experiencing life through an always-nuanced worldview.

I’m excited to be participating in Blog Action Day 2009!

Climate change and global warming are terms we are all familiar with and have heard a million times by now. While most of us know that climate change will affect all of us, what we don’t always talk about is how climate change will hit hardest those who are poorest.

The Millenium Development Goal #7 is addressing environmental sustainability, and makes a connection between global warming and poverty reduction:

Reducing poverty and achieving sustained development must be done in conjunction with a healthy planet. The Millennium Goals recognize that environmental sustainability is part of global economic and social well-being. Unfortunately exploitation of natural resources such as forests, land, water, and fisheries-often by the powerful few-have caused alarming changes in our natural world in recent decades, often harming the most vulnerable people in the world who depend on natural resources for their livelihood. [Source: End Poverty 2015]

It’s not surprising to me that climate change will affect the most those at the bottom of the pyramid. Not only will price increases (in the case of drought –> less grains / food –> increase in food prices, etc.) impact the most those with lower incomes, climate events such as droughts, heat waves, and storms will hit — literally — those who are the poorest. Those that live in areas that lack the infrastructure that could withstand severe weather conditions will undoubtedly face the impacts of storms and hurricanes. Farmers whose crops fail due to drought will have to find another way to sustain themselves and their families. The list goes on.

But instead of highlighting all the problems that climate change causes, it’s even more important to think about solutions — more specifically, the role social entrepreneurship could play in addressing global warming.  In reading C.K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, I came across a case study about a company that does just that.

Prahalad sheds light on the work of a rural energy finance company E+C0. E+Co found the connection between energy and poverty: one reason people cannot escape poverty is due to the lack of access to modern energy (mostly electricity) that allows them to be more productive. E+Co conducted a study and realized that the demand for electricity at the bottom of the pyramid exists, and that there is “potential for widescale adoption of renewable energy technologies” because the majority of costs for renewable energy is up front, while “fuel” costs (wind, solar, etc.) are essentially free (Prahalad 140).

E+Co’s mission was:

the provision of clean, modern energy to the world’s poor via locally developed, market-based solutions

E+Co emphasizes “energy through enterprise”; they seek entrepreneurs in developing markets to develop products and services that will meet the energy needs in the local communities. E+Co invests in these entrepreneurs or companies, one of them being Tecnosol, a company that “sells and installs distributed solar PV, wind, and hydroelectric power systems to mostly rural unelectrified populations throughout [Nicaragua]” (Prahalad 144) and has installed over 3,500 PV systems, 20 wind systems, and also some hydroelectric systems (145).

Here, we see a pretty interesting partnership being forged between a company (E+Co) that is the investor and local entrepreneurs and companies that serve its communities and target a need (energy – clean energy).

Another example of a successful partnership working towards sustainability is one I’ve highlighted in my research paper on social entrepreneurship I wrote over the summer.

A successful three-way alliance between entrepreneurial BOP business WasteConcern, large fertilizer company Map Agro, and the Bangladeshi government solved a waste buildup problem in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In short, WasteConcern identified the market opportunity to convert the majority of the waste generated – food – into compost for rural agriculture businesses to use as organic fertilizer to produce more food, generating a mutually beneficial and sustainable cycle. In order to implement the project, Waste Concern approached Map Agro, the largest fertilizer company in Bangladesh that had the resources and capital to transform and produce the organic compost.

In both of these examples, we see a partnership being forged through a market-based approach that BOP businesses to address a particular need within the communities.

I am personally really excited by success stories such as these, and I think it’s really important to remember that while global warming statistics and the situation in general is dire and sometimes seems hopeless, that is just more reason we cannot give up. Taking a social entrepreneurial approach to climate change is one that I am particularly interested in, although it is most definitely not the only solution!

Personally, I often feel like I don’t do enough in attempting to address climate change. I have made adjustments in my lifestyle to be more sustainable, and am (and have been) involved in student organizations that work towards sustainability. But I never feel like it’s enough. And while it is true that “something is better than nothing,” that’s not good enough for me. We should all be looking to be more sustainable in our lives and be more aware of the impact we have on our planet. Wherever we are now in individual progress now, it’s awesome, but that should not be the stopping point. I am going to make more of an effort to be more environmentally-friendly in my lifestyle, and strive even more towards sustainability in whatever I do.

Today, I’m starting off by this Blog Action ’09 post on climate change. Tomorrow, it will be something else–OK, I’ll be on my way to LA for the weekend..but carpooling with two other friends!

What are you going to do to make your lifestyle more sustainable? How are you going to address global warming today? Comment and let’s share ideas!

The Berkeley Hunger & Homelessness Conference 2009 is an event that I’ve been working to put on, along with other student organizations on campus, for a while now. It seems like (or I hope that) there will be quite a few attendees, and we have a pretty good variety and range of speakers.

A group of students on campus have also made a short student documentary on homelessness in Berkeley. We previewed the documentary yesterday at our meeting, and I must say – it looks fantastic, and I hope that those attending our event will enjoy it as well. The short documentary can be viewed here: it includes interviews with UC Berkeley students, a UC Berkeley professor, formerly and currently homeless individuals, and volunteers at homeless shelters.

My hope is that this conference will encourage dialogue and discussion about just what “homelessness” means, and hopefully address and dispel stereotypes and the stigma around homelessness. Furthermore, I hope that the conference will increase awareness about the food insecurity that exists in West Oakland (53 liquor stores, 0 grocery stores), discuss the inextricable linkage between hunger and homelessness, and address “sustainability” also as an overarching topic –

1. How does the lack of grocery stores in West Oakland affect our local food distribution?
2. Why is “homelessness” as an issue in Berkeley unsustainable?
3. How do we address these issues on a local level so as to become a more sustainable city?

And, most importantly, discuss what students and the community could do to alleviate hunger and homelessness. Although I feel that there are larger issues and steps that must be taken to truly address hunger and homelessness, the first step is awareness and education about these issues, and hopefully this conference will do just that.

As Obama said himself from The Huffington Post article,

“Part of the change in attitudes that I want to see here in Washington and all across the country,” [he said], “is a belief that it is not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

I will update here after the actual conference with (hopefully) positive thoughts and reactions. Until then!

The conference definitely exceeded my expectations. We had over 120 participants, and a diverse crowd. I really enjoyed hearing Osha Neumann speak about the stigma that surrounds “homelessness”: the way people refer to those who do not have houses “the homeless”, even though we don’t refer to people who do have houses “the housed.” I noticed that there was a lot of discussion about being “politically correct”, if you may call it that – otherwise, I guess we can just say our sensitivity, in referring to those without houses “homeless” or categorizing the “problem” as “homelessness.” I can now say that I do feel self-conscious whenever I say “the homess”, and yet I don’t know whether saying “those who are homeless” is any better. I’ve never really been good at being PC…regardless of the term.

One example that Osha Neumann gave that was just so telling of how unequal, corrupt, and fundamentally messed up about our society: someone who was chased, arrested, and jailed for stealing $6.50 worth of food/etc. from a store, versus those on Wall Street that stole millions and billions of dollars and there was so much debate over how to “punish” these people. This is what we call a double standard, and in this case, it should NOT exist! When he put it that way, it was just so dumbfounding and absurd to me…

I also enjoyed hearing Robert Ratner, Housing Administrator of Behavioral Health Care Services in Alameda County, speak about EveryOne Home. I’m not going to lie – I don’t know much about housing policy and legislative policies both regionally and nationally over the years, so I don’t have much commentary about this. However, I do have a description of EveryOne Home’s mission:

EveryOne Home envisions a system of care in Alameda County that by 2020, ensures all extremely low-income residents have a safe, supportive and permanent place to call home with services available to help them stay housed and improve the quality of their lives.

I think that the conference overall was a success: it brought together many different student groups (even more than the three – Cal Habitat for Humanity, The Suitcase Clinic, and CalPIRG - that had planned the conference), people from the community – both “the housed” and “the homeless” (trying to avoid having to be PC when mentioning these “two groups”..blah I don’t know how), and people of all ages. I hope it was helpful, informational, and maybe even inspirational for those who attended… This conference could become an annual event. But we’ll have to see about that.

Until then, please enjoy the new theme I installed, NOT (obviously) made by me. I like what they call a “Life Stream” — it’s like a newsfeed of (almost) everything in my social media life!