effects of rising water de-pend on the nature of coastal geography. A recent World Bank study used detailed satell i te maps to predict the consequenc-es of 1 to 5 meter sea level rises for 84 developing countries. The physical ef-fects were combined with information on

the geographic distribution of population, cit ies, economic activity, agriculture, and wetlands in order to better assess the full human consequences. The study sug-gests that hundreds of mill ions of people wil l be affected globally, but the worst im-pacts are expected in a handful of coun-tries. Vietnam, Egypt, Mauritania, and a host of small islands are particularly at risk. Just a 1m rise would displace 10% of the population in both Egypt and Vietnam. And with much of the Nile Delta under wa-ter, Egypt would lose 13% of its agricul-tural land to the Mediterranean. A 5m rise would displace about 6% of China’s exist-ing population – nearly 80 mill ion people. Islands wil l be particularly hard hit. The Bahamas, for example, would see 12% of its land affected by only a 1m rise and more than 60% inundated in the worst-case scenario.

Of course, many of the changes noted above wil l l ikely occur slowly and, hope-

fully, provide some opportunity to plan ac-cordingly and minimize the long-term risk. The same cannot be said about storm surges. Small increases in sea level can cause disproportionately large increases in the reach of storm surges and related flooding. In addition, extreme weather events wil l become more common and tropical cyclones wil l increase in intensity as a result of warmer oceans. Develop-ing countries are particularly susceptible to the consequences of storm surges due to greater weather-related risk and limited man-made protection, such as levees and barrier islands. Although coastal wetlands and coral reefs can provide excellent natural protection against storm surges, they are being destroyed by economic development, encroaching salt water, and changing ocean chemistry. Taken to-gether, rising seas and stronger storms wil l expose even greater numbers to the costs of inundation, f looding, and reloca-tion. The human toll of these changes wil l

ENVIRONMENTENVIRONMENT

August, 2007 | G | P | M |

be felt disproportionately in low-income countries where the costs of keeping back the sea are simply too great. A harbinger of things to come, the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu negotiated an agreement with the government of New Zealand to begin evacuating its population over the next 30 years.

Water world: The twin threat of droughts and floods

A warmer world means greater evapo-ration, increased water vapor, and more rain. But it also entails a world of greater water stress. Precipitation wil l increasingly come in the form of rain instead of snow, leading to reduced replenishment of the world’s snowpacks and glaciers, ul-t imately providing less melt water runoff to streams and rivers. There wil l be more cases of both torrential rain and severe drought in this kind of environment. To-gether, these forces give rise to varied distributions of projected water avail-abil ity. The IPCC predicts that high latitudes may see a 10-40% increase, while mid-latitudes and sub-tropi-cal regions, l ike the north-ern and southern thirds of Africa, are l ikely to experi-ence decreases of 10-30%. In many African countries especially, extreme water stress is already a serious problem. Indeed, the world’s greatest ongoing humanitar-ian disaster, the crisis in Darfur, stems in part from land disputes between nomadic herders and settled farmers over the in-creasingly dry and unlivable terrain of the Sahel.

Due to growing population and chang-

es in water availabil ity, the UN predicts that 5.5 bil l ion people wil l l ive in water-stressed countries by 2025 – two-thirds of the world’s projected population. And while only 3% of the world’s landmass is currently at risk of extreme drought, that f igure is expected to increase to 30% by the end of the century according to a study by the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. Much of the hu-man impact wil l occur in Asia, where the massive glaciers of the Himalayas are the traditional source of runoff to major rivers l ike the Indus and Ganges. In the hot sum-mer months, glacial melt water provides

75% of the flow in these rivers. Dwindling glaciers and snowfall threaten to eventu-ally reduce these life-giving waterways to seasonal streams. Completely remov-ing melt water from the Ganges would re-sult in water shortages for half a bil l ion people and 37% of India’s irrigated land.

This type of catastrophic scenario may be some time off, but perhaps a quarter of the world’s mountain glaciers wil l disap-pear by mid-century given current rates of melting.

In the short-term, the greatest risk of melting glaciers is not less water but too much. Floods are a perpetual threat to many people. In fact, a research team headed by Chris Milly of the U.S. Geo-logic Survey found that the prevalence of great f loods increased significantly dur-ing the 20th century. The continuation of this trend is due to both greater rainfall

and the potential for sud-den release of glacier lakes formed by melting ice. Flood-ing has an immediate effect in terms of l ives lost, homes destroyed, and people dis-placed. The costs don’t stop there, though, since cholera and diarrheal diseases often follow as the stagnant water slowly recedes. As Figure 2 shows, climate-related disas-ters are particularly acute in the poorest countries.

Floods can also con-taminate drinking water sup-plies by dispersing sediment, parasites, viruses, and toxic chemicals (l ike ferti l izers from fields) into catchment basins and reservoirs. In a world of more downpours and drought, there wil l l ikely be pressure to build dams and above-ground storage to capture freshwater. The threat of f loods – espe-cially following periods of ex-

tended drought – means that maintaining adequate clean water supplies wil l be a tremendous challenge, particularly for countries with l imited infrastructure and resources. The hard truth is that one bil-l ion people currently lack access to clean water, and the average supply of water

12

Fig ure 2: Comp arin g D isaste r s A cros s Count r ies Although pa rticularly destr uctive , floods ar e only one example of climate-related disasters . The re is good reason to expect the occurren ce of other m eteorolo gical eve nts to als o increase as the globa l climate bec omes wa rmer and mo re variable. Data from the last 30 years confi rms th at poor count ries are particu larly susce ptible to the se phenomen a. As the figure below shows, the human imp act of the avera ge climate-related disaster is per ha ps 20 t imes gre ater in low inc ome count ries com pared to th eir high inco me brethren.

I m p a c t o f C l i m a t e - R e l a t e d D i s a s t e r s

b y C o u n t r y I n c o m e f r o m 1 9 7 5 t o 2 0 0 5 *

L ow er -m id d le

in c omeUp pe r - m id d le

in c o me

Hig h in c ome

Lo w in c o me

0

5 0

10 0

15 0

20 0

25 0

Hu ma n imp ac t pe r d is as te r a c c o rd in g to a w e ig h te d in d ex .

Less -- Human Impact -- More

* Climate-related disasters include floods, droughts, wind storms, waves/surges, extreme temperature, slides, and wild fires. Data extracted from the OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database (www.em-dat.net).

ENVIRONMENT

| G | P | M | August, 2007 13

per person is expected to drop by one-third over the next two decades. Given population growth and the disappearance of mountain glaciers, the long-term chal-lenges posed by water stress wil l be se-vere.

Fear of famine: The threat of declining agriculture

There is l i tt le doubt that developing world agricultural production wil l be ad-versely affected by climate change. Higher temperatures, greater rainfall variabil ity, and more extreme drought and flooding wil l decrease crop productivity directly and give rise to potentially destructive follow-on effects. Increased evaporation, for example, wil l reduce soil moisture,

perhaps leading to greater wind-induced erosion. Longer growing seasons and warmer winters – potentially beneficial in historically colder, higher-latitude coun-tries – might also support larger popula-tions of crop-destroying insects. Since plants effectively “feed” on carbon diox-ide, increased CO2 may provide a “car-bon ferti l ization” boost to crops l ike rice and wheat, but there appears to be l itt le benefit for maize and sorghum. There are also concerns as to whether the potential CO2-induced increases in yield translate to similar increases in nutrit ional value, particularly in terms of protein content.

In Africa, where 70% of the population farms for itself, the IPCC expects to see yields from rain-fed agriculture fall up to 50% by 2020 in some countries. Food se-

curity wil l be exacerbated by decreased fish stocks in lakes due to rising water temperatures and continued over-fishing. In Central and South Asia, crop yields are expected to decrease up to 30% by the middle of the century. A forthcoming study predicts an average 20% drop in agricul-tural productivity across the developing world by 2080. In India, the productivity hit is expected to be 40% – and that’s as-suming Himalayan-fed rivers continue to supply irrigation systems with adequate water. Despite all this, global agricultural production is projected to increase in the short-term due to expanded temperate zones in developed countries. If global temperatures increase significantly, how-ever, crop yields wil l l ikely decrease even at high-latitudes.

ENVIRONMENT

Flooded Farms

August, 2007 | G | P | M |

There are currently over 800 mill ion malnourished people in the world – 200 mill ion in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Given predicted changes in agricultural produc-tion and rising population, the IPCC sug-gests an additional 50 mill ion people could be at risk of hunger by 2020 and a further 132 mill ion by 2050. Given that many ru-ral communities rely on local, subsistence farming, their abil ity to survive shocks to agricultural productivity is l imited. Even if short-term increases in global produc-tion could be successfully redistributed to prevent wider malnutrit ion, the larger so-cioeconomic implications of increasingly unstable agriculture wil l be extensive. In Africa, for example, agriculture accounts for 40% of all exports; crops and livestock provide 50% of household income; and small-scale farming employs 60% of the workforce. Even in countries l ike China – where the total change in productivity is expected to be small – there wil l be sig-nificant transition costs as the most pro-ductive lands shift northward. In addition, supplies of f ish – which have traditionally provided a significant portion of human protein consumption – are expected to decrease in response to both over-fishing and the destruction of coral reefs due to ocean warming and acidif ication. On the whole, projected climate change in just the next few decades wil l undermine the food security of many developing countries. If temperatures continue to increase, even production in developed countries wil l fall in the long-run.

And the l ist goes on…

The probable effects, especially on de-veloping countries with l imited capacity, can be taken even further. Many of them are mentioned in the IPCC’s April 2007 report on the impacts of climate change. Cardio-respiratory diseases are expected to increase as lung tissue is exposed to greater amounts of ground-level ozone. Warmer winters and wetter conditions wil l expand the potential range and elevation

of disease vectors l ike mosquitoes – which can carry more than 100 viruses known to affect humans. A conservative estimate suggests 20-30% of all known plant and animal species are at risk of extinction given current trends; it is impossible to predict what kind of impact this reduced biodiversity might have on the larger food chain. Higher temperatures and reduced soil moisture may reduce much of the Am-azon rainforest to savannah and desert by the end of the century. And although the relationship between environmental stress and conflict is complicated, a forthcoming Columbia University study suggests that rainfall variabil ity and severe drought play a role in the onset and escalation of vio-lence. To put it plainly, the risks are too serious to ignore any longer.

Righting the ship: Moving toward a safer future

In each of the topics addressed above, a common theme is evident: In the short-term, things look bad. In the long-term, they are certainly worse. Because of the long atmospheric l i fe of carbon dioxide, we are already destined to face the short-term consequences of the next few de-cades. A certain amount of temperature increase and its attendant effects are already in the pipeline, and they wil l oc-cur regardless of attempts to tackle GHG emissions. Dealing with the consequenc-es of this inevitable warming – what we might call adaptation or coping – wil l be a fundamental challenge in all societies. But as we have seen, the best evidence suggests that the majority of the negative effects in coming decades wil l be centered on the world’s poorest populations. In the short-term, climate change is largely an issue of risk reduction, disaster relief, environmental management, and human development. This wil l require improved prediction, monitoring, and response to climate-related disasters as well as tre-mendous efforts to prepare for the ex-

pected risks (drought-resistant seeds, f lood control infrastructure, improved sanitation systems, etc.). The challenge of climate change is not in competit ion with that of global poverty; they are one and the same.

If we look beyond a few decades, the issue changes character. Without seri-ous efforts to reduce GHG emissions, the negative effects of climate change wil l begin to equalize across regions as temperatures continue to climb. At some point, the init ial agricultural benefits – pri-marily l imited to high-latitude developed countries – begin to decrease and then reverse. More crit ically, though, a series of t ipping points are l ikely to be reached and passed. As we saw in the tour of our planet’s climatic history, the breaching of crit ical t ipping points can give rise to feed-back loops that enable dramatic change.

In addition to the melting of ice and i ts impact on Earth’s abil ity to reflect sun-l ight, there is concern over the abil ity of the world’s oceans, plants, and soils to continue absorbing vast amounts of car-bon dioxide. About half of all the CO2 pro-duced by humans is currently absorbed by various ecosystems, keeping the planet cooler than it would be otherwise. But warm water absorbs less CO2 than cold water, and the oceans are heating quickly. At some point, the oceans wil l no longer be able to protect the atmosphere from the full consequences of our fossil fuel ad-diction. The same goes for plant l i fe and soil. The IPCC expects the abil ity of land-based ecosystems to remove carbon from the atmosphere to peak by mid-century and then decline. Once these processes begin, atmospheric CO2 will increase and warming wil l quicken – regardless of hu-man efforts to right the ship. In order to prevent the onset of feedback loops, re-ducing the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere to a “safe” level must be hu-manity’s primary goal.

14

ENVIRONMENT

| G | P | M | August, 2007 15

What constitutes a “safe” level is a matter of some debate and subject to un-certainties. One way to think about the problem is to consider how much addi-tional global warming can be tolerated. A report by the German Advisory Council on Climate Change suggests that warm-ing the planet more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels would put us at risk of passing crit ical t ipping points. Given the scale of the possible consequences and the unprecedented nature of this climatic “experiment,” it would be wise to err on the side of caution. In order to be reasonably confident (at least 70%) that the Earth wil l not exceed this temperature threshold, it has been suggested by Malte Meinshausen and his col-leagues that the atmospheric concentration of GHGs must eventually stabil ize at or be-low 400 ppm of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) – a mea-sure that takes into account CO2 and other GHGs. Sta-bil izing at levels higher than 400ppm CO2e increases the probabil ity that we wil l “over-shoot” and exceed the “safe” temperature l imit. In order to avoid this outcome, the near-term maximum or “peak” con-centration of GHGs should probably go no higher than 475 ppm CO2e before beginning to decline.

Taken together, these guidelines sug-gest that appropriately “safe” reductions in fossil fuel emissions might follow a path similar to those in Figure 3. The specific shape of the curves depends on the year in which emissions reach their peak. This reveals a basic climate change truth: The longer we wait to begin reducing GHG emissions, the steeper the subsequent cuts wil l need to be. If global CO2 emis-sions were to peak in 2010, for example, then annual emissions in 2050 would need to be 60% below current levels. This translates to an average reduction of

2.3% per year. If emissions peak in 2020, however, the world wil l need to cut emis-sions to 77% below current levels by mid-century – an average annual decrease of 5.2%. In other words, by delaying the on-set of GHG reductions by 10 years, the pace of subsequent cutbacks more than doubles. Since gradual reductions are less costly than sudden ones, it benefits all of us to begin reducing emissions as quickly as possible. It is also important to set a sufficiently aggressive stabil ization target from the beginning. If the science eventually reveals that a different stabil i-zation level is appropriate, it wil l be much easier to increase rather than decrease

emissions to meet the new objective.

Bearing the burden: Sharing the costs of climate action

It has often been noted that climate change is the result of the rich world’s economic growth and burning of fossil fu-els. To a large degree, this was and sti l l is accurate. Over the course of the 20th century, the developed countries of North America and Western Europe – currently comprising about 12% of the world’s peo-ple – were responsible for about 60% of all fossil fuel emissions. At present, the average cit izen in the developed world produces 15 tons of CO2 every year. The

typical American produces even more: 20 tons annually. Meanwhile, the average African is responsible for l i tt le more than 1 ton of fossil fuel CO2 emissions each year.

This is not to say that emissions across the developing world are equally low. In China, for example, per capita emissions have tripled since 1980 to more than 4 tons of CO2 per year. Indeed, the largely coal-fired growth of developing countries, especially China and India, wil l l ikely contribute two-thirds of future emissions. Further, population growth alone wil l put upward pressure on the emissions of de-

veloping countries. The world’s population is expected to grow from 6.5 bil l ion at present to over 9 bil l ion by 2050 – with 99% of the growth occurring in today’s developing countries. Even at relatively low levels of per capita CO2 emissions, an additional 2.5 bil l ion people could have a tremendous im-pact on the atmosphere.

Governments often use these differences in past, present, and future emissions as excuses for delay and in-action. Developed countries,

especially the United States and Austra-l ia, are reluctant to support global climate init iatives that do not regulate the future emissions of the fastest-growing poor countries. At the same time, developing countries often insist on the right to mimic the fossil-fuel intensive growth of today’s wealthy societies. Neither position is ra-tional nor constructive. The fact is that avoiding the most catastrophic effects of climate change wil l require concerted ef-fort on the part of both developed and de-veloping countries – and soon. If we fail to reduce emissions quickly, a report by the UK government estimates that future climate change may shrink economic pro-duction by up to 20% per year. On the oth-

F i g u r e 3 : P l a u s i b l y " S a f e " C O 2 E m i s s i o n s

P a t h w a y s i n t h e 2 1 s t C e n t u r y

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2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2070 2080 2090 2100

EQW emissions pathways for 400 ppm CO2e stabilization (475 ppm peak) as detailed in Meinshausen (2005).

Global Fossil FuelEmissions (Gton)

ENVIRONMENT

August, 2007 | G | P | M | 16

er hand, the annual cost of achieving the necessary cuts would probably be about 1% of global income.

This does not mean that the burden of reducing emissions should be spread evenly across all countries. An effective climate policy over the course of this century requires the developed world to take the lead in terms of emission reduc-tions. As home to the most carbon-inten-sive societies, developed countries must assume responsibil i ty for the majority of the required cutbacks over the next four decades. In addition, the richest societies must cap and begin reducing their emis-sions in the very near future. To meet the global targets outl ined above, it is plau-sible that the world’s richest countries would need to reduce total CO2 emissions by an average of about 4.3% per year be-tween 2010 and 2050.

Under such a scenario, some of the fastest growing developing countries might not be required to reduce emis-sions unti l a number of years later. And even then, given their lower init ial levels of emissions, the rate of decrease wil l be less severe than in the developed world. If the whole of South and East Asia were to peak CO2 emissions in 2020, for exam-ple, the necessary rate of reduction over the next 30 years would be less than half that of the richest countries. As the centu-ry progresses, it is l ikely that developing countries would assume a larger share of global emission reductions. For example, it would be reasonable to expect the de-veloping world’s share of total emissions reductions to increase from less than 30% in 2030 to more than 90% by the end of the century.

Under any effective and equitable cli-mate change agreement, per capita emis-sions would begin to converge across countries and over time. At present, per capita CO2 emissions in developed coun-tries are about 6 times greater than in the

developing world. The scenario described above would l ikely see per capita emis-sions equalize across regions sometime in the second half of the century. This type of climate policy “end-game” is not only ethically defensible, it is polit ically necessary. It is diff icult to imagine the forging of any legitimate, international agreement that does not have an equal-ization of per capita emissions as its long-run objective.

Getting down to business: Achieving the necessary changes

The figures above represent plausible goals and targets based on the science of climate change – not economic or po-lit ical solutions. It wil l be up to each indi-vidual country to craft its own approach to decarbonization. This is not the place to delve into the details of specific carbon reduction strategies, except to say that, ideally, at least part of this process wil l take place within an international carbon trading system. Under such an arrange-ment, “carbon credits” – each permitting a certain amount of emissions – would be allotted to individual countries. These would then be awarded, perhaps through auctions, to businesses that emit CO2 in the course of their operations. A company would be allowed to emit only as much CO2 as their credits allow. If a company

wishes to emit additional CO2, they would need to buy more credits – perhaps from another company that has succeeded in reducing emissions and has unused cred-its to sell. In this process, companies that discover ways to reduce their emissions are financially rewarded. Most important-ly, by periodically decreasing the over-all number of credits, the total amount of emissions can be “ratcheted down” to meet global targets.

It wil l take committed effort and skil l ful negotiation to develop such a system. The beginnings of one are in place through the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. has so far refused to adopt. Whether the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012, should be expanded and extended or replaced by a new agreement remains to be seen. It is clear, though, that the groundwork for a truly international and aggressive climate accord needs to be in place soon. For this reason, the U.S. should develop its own national carbon trading system, beginning with the electric power sector, and do so within the next few years. Given that the U.S. is responsible for 25% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions, this would be an im-portant environmental move and a signal to the rest of the world that we are com-mitted to addressing the climate change challenge.

Participation in the Kyoto Protocol: dark green indicates countries that have signed and ratified the treaty, yellow indicates those that have signed and hope to ratify it, and red indicates those that have signed but not ratified it.

ENVIRONMENT

| G | P | M | August, 2007 17

Once in place, such a carbon trading system should be quickly extended to, or merged with, similar programs in other developed countries. Developing world governments should be involved in this process, as the ultimate goal would be to include their emissions under the umbrel-la of a global carbon trading system. The init ial agreement need not, contrary to the current administration’s position, demand emission reductions from India and Chi-na at the outset. Indeed, it is unrealistic to expect these countries and others to abandon their substantial coal reserves unless we help develop the technological and economic alternatives. Only by creat-ing the necessary incentives – putting a price on carbon – in our own economy will the needed breakthroughs come. Although a so-called “cap and trade” system is po-tentially quite helpful in achieving this ob-jective, it wil l need to be part of a larger approach. Successfully transitioning to a decarbonized economy wil l require other efforts, possibly some combination of f i-nancial incentives for green technology and conservation, taxes on carbon-inten-sive goods and services, or direct regula-tion in cases where the previous interven-tions are inadequate.

Recent developments suggest that things are beginning to move in this direc-tion. There are already a half-dozen bil ls in Congress on this very issue. The Su-preme Court has ruled that CO2 is a “pol-lutant” under the Clean Air Act. On April 14th, more than 1400 rall ies were held across the country call ing for GHG reduc-tions. As the 2008 elections draw near, there wil l be pronouncements and prom-ises from the Presidential candidates. When it comes to assessing the various proposals and their abil ity to effectively curtail future warming, keep the following in mind: If the United States were to cap emissions in 2010 and init iate an aggres-sive carbon reduction program, total an-nual CO2 emissions would need to be at

least 80% below current levels by 2050. Given projected growth in population, this entails an 88% reduction in per cap-ita emissions. Delaying the onset of the program until 2020 would require annual emissions at mid-century to be 95% be-low current levels (97% less in per capita terms). Proposals that fail to meet these targets – or propose none at all – are unlikely to induce the kind of change de-manded by the climate crisis.

Finally, the inevitable short-term costs of climate change must be faced head on. As we have seen, these costs wil l be predominantly borne by the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. The response wil l require efforts within the development community to reduce expo-sure to climate risk, adapt to the coming changes, and respond to the inevitable humanitarian disasters – all in addition to the ever-present challenges of a world in which half of humanity l ives in poverty. All of this poses an acute moral dilemma for the world’s rich: How will we respond to problems that we know are the result of our own actions? What are the moral consequences of a world in which the ma-terially wealthy have, in effect, exported suffering to those with the least? Unless the causes and consequences of climate change are known and owned by cit izens of the developed world, it wil l be diff icult to mount a sufficient and sustained re-sponse.

The bottom line: Challenge as opportunity

Climate change presents one chal-lenge after another. In the developed world, the challenge wil l be building and maintaining support for reduced emissions even as it becomes clear that the primary short-term costs are borne by faceless people thousands of miles away. In the poorest developing countries, particularly in Africa, the challenge wil l be adapting

to increased climatic instabil ity despite extensive poverty and limited resources. In rapidly-growing developing countries l ike India and China, the challenge wil l be resolving the tension between fossil fuel intensive growth and the clear need to head-off future emissions.

Although climate change is by no means a positive development, it does present a unique opportunity for the inter-national community to forge cooperation across environmental, economic, polit i-cal, and social spheres. Indeed, no other issue has such potential. To be sure, there wil l be tremendous debate and disagree-ment over the specific details of any cli-mate policy. But history suggests that tre-mendous transformation is possible when we share common objectives. And given the truly global nature of climate change, meeting the necessary emissions targets is something we can all rally around – in fact, we have to.

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ENVIRONMENT

August, 2007 | G | P | M |

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| G | P | M | August, 2007 19

GlobalGiving: the eBay for international philanthropy

n October 2000, Dennis Whittle left a flourishing career at the World Bank. People thought he

and Mari Kuraishi, who also held a senior-level position at the global lending institu-tion, were out of their minds for leaving what many considered the ultimate career destination for international development professionals. But for the two, it was a de-cision they had to make, to launch what has been called the “eBay for internation-al philanthropy.”

The Development Marketplace, where it all began...

It all started at the Global Development Marketplace. Whitt le recounted that epi-sode. “James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank at the time, asked us to experiment with radically different ways of doing business at the World Bank. He gave us a l itt le money and said ‘I want you guys to really think of some very, very good things.’ We took the task seriously and what we came up with was the De-velopment Marketplace, which was totally bottom-up--small projects, very open ac-cess, and very quick decision process-es.”

The init iative is almost the antithesis of the current international development system. “The existing model is that you

have World Bank experts and ministry of natural resources experts who get togeth-er to talk about the countries’ problems and design programs and projects from the top down. But what would happen if you take anybody in the world with ideas for improving economic growth, social welfare, and environmental conditions and make them eligible for small amounts of funding to develop their ideas? So in 2000, we launched the Development Mar-ketplace—we invited people from across the globe, who had good ideas, and in two days we made guarantees of $5 mill ion to 44 groups around the world.” Whitt le re-membered two Ugandan women who, unti l that point, had never gone outside their own province, and who brought with them a proposal for an innovative micro-credit program.

Whittle was witness to the immense en-ergy and creativity among participants in the one-day gathering. For many of them, the Development Marketplace was a l ife-changing event. “(Mari) and I came away thinking we’ve got to find a way to do this on an ongoing basis, not just as an annu-al event. Several people who were there said, ‘why don’t you do this all the time, this is fabulous’.”

At the close of the event, a South African woman came up to Whittle and said, “We

didn’t win.” “Well, not everyone can win, this is a competit ion.”

“That’s okay; we’re just waiting for the secondary market to start.”

“What do you mean secondary market?”

“Somebody told me that just because the World Bank did not fund our idea, that doesn’t mean there are no other people in the world who would.”

That exchange gave Whittle an epiphany. “Holy cow, she’s exactly right. I never thought of it that way. I began to think how exciting that was. There are all these people with all this energy and ideas, and the question is—how can you tap that? The World Bank said we’d probably have 30 or 40 more of these events, some in Washington and some around the world. But we wanted to do something that was online, and was available 24 hours a day, basically around the world. So I took a few months leave from the World Bank to research (that possibil i ty), and I decided it was viable.”

A few months later, Whitt le along with Kuraishi quit their jobs at the World Bank to establish GlobalGiving.

Eliza J. Villarino

I

Returns for the homeland

PROFILE

August, 2007 | G | P | M |

The story behind the name

Though GlobalGiving seems an obvious choice for a name, it was not init ially so for the founders. Originally, the organiza-tion was called “DevelopmentSpace,” a brainchild of Whitt le. “I was really very proud of that name, and I thought it meant a virtual space for international develop-ment.”

Unfortunately, that is not how it registered with people, particularly those not familiar with international development. “We got all these phone calls, asking if we do soft-ware or real estate development. Some-body even thought we do interior design because of the word ‘space.’ So my bril-l iant idea of a very clever name turned out to be a terrible name.”

The search for a new name brought Kurai-shi to San Francisco. She met and brain-stormed with a small strategy/design firm called Stone Yamashita, and returned with ‘GlobalGiving’ as the new name for the organization. Whitt le was init ially not receptive to the idea. “I was very angry

and upset, I thought it was stupid name; it had l itt le to do with international develop-ment.” Kuraishi and others reasoned with him and later he admitted that “it was the best decision we ever made because now everyone instantly understands what we do.”

Growing pains

GlobalGiving’s early challenges went be-yond coming up with the right name for the organization. Its founders, despite their development experience, had litt le knowledge about marketing, setting up a Web site, and other basic requirements for starting an online business. “I think the biggest challenge was finding the people to help us out in all these areas we didn’t know anything about,” Whitt le said.

Whitt le also suffered a “shock” with his new role. He confessed to being “spoiled,” used to World Bank secretaries who would answer or make calls for him. Now, he has to do this himself. But he agreed that the change, though hard, “was very good from humility point of view.”

Six years later

Now entering its f ifth year as GlobalGiv-ing, the organization has received more than $4 mill ion in donations from 4,000 do-nors, which has been directed to approxi-mately 750 projects worldwide. According to Joan Ochi, Director of Marketing Com-munications at GlobalGiving, 2005 was a landmark year, with contributions reach-ing over $2 mill ion as the world saw large-scale disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami, which prompted an outpouring of donations.

Individuals account for most of Global-Giving’s donors. They can choose from a catalog of more than 400 projects, which are grouped according to theme, region and project sponsor, and make payments via credit or debit card, check or PayPal.

Some individual donations are made though employee-giving programs for companies such as Hewlett-Packard. In HP’s case, the company matches pledges made by U.S. employees during its em-ployee giving campaign, thus increas-

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0 democracy economic education environment gender & health human technology development equality rights projects 10 83 78 36 22 82 23 14 donated to donations 43 578 1020 182 185 1311 127 28

DONATION DISTRIBUTION

PROFILE

| G | P | M | August, 2007 21

ing the funds directed to GlobalGiving’s projects. Besides HP, GlobalGiving has similar partnerships with technology firm Applied Materials, Gap Inc., one of the world’s largest specialty retailers, as well as other “affinity” based organizations such as the National Peace Corps Asso-ciation and Sister Cities International.

Whitt le deemed such collaborations as part of the reason for GlobalGiving’s suc-cess to date. The organization’s roster of corporate and institutional partners has grown to include AMD, AOL, America’s Charit ies, CIDI, eBay, Google, The North Face, Pandora, Participant Productions, SRA-Touchstone, Visa International, and Yahoo!. Whitt le is also grateful to nearly 40 non-governmental organizations that help GlobalGiving “vet well-run, high-quality, high-impact projects all over the

globe.” Ashoka Innovators for the Pub-lic, CHF International, International AIDS Vaccine Init iative, Relief International, and even the World Bank Development Marketplace, are among GlobalGiving’s network of project partners.

The GlobalGiving co-founder takes pride at what his organization has done over the past six years in terms of changing the ex-isting paradigm in international develop-ment. “For so long, the whole system has been dominated by top-down institutions, and we have now legitimized the concept of bottom-up ideas in development. I think the achievement that I ’m most proud of was getting the idea out there and helping launch a new way of doing things.”

GlobalGiving also is changing the way that people think about donating to chari-

table organizations—helping donors who are grappling with questions such as

• When you give to a typical charity, do

you ever wonder where your “give”

goes?

• How many people is it helping?

• Is it going to have a long-term impact?

• Is your money being spent wisely, or is

it stuck somewhere along the way?

Funds are transferred to the projects with-in 60 days, and project leaders in the field are encouraged to keep their projects cur-rent by posting progress reports, in many cases with photos and commentary. Do-nors are automatically notif ied when a progress report is posted to a project they supported, so they can keep up-to-date on the impact their donation is having.

DONATION DISTRIBUTION

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August, 2007 | G | P | M | 22

Hopes and vision

According to Ochi, the organization ex-pects to double donations received this year (excluding disaster-specific contri-butions in 2005). GlobalGiving retains ten percent of each donation, which goes toward financing its operations; current-ly, the balance is funded by grants made by foundations. The goal is ult imately for the organization to become self suffi-cient, generating contributions of approx-imately $40 mill ion per year by 2011.

Arriving at that point depends heavily on the success of GlobalGiving’s marketing strategies. The company, Ochi said, is working with esteemed partners includ-ing advertising giant Leo Burnett, and us-ing online banner advertising to increase people’s awareness of its programs. It is also exploring ways to promote Glo-balGiving via word of mouth, which Ochi sees as key to widening its donor base. The company also is introducing new features, such as Gift Certif icates, which enable donors to give meaningful gifts, and recipients to choose the projects they want to support.

Whitt le is optimistic that GlobalGiving wil l reach its goal. “We expect that in the next few years, as we continue to grow, there wil l be thousands of projects on our Web site, and tens of mill ions of people wil l have their l ives touched by projects on Global Giving.”

Ultimately, he wants the organization to be regarded as the “de facto marketplace for all legitimate grassroots projects—if you have a project, you want to be l isted in GlobalGiving because it ’s the place where you need to be, because it confers some validity on what you do, and it ’s a valuable way to connect with donors around the world.”

Total donors to date by country Comments?


Source: GlobalGiving

U.S. 5256Canada 125UK 59Japan 52Australia 32India 17Singapore 16France 14New Zealand 13Netherlands 13Switzerland 10Spain 10South Korea 10China 9Germany 6Malaysia 5Portugal 4Italy 4Ireland 4Norway 3Croatia 3Belgium 3Bahrain 3Trinidad & Tobago 2Sweden 2Saudi Arabia 2Pakistan 2Greece 2Egypt 2Brazil 2Vietnam 1UAE 1Turkey 1Thailand 1Taiwan 1Poland 1Phil l ippines 1Nigeria 1Mexico 1Lebanon 1Jamaica 1Ivory Coast 1Israel 1Estonia 1Ecuador 1Denmark 1Czech Republic 1Cyprus 1Costa Rica 1

PROFILE

| G | P | M | August, 2007

A Long Journey Home Liberian Refugees Return

With Hope

iberian refugees throughout West Africa have chosen to leave the relative safety of camps and re-

turn to their war-torn country, now with peace restored and a democratic govern-ment in place.

The refugees have uprooted themselves again, not out of fear l ike when they first f led Liberia, but with hope for rebuilding their l ives and their nation.

Cecil ia Saah, 49, f led Liberia in 1990 in search of her two children. In the cha-os of the civil war, the family had been pulled apart. She suspected her two sons went east, to Cote d’Ivoire or Ghana. Taking only what she could carry, she set off.

For 16 long years she searched among refugee camps, making new friendships then breaking them, but never finding or hearing from her children. Her saga finally ended this summer, when she got news at the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana

that her children were back in Liberia. And as quickly as she had fled during the civil war, she returned.

Liberian refugee Melvin Iyoriabhe, 11, was born in exile in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire. But civil war erupted there, and in 2003 he and his mother were forced to run again, this time heading to the Buduburam camp in Ghana. They, too, decided it was time to return home. “I know it is safe in Liberia because El-len Johnson-Sirleaf is a woman and she is good,” he said before departing from

Ghana, in reference to the new Liberian president who was elected in November 2005. “I know she can take care of the

country.” Melvin and Saah are two of the 1,800 Liberi-an refugees who have repatriated this year from Ghana on U.N.-sponsored trips. In all, more than 70,000 Li-berian refugees have returned home since the end of the 14-year civil war in 2003.

But the United Nations estimates there are sti l l about 230,000 in exile, mostly torn apart from family and living in camps throughout West Africa.

The camps are l ike way stations for people in exile. Although some refugees have lived in them for more than a decade, they are not meant to be permanent. The U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, which spearheads efforts with national governments to cater to refu-gees, says there are three “durable solu-tions” for refugees: resettlement to a third country, usually in the West; local integra-tion; or repatriation.

By Justin Moresco

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HUMAN RIGHTS

August, 2007 | G | P | M | 24

But resettlement, though seen as a jack-pot for refugees, remains elusive; only about 5 percent of all refugees worldwide are granted this option, typically for un-usual circumstances related to health, se-curity or family reunification.

The second option, local integration, is dependent on the polit ical atmosphere and whims of the host nations, themselves not always paragons of stabil ity. The third op-tion, repatriation, is considered the ideal.

To encourage Liberian refugees to repa-triate, the UNHCR began actively promot-ing it in February 2006 on a voluntary ba-sis. The agency regularly organizes free transportation back to Liberia, and allows returnees to take with them many of their personal belongings.

The UNHCR also provides assistance packages upon arrival – including food ra-tions, sanitary kits, kitchen sets – and of-fers micro-credit schemes and vocational training in Liberia.

The agency has also organized “go and see missions.” Five refugees from the Buduburam camp went to Liberia for a week to judge the security situation and observe basic services, such as water and electricity. They spoke with doctors, teachers and community leaders, f i lmed the trip and then showed it back at the camp, with the hope that it would encour-age returnees.

Despite these efforts, many refugees pre-fer to remain in exile. They fear that the stabil ity won’t hold and that scarce jobs won’t be available for them if they return so soon after the war.

It ’s an agonizing decision, said refugee Varney Sambola, chairman of the Liberian Refugee Welfare Council at the Budu-buram camp, which acts as a l iaison be-tween the refugees and the UNHCR.

“You have to go back and join people who made you leave, who maybe kil led a fam-ily member,” Sambola explained. “You have to go back and see your house that’s been destroyed and deal with the fear and doubt about the reaction of people at home. Here maybe you have a source of income and you have to give that up. When you put this all together, it ’s a big decision.”

Changing Circumstances

And it ’s a decision that’s set to get more diff icult. The United Nations and ma-jor donor countries, including the United States, are increasingly diverting money that previously supported refugees in camps to programs based in Liberia. They argue that Liberia is on the road to recov-ery and that available resources should be directed there.

Meanwhile, the UNHCR says it only has funding to continue supporting voluntary repatriation through June 2007, after which time refugees wil l have to pay for and find their own way home. Funding for programs in camps, such as for education and health care, may dry up as well after that deadline.

“We are concerned about the timeframe,” said Senai Terrefe, a UNHCR officer in Ghana. “There is a wait and see approach among refugees to see if the process of democratization wil l hold in Liberia. But [our programs are] not open-ended, and our donors wil l eventually stop funding.”

Refugee Samuel David, 33, f led Liberia in 1990 to neighboring Guinea. He was sep-arated from his parents and hasn’t heard from them since. When the conflict in Li-beria spil led over to Guinea, he fled again and arrived in Buduburam in 1997.

While at the camp, he has felt pulled by two conflicting forces – one to return to Liberia and one to wait in the hope of re-

settlement to the United States.

“I have some friends from Buduburam in Liberia,” he said. “They say we are wast-ing our time in the camp and we should return. Then the ones who have gone to the U.S. call you and say there are green-er pastures. They tell us to stay in the camp as long as we can so we can re-settle. They say we should even eat sand if we must to stay in the camp.”

David has built a home in Buduburam and makes a l iving in construction. Yet he said he feels his future is slipping out of his hands in Ghana, and he has accepted that for him – young and healthy and without any unusual circumstances – resettlement to the West is impossible.

That’s why after some reflection, he de-cided he wil l soon return to Liberia. “I get a l itt le nervous about returning,” he said. “I wonder how I wil l start from zero. But God wil l ing, I wil l be okay.”

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The Continuing Battle Against Malaria

“Malaria is a leading cause of death and disease worldwide” reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Posing not only a health threat but an economic threat, the dis-ease has long wrought “a vicious cycle of disease and poverty.”

Indeed, malaria, which is most prevalent in developing na-tions, annually infects as many as 500 mill ion people worldwide. Occurring in at least 100 countries, more than 40 percent of the world’s population is at risk. In the most stricken regions l ike sub-Saharan Africa, a child dies from malaria every 30 sec-onds.

Fortunately, however, the global disease has provoked a global response. Malaria was eradicated in the United States in the 1950s, and although, at that t ime, multi- lateral attempts to maintain a worldwide campaign against the disease and its vec-tor mosquito sputtered, the past few years have seen a promis-ing surge in anti-malarial campaigns.

The United States: the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI)On December 14, 2006, the United States held the first-ever

White House Summit on Malaria. Hosted by President George W. Bush and the First Lady, Laura Bush, the summit focused specifically on facing the challenges of combating malaria in Africa, on mobil izing NGOs to cooperate with governments, and

on “growing the grassroots,” that is, raising awareness of how organizations and individuals can become involved in the fight against malaria.

At the summit, President Bush also unveiled an expansion to his President’s Malaria Init iative (PMI).

“The toll of malaria is even more tragic because the disease itself is highly treatable and preventable,” Bush says. “Yet, this is also our opportunity, because we know that large-scale action can defeat this disease in whole regions. And the world must take that action.”

The PMI, a “historic $1.2 bil l ion, f ive-year init iative to control malaria in Africa,” was officially announced on June 30, 2005. Its goal is to “assist national malaria control programs to cut malaria-related deaths by 50 percent… [in] target countries in Africa.”

By taking a comprehensive approach—which includes spray-ing homes with insecticides and providing the African people with specially-treated mosquito nets, anti-malarial drugs, and medical treatment to prevent the disease in pregnant women—the PMI hopes to reach 85 percent of those most at risk of con-tracting malaria: pregnant women and children under the age of f ive.

By Michael Madson

Keeping Focus On Disease Management

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With its recent expansion, the PMI will additionally• Recognize eight additional African countries—Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia Madagascar, Mali, and Zambia—as “PMI target countries.” (Previously, only Uganda, Tanzania, Angola, Senegal, Malawi, Rwanda, and Mozambique were covered under the PMI.) • Launch the Malaria Communities Program, a $30 mill ion project to “build independent, sustainable malaria-control projects in Africa by providing grants to African NGOs and religious groups to support their malaria-control work.” • Kick off the “Volunteers for Prosperity” program. This init ia t ive wil l help fund highly skil led volunteers, l ike doctors, to combat the disease in Africa.• Designate April 25, 2007 as “Malaria Awareness Day.” Nations around the world wil l “commemorate April 25 to raise global awareness of malaria, and to reaffirm their commitment to fighting this disease.” “Together,” Bush says, “Americans can help protect an entire continent.”

International Organizations: the World Bank and OthersInternational organizations have also been instrumental in

supplying funds for the fight against malaria. Recently, the World Bank approved the “largest-ever malaria control project” in the country of Nigeria, a nation especially ravaged by the disease. The entire project wil l channel $180 mill ion US dollars into the country as part of the World Bank’s Malaria Control Booster Pro-gram, which was set up last year.

Says Yaw Ansu, Director of Human Development in the Africa Region of the World Bank, “Since the launch of the Booster Pro-gram about 15 months ago, the Bank’s Board of Directors has approved eleven projects supporting malaria control in Africa for a total of over $350 mill ion, a clear sign of our renewed com-mitment to support African countries in their f ight against this disease.”

The World Bank’s anti-malaria programs build upon the ef-forts of other organizations l ike the World Health Organization (WHO), the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), and the Global Fund. Other contributions have come from the Bil l & Melinda Gates Foundation, ExxonMobil, and Ma-laria No More.

Indeed, anti-malaria projects have no shortage of capital; the global commitment to combating the parasite has been espe-cially strong, particularly since various findings have suggested that malaria may contribute to the spread of HIV.

New Threats and New ResearchEven more challenging than maintaining the financial back-

bone of such projects is countering the remarkable resil ience of the parasite.

Traditionally, anti-malarial drugs have been key in virtually

eradicating the disease in developed countries, and funding for such drugs continues today. Although the average cost for anti-malarials has dropped—the average cost for chloroquine has fallen to $0.13, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine to $0.14, and a week-long treatment of quinine has fallen to $2.68 —and in-creasingly more medications are fi l tering down into the undevel-oped world, malaria outbreaks continue. The disease may even be reintroduced into the United States.

In December 2006, Nature Genetics published a series of studies that examined the genetic makeup of the most deadly strain of the malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. Researchers were surprised by the parasite’s genetic diversity and its uncanny abil ity to adapt.

One of the lead researchers, Matthew Berriman of the Well-come Trust Sanger Institute, noted that “When we attack, the parasite responds and that is marked by the changes in the parasite DNA that we observe.” As drugs are used against the Plasmodium, the parasite wil l alter its genetic material to resist further “attacks.”

Yet, on the positive side, the studies also identif ied seven different genes in the microbe’s molecular structure that evolve more slowly than others, and such genes may become the pri-mary target of a forthcoming anti-malarial vaccine. Because other treatments have failed to eliminate the disease worldwide, developing an effective vaccine against malaria is considered to be “one of the most important research projects in public health.”

ConclusionsThe current battle against malaria has no apparent end in

sight. Bed nets and insecticides against the anopheles mos-quito, along with medications against the parasite itself, have shown some effectiveness in controll ing the disease, but ac-tually eradicating the outbreaks wil l prove more diff icult. Yet, with continued funding, continued international cooperation, and continued research, the global eradication of malaria is not a hope unfounded.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); www.cdc.gov/malaria/faq.htmThe White House, “White House Summit on Malaria,” Dec 2006; www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/malaria/Daily Bulletin, The United States Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, 15 December 2006, “Eight More African Countries to Receive US Anti-Malaria Help” by Kathryn McConnell; http://www.usmission.ch/DailyBulletin/2006/December/1215.pdfThe White House, “White House Summit on Malaria,” Dec2006; www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/malaria/The World Bank, “World Bank Approves $180 million to Help Nigeria’s Fight Against Malaria”; http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/ 0,,contentMDK:21160343~menuPK:34463~pagePK:34370VOA News, “HIV and Malaria Contribute to Each Other’s Spread” by Rose Hoban, 12 December 2006; http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-12-12-voa58.cfmSciDev.net, “Malaria Parasite ‘Has Many Tools to Infect Humans,’” 11 December 2006; http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=3278&language=1VOA News, “Scientists Hail New Malaria DNA Research” by Jessica Berman, 10 December 2006; http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-12-10-voa24.cfm

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Stephen Lewis

he common perception that United Nations envoys are l itt le more than mere figureheads or glorif ied diplomats has been completely shattered in the person of Stephen

Lewis. In 2001, then-secretary-general Kofi Annan appointed the 64-year-old Canadian to be the first special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. On Dec. 31, 2006, Lewis’ tenure came to an end: not with a whimper, but with a bang.

For five and a half years Lewis made numerous visits to Africa, observing first-hand the indescribable destruction that AIDS has wrought on that continent. He has been a passionate advocate for each and every infected person he has met - and for those he hasn’t.

Lewis has unhesitantly taken on all whom he feels have con-tributed to the problem, either through their acts of omission or commission. This has included the governments of the United States and South Africa. He has campaigned tirelessly in the UN headquarters, in corporate offices, in halls of government all over the planet and in the media.

Throughout his term as special envoy, Lewis traveled the world giving lectures. One such speech, delivered unscripted at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, was entit led Hu-man Rights Gone Wrong: A Pattern of World Indifference.

“This is a special opportunity for me because I don’t get to speak about the realm of human rights as much as I would l ike, and I would l ike to find a context which is applicable. It occurred to me that the appropriate context is that of the Millennium De-velopment Goals,” Lewis began, setting the stage for what was to follow.

“The Millennium Assembly of the United Nations was held in the year 2000 and was intended to deal with the question of glo-balization. Globalization was intensifying degrees of inequity in ways that no one imagined. It was necessary to find alternatives to the assumptions about globalization.”

These alternatives were contained in eight millennium goals, which every representative at the United Nations on that day

agreed to support and implement in all parts of the world. The goals are as follows: to cut poverty and hunger in half, to dra-matically reduce infant mortality rates, to dramatically reduce maternal mortality rates, to ensure every child who is eligible for primary school should be in primary school, to attempt to approximate some kind of gender equality, to turn back the pan-demics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, to reach a certain en-vironmental sustainabil ity, and to develop a shared partnership between the developed and developing world.

“Interestingly enough, human rights l ies at the heart of all those goals. Every single one of them is a fundamental human right,” Lewis declared emphatically, and then introduced the next section of his address by saying, “And I think that because the goals are not going to be reached in many countries, a number of issues which emerge from the questions of human rights need to be dealt with.”

One issue, according to Lewis, is that of civil and polit ical rights versus economic and social rights. As he told his audi-ence at the University of Alberta:

“In fact, the United States of America is very reluctant to ascribe rights to economic and social reality at all. Whether it ’s food or health or education or housing, the United States prefers to call those aspirational rights; not human rights. It ’s profound-ly important to recognize that they are contained in every single international covenant from the Universal Declaration of Human

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Rights on down. There is something grievous about refusing to recognize the economic and social rights in this world.”

The UN special envoy cited three primary threats to human rights around the globe.

“The first is the question of poverty. Poverty eviserates ev-erything. The reality of impoverishment in so many developing countries undermines the capacity of people to exercizse their rights in every single sector and domain. And what, in its own way, is most criminally negligent are the constant promises de-livered by the G8 countries in particular to attempt to reach the goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national product for foreign aid. There’s not a single one of the G8 countries which has even ap-proximated that target.

“Number two, there continue to be numbers of confl icts which do terrible damage on many continents and which eviserate the possibil i ty of the exercise of human rights. Take for example the continent of Africa, although it is by no means unique in this regard. How is it that the international community, which knows everything there is to know about what’s happening in northern Uganda, has never found it necessary to intervene or bring it to an end? And everybody in this audience knows about Darfur. We have an international convention called the Con-vention Against Genocide which requires countries who observe genocide to intervene, and the world has not found it possible to rescue the people of Sudan.

“The third factor which I want to raise is the pandemic of HIV and AIDS. And of course Africa, and southern and eastern Africa in particular, is the epicenter of that reality. How do you acquire human rights when, on every front, a virus is sabotaging their reality?

“For example, we have begun to provide treatment in south-ern Africa. Finally, after all these years, we’re gradually roll-ing out the antiretroviral drugs which wil l prolong life and give people some hope. But the roll out of treatment is so painfully slow and incremental! There are barely more than a mill ion people now being treated internationally; there are over six mil-l ion people who require treatment today. We wil l lose them all i f we don’t move more rapidly! We have the drugs at a price we can afford if the the Western world honors the commitments it has made.”

Although no longer the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Af-rica, Stephen Lewis continues to believe that - as he puts it - the struggle for the rights of humankind is the most noble struggle to be waged.

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Microfinance: Purveyor of Peace

“Dear Lord, give us the strength in our daily l ives, help us nurture love in our hearts and the abil ity to forgive...” The words come quietly from a circle of women holding hands in a coffee field nestled deep among the lush hil ls of Rwanda. When their prayer is f inished, they wil l take their hatchets and swing them among the tall coffee plants, creating moist patches of earth be-tween the greenery in the harvest of Rwanda’s main export.

The twelve women of this coffee cooperative are in business thanks to a microfinance loan tak-en out to purchase cof-fee plants for their f ield. What began some years ago as a prayer group to help rebuild trust among neighbors in post-geno-cide Rwanda has now developed into a small enterprise that brings profits, both financial and social, to the women and families involved.

Microfinance has widely been touted among development cir-cles as an innovative an-swer to poverty in an era of aid fatigue and disil lu-sionment. The 2005 No-bel Peace Prize was awarded to Muhammad Yunus and the Ban-gladeshi microfinance institution Grameen Bank on the grounds that “lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty.” And microfi-nance, in a very direct sense, helps groups do just that.

Microfinance challenges a “top-down” approach by targeting low-income groups who have in the past been barred from taking out legitimate bank loans. Loans average under $100 and pri-marily support agriculture, animal husbandry, and home-based enterprises. Microfinance Institution (MFI) banks are often just small houses, staffed by people who travel many kilometers by bicycle or motorbike on bumpy dirt roads in order to recover

dues.

In Rwanda, the small East African country best known for its “goril las and guerri l las in the mist,” mi-crocredit programs were among the first forms of assistance offered by in-ternational donors in the years following the 1994 genocide. The war had torn the country apart and devastated the social and economic systems, with over a mill ion people kil led or made refugees. Women were particularly hard-hit: thousands were victims of rape or physi-cal injuries, and many lost their husbands to impris-onment or death, subject-ing them to further eco-nomic deprivation—not to

mention the emotional trauma of l iving through such horrors.

Refugee women and widows were thus the primary focus for many of the first microfinance programs in post-war Rwanda. The programs flourished and a decade later, in 2005, there were

By Caya Kaad and Jenny Williams

Using The Microfinance Model For Conflict Resolution

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an estimated 230 institutions or NGOs that offered microcredit programs. Today, approximately one out of every eight Rwan-dans is an MFI client. Women are sti l l the primary recipients of loans—a ratio reflected by the award-winning Grameen Bank, where 96 per cent of the borrowers are women and the repay-ment rate is an astounding 98 per cent.

Bernadette’s coffee cooperative is just one example of the thousands of women’s groups engaged in income-generating activit ies that sprung up in Rwanda after the genocide. Micro-finance loans provide opportunities for women to engage in ac-tivit ies on a larger scale, offering better chances of escaping destitution. As Bernadette says, “Women patiently endure hard-ships—they are the spine of God. But they are also creators and menders of broken jars.”

Bernadette herself knows about mending what has been bro-ken. She and her husband were made refugees by the war in which they also lost three of their f ive children; they returned to their vil lage only to find that the neighbours who stole everything from them during the genocide were now too poor to pay them back.

After a few years in which she and her husband struggled to rebuild their l ives among the distrust and suspicion common in post-genocide Rwanda, Bernadette felt that something had to be done to reconcile the past. She init iated a praying group and invited vil lagers of all ethnic groups to join. The prayer group soon became a vibrant association, and some years later twelve women from the group joined together in taking out a loan from an MFI for the formation of the coffee cooperative. This coop-erative is unique in that it explicit ly counts both socioeconomic

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gains and peace building among its aims. Bernadette’s other endeavor also demonstrates how microfi-

nance can strengthen the socioeconomic position of rural wom-en. She and four of her neighbors created a solidarity group—in MFI terms, a group of three to eight people who share the re-sponsibil i ty for the debt of the loans that each member takes out, thus ensuring that if one person can’t pay, the others wil l cover the loss. From this, Bernadette has bought vegetable seeds for her gardens; she sells any surplus at the market and has managed to pay off the original loan and interest.

Init iatives such as Bernadette’s two microfinance-supported projects have enabled people to engage in activit ies that benefit the whole community. These cases i l lustrate how microfinance can promote networks of cooperation of different social groups (in this case, women from previously warring ethnic groups) and thus encourage peace. As the president of an MFI states, “Peace building should no longer only reside in words, but has to be practical and benefit the whole society.”

Some don’t necessarily make the connection between micro-f inance programs and peace building. A member of Bernadette’s solidarity group, a widow who lost her entire family save for three children, says, “I don’t think that improvement of l ivelihood and reconcil iation is l inked. A person who has love in the heart doesn’t f ind that poverty is a l imitation for reconcil iation... [It] is not only poor people who steal. If I ’m poor then I have to work harder to improve my livelihood. It ’s the task of the individual heart to find peace.”

She may be wise to be skeptical. Rwanda’s history reminds us that it is also important not to be seduced by scenarios that suit a standard narrative of “good development.” In the late 1980s, international donors portrayed Rwanda as one of the most democratic societies in Africa, with a closely-knit civil soci-ety based on many grassroots associations. Nonetheless, con-fl icts and the genocide sti l l occurred. Thus, one must consider the ideological tendencies of donor organizations and NGOs when accessing a country’s potential for poverty alleviation and lasting peace.

In Rwanda, the effectiveness of microfinance programs has proved to be a mixed bag. Group conflicts and lack of f inancial discipline in MFIs are problematic, especially after the genocide when the massive foreign aid coming into the country supported the establishment of many rogue MFIs. Employees stole money and some MFIs went bankrupt.

In addition, credit without training can be more akin to wel-fare than a means for long-term development or peace building.

Projects supported by microfinance loans must be able to earn enough for the clients to pay back their loans, but people are of-ten able to engage only in the trades they already know. Within microfinance programs, women generally have limited oppor-tunities to learn new trades or invest in businesses with higher potential for returns.

It ’s clear that microfinance, despite its promise of small-scale development and “bottom-up” approach, is weaved into a complex polit ical and socioeconomic setting. But the fact sti l l remains: abject poverty is one of the greatest challenges of the modern world, and its persistence severely tests the abil ity of men and women to l ive in peace together. At the very least, the socio-economic init iatives that spring from microfinance pro-grams give a reason for groups to collaborate and share ideas who might otherwise be isolated in their poverty.

Another member of Bernadette’s credit group says, “I don’t know about reconcil iation. I can’t see inside people’s hearts. I can only see what is happening and I see people cooperating and interacting again.”

For More on Microfinance:

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) (www.cgap.org)Microfinance Gateway (www.microfinancegateway.org)Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX)www.themix.org)Microbanking Bulletin (www.mixmbb.org)Microcredit Summit Campaign(www.microcreditsummit.org)Development Gateway (www.developmentgateway.org)Links and General Information (www.sipa.columbia.edu/students/micro/index.html)

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The Fortune at The Bottom Of The Pyramidhe words “poverty” and “the poor” oftentimes paint in the mind’s eye the images of outstretched hands asking for help, needing outside assistance in order to gain the

simple necessities of l i fe such as water, shelter, and clothing. This is why when C.K. Prahalad begins his book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, with the proposition that the 4 bil l ion or so impoverished at the bottom of the income pyramid may instead be viewed as consumers and entrepreneurs, the reader is immediately engaged in a new dialogue regarding the future of economics as we understand it. By redefining the “BOP” as a viable consumer group and therefore part of the solution and not the burden, Prahalad lends credible proof to the idea that the terms “the poor” and “purchasing power” can easily appear in the same sentence.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid then continues to expand on the idea by init iating the reader into a marketing strategy that simply states: Why target $100 units to tier one consumers who number between 75-100 mill ion when you can target $1 units to tier 5 consumers who number around 4 bil l ion? While the buying power of this bottom tier certainly cannot com-pare with the top tier, the sheer volume of consumers located in this echelon represent a dormant purchasing force which is only all-to-eager to be awakened. Prahalad cites product after product that uti l ized a break down of mainstream marketing and sales in order to break into this massive consumer arena. This includes rethinking the spending priorit ies of those mak-ing around $2.00 a day, as well as distribution, advertising, and even product composition alterations. One of the more amazing results, Prahalad i l lustrates, is that improving or adjusting prod-ucts and services for the poverty stricken directly impacts the quality of the product sold to the mainstream and wealthy con-sumer. This could be as intricate as designing technology that is more impervious to weather and terrain conditions, or as simple as making unit packaging smaller and more affordable, including individual and single-serve packages of shampoos, teas, and aspirin. Prahalad delivers the big bang towards the end of “part one” of his book by showing the eventual transformation of the economic pyramid into a diamond; the reader has to fight the impulse to stand up and cheer out loud.

The second part of Prahalad’s book goes into greater detail regard-ing documented success stories at the BOP in countries such as Peru, Brazil, and India. These success sto-ries span a range of innovations at a range of industries from health care to finances to agriculture. These case studies allow the author to lend to the reader the exploration of in-vestment benefits at the BOP level, as well as to i l lustrate the simultane-ous empowerment of the consumers. Several of the examples also demonstrate the way BOP markets have empowered women specifically, including financial organizations which lend only to women, and a cement manufacturer that extends credit for build-ing materials exclusively to women as well.

Prahalad’s book is a wonder. The simple equations he pres-ents for both consumer and industry benefits are staggeringly simple and, when executed correctly, shockingly lucrative for all parties involved. It is unfortunate, that The Fortune at the Bot-tom of the Pyramid oftentimes feels l ike required reading for an undergrad economics class; a lot of charts, graphs, and tables, not to mention an abundance of terminology to digest and apply for comprehension. However, if a reader is wil l ing to indulge the author in his tables and endnotes, the result is well worth the effort.

By Barbara Poelle

BOOK REVIEW

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