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SUNDAY, MARCH 25, 2007

Climate change: It's getting personal

Out of the six billion-or-so people on the planet, two out of three probably aren't in much of a position to do anything about it right now. They're either too busy trying to get their next meal together, or scratching a living off a few dollars or less a day. We're talking climate change, and as citizens of the developed world we're being told more and more that we should take our share of responsibility and act. After all, we're the lucky ones who can.

In the UK, climate change is top of the agenda. I've been back only a week and the newspapers are full of adverts and government advice on how we, as consumers, should be doing our bit. We have an incredibly important role to play, yet many of us still don't yet seem to realise it. Why aren't we getting the message? Is asking people to walk the short distance to a local shop really such a problem? Or to not leave things on standby? Or to turn the heating down a notch or two and put a jumper on? On the plus side people at least seem more aware of climate change. But getting them to take that next step and change their habits seems, for many, to be an "ask too far".

In an attempt to speed them along, Christian Aid have recently been running some hard hitting newspaper campaigns in the UK (I'm not sure if they're doing the same in the US). At the same time, interest continues to grow in devices such as "standby savers", which will do what most consumers appear resistant to do and kill the power to their beloved consumer devices when they're not being used. As a recent Economist article explains:

"Strange though it seems, a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food. For while heating food requires more than 100 times as much power as running the clock, most microwave ovens stand idle - in standby mode - more than 99% of the time. And they are not alone. Many other devices, such as televisions, DVD players, stereos and computers also spend much of their lives in standby mode, collectively consuming a huge amount of energy"

If doing something as simple as unplugging things at the wall at night reduces energy consumption in the home by as much as 20%, why are so few people doing it? Maybe breaking the global population down into segments may help us understand behaviourally why some people may or may not be interested - or care - about the climate change issue.

Here's a very rough attempt for starters:

On the basis of these very, very rough figures, it looks as though only 300 million people, or approximately 5% of the total world population, would actually be willing or able to change their behavioural habits based on the climate change issue. For the environmentalists, this segment would be classed as "in the bag", so-to-speak. We have a number of segments above this hardcore group, and these are the ones needing to be targeted by advertising and educational campaigns. Clearly each segment would require a different 'marketing' approach based on a range of unique drivers for their non-engagement, and maybe this is what's been missing.

I wonder if anyone is working on this?

FRIDAY, MARCH 09, 2007

Technology-aided aid

I'm always interested in innovative ways of getting aid directly to those who need it in the most timely and efficient manner possible. Kiva deals beautifully with one aspect of this - linking lenders in the 'developed' world with borrowers in 'developing' countries. But when it comes to financial aid to many of the rural poor - the man or woman on the street, so-to-speak - no mechanism exists (I don't count giving to charity as being a direct donation, by the way). Not only is it a technical challenge to facilitate a direct donation (although mobile payments will soon unlock that particular door) there are other trickier issues, such as what we know about these individuals, or their needs and particular circumstances.

In times of famine or hardship, the typical Western response is to send over plane-loads of food aid. Although this might seem like the most logical thing to do, often it overlooks the chief cause of the famine. Lack of food generally comes below politics, political instability, access to resources and markets, and civil conflict in the famine equation. In other words, it's rarely about a 'simple' lack of food. And flooding a country with food aid creates its own problems, from feeding the militia in conflict situations to destroying what's left of the local and national agricultural market systems.

So, is there an alternative? Well, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) seem to think so, and they've just started a $3 million pilot project to prove it. They'll be providing cash payments instead of food to tens of thousands of hungry people in northern Malawi. You can't get more direct than that. Although the full impact - and effectiveness - of the program won't be known for some time, the signs look good. As with many microfinance projects in developing countries, women are the main recipients of the cash, and many take their money and head straight to local markets to buy food. This keeps the local economy moving and the agriculture sector bouyant. That's one problem solved, and two avoided, on my count.

(Incidentally, direct payments are nothing new in the conservation world. They've been tried for some years with varying degrees of success. The process is pretty much the same - give the conservation dollars directly to the people living in the conservation area, and encourage them to help preserve their environment through their pockets. I've always quite liked the concept, but appreciate how controversial it is. A PDF paper on conservation direct payments is available here).

Meanwhile, back in Malawi, you may be wondering what this project has to do with technology. Well, administering a system where piles of cash are handed out to tens of thousands of naturally very willing recipients needs to be effectively managed and controlled. So, each of the villagers in the scheme are fingerprinted, and their details held on a smart card which they present at pay-out.

The whole idea of making direct payments is appealing to both the donor and the recipient. If it works it could take hold as an entirely new model for delivering aid, providing it is scalable. The fact that a simple and tested technology has proved to be a key enabler makes it all the more interesting, to me at least.
 

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2007

To Kate. 21/02/06

what i'd like to see
is that table where you once sat
covered in beautiful flowers.

it would remind me
of you.

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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2007

Inspiring the local [by default]

I'm all for local solutions to local problems. Or even locally-inspired solutions to local (or national) problems. Or nationally-inspired solutions to local or national problems. I think you get the picture. But one thing I'm not quite so keen on is the default state of international solutions to local problems, or national problems in some cases. Sure, you can quite rightly argue that certain solutions need to be developed internationally to obtain economies of scale, particularly if your solution involves manufacturing, or if you're working on the environment or in the health arena (after all, malaria is malaria, wherever you are). Just take the One Laptop Per Child Project, or OLPC, for example. For all it's good and bad points - and I'm not going to go into any of those here - it troubles me on two interconnected fronts. Firstly, it's international trying to solve local, and secondly, it really doesn't need to be. Once again we've reverted to the 'default state' (one day I'll draw up a diagram of how this should work. I keep getting asked what my 'model' is!).

(One point I'd like to quickly clarify here is my own belief in providing tools and not solutions wherever possible. Capacity-building is generally far more effective this way. This blog entry, however, deals with the issue of "solutions" because these are usually what's offered. Hopefully one day this will also change).

With all the hype around the OLPC project you could have easily thought that it was the only computer-based 'digital divide' solution in town. Well, you'd be wrong. It's quite possible that you may not have heard of some of the others, despite the big names behind them. How about the Eduwise laptop from Intel, or FonePlus by Microsoft? No? Maybe..? Okay, the Personal Internet Communicator from AMD, the chip maker? These are all being touted as THE solution to the digital divide problem (that's providing internet connectivity/IT to the worlds' poor, to you and me). A couple of these solutions use similar, but others distinctly different, technical approaches. But the one thing they have in common is they are all US-based responses to problems outside of the US.

Ever heard of NetTV, NETPC or Novatium? Well, soon you could be hearing a lot more. Ramesh Jain, one of the men behind Novatium, is an Indian. Not surprisingly he knows India, and he's working on his own (not surprisingly, Indian) solution to India's own digital divide. Luckily for Ramesh (if that's the right word to use), his government rejected an offer of a million OLPC's on the grounds that they were too expensive. His solution - a unit based on a cheap cell-phone chip, no hard drive, a keyboard, a screen and a couple of USB ports - comes in right on the $100 mark (OLPC is hovering around $140 these days). What's more, Ramesh believes he can get the price down to nearer $70.

What's so different about the two approaches - other than the obvious technical ones and the fact that one is a national and the other an international solution - is that Negroponte's OLPC is based on heavy subsidies from private and public philanthropy. Ramesh is in it to make money. OLPC- and NetPC-style initiatives often lack sustainability, a 'minor' issue which often ends up totally spoiling the party. Look at the history books - the superhighway is scattered with the remains of initiatives forced to leave early with their USB cables dangling between their legs.

Now, a local or national approach to the problem, based on a socially-focussed business model? That could just work. It certainly ticks all the right boxes for me.

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2007

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

There are many many good, dedicated, passionate people out there - struggling against the odds - working in developing countries to help improve the lives of some of the poorest and most marginalised people. Let's make no mistake, these odds are regularly stacked against them. Corruption, world trade systems, lack of resources, the impact of global warming, natural disasters, you name it.

This week I read about another. They're called Vulture Funds. And I felt sick.

Vulture Funds work like this. A company 'buys' the debt of a developing country from the original lender, often at a reduced rate (since they're often about to be written off), and then sues the original borrower for the initial sum, plus escalated fees and interest. What's more, it's legal and 'recognised' by the International Monetary Fund, among others.

These Funds came to my attention this week while I was reading a news story from Zambia. A $4 million debt (money lent by the Romanian Government back in 1979, incidentally) had been purchased by one of these Funds, which then won a court case against the Government of Zambia for payment of $42 million by way of settlement. Yes, you heard that right - $42 million. A Zambian presidential adviser and consultant to Oxfam pointed out that $42 million was equal to all the debt relief the country received in 2006. "It also means the treatment, the Medicare, the medicines that would have been available to in excess of 100,000 people in the country will not be available".

How do these people sleep at night? Sure, if you borrow money then it's only right that it's paid back. But chasing down some of the poorest countries in the world like this, to me, is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2007

It's capacity building, stupid..!

Most of us know the story about teaching a man to fish. It goes something like this. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he can feed himself and his family forever, or at least a lot longer than one day. I have a similar story, but with a slightly different ending.

Benson in Zambia needs to dig a hole. The way most international aid works today, we'd fly a team over and dig the hole for him. We'd bring over the spades, use consultants to decide the hole's parameters, and then return home with the spades. The hole might be the wrong shape, or the wrong depth, and in the wrong place, but it's a hole, right? You may ask why we're digging it. Benson knows where his hole needs to be, the optimum depth and shape. Why aren't we giving him the spade, and letting him to do the rest? And, hey, with a spade he can then go and maybe dig holes for other people, and maybe make a little money along the way.

Okay, this may be a simplistic version of capacity building, but it's so obviously the way we should be going it's quite amazing that it's still not standard - or even best - practice. Many ICT programs simply replicate these old models. The "West" holds the intellectual property over the systems, they're developed in our capital cities, they give us jobs, they're often big and grand and expensive, and we then let them loose in the developing world. Hey, some even work! But I still wonder why we don't let developing nations develop their own solutions. As with Benson and his spade, all they need are the tools and a little help, and they're well capable of doing the work themselves. They understand their predicament more than many of us could ever do.

While I was in Bangalore last December for the W3C Workshop, I had the pleasure to hear first-hand about an amazing project being run by Nathan Eagle, an MIT Research Scientist based at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. The EPROM project (IT experts will get the irony!), or Entrepreneurial Programming and Research On Mobiles, aims to foster mobile phone-related research and entrepreneurship at Kenya's leading university. Students are taught how to program mobile phones, and develop applications, for use within the university, within their communities, and nationally. Quite simply it's a brilliant idea, and an example of capacity building at its finest.

If you dig around it's still possible to find little gems like this, but it's a shame we have to look so hard. Initiatives such as EPROM and Kiva (see the blog entry below) are setting the new standard. They're breaking the mould for how we go about "helping" the developing world. As many of us may already know, it's not really help they need. It's the tools. There are some very bright people over in Africa too, you know.

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2007

Joining the dots the Kiva way

An old expression, maybe, but "that idea is so simple I don't know why I never thought of it" applies almost on a weekly or monthly basis when you're tapped into the Silicon Valley technology/academic environment. Take YouTube. The idea seems like a no-brainer, but to take it from nothing to a $1.6 billion venture in less than two years really gets you thinking... What will be next? Can I get a slice of the action? Will Google spot me?

For a few years now I've been racking my brains trying to come up with ways technology can be used to connect donors and recipients, and build social networks to support and sustain it. I'm convinced that people would take more of an interest in what their money does if they can give it, or in the case of Kiva lend it, directly to the person that needs it. Traditional donations are relatively untargeted and given with an almost blind faith. How many people know what happened to the $10 they gave to the Asian tsunami appeal? Has it bought someone a fishing net, or helped them repair their boat, or their home? Or is it still sitting in a bank account waiting to be spent?

Kiva is, dare I say it, such an amazingly simple yet brilliant idea it's pretty amazing that no-one (me included!) never thought of it earlier. Kiva lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur, or small business-person, in the developing world - empowering them to lift themselves from poverty. Not only does it provide a platform to make that virtual connection, it also creates an emotional one. Furthermore, it's a loan, not a donation, so your $50 or whatever can be used over and over again. And you get to see it working.

Kiva is relatively new - it will celebrate its second birthday around Easter - yet it continues to expand both geographically (it recently launched in France) and in reach (new microfinance institutions are coming on board the whole time). It's a perfect example of how technology can be used in a positive, constructive way. And it's sustainable.

Who knows what's next. Maybe I'll think of something. But Kiva certainly raises the bar, and long may it continue to do so.

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2007

Five ways to reconnect

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MONDAY, JANUARY 08, 2007

What next for the Inconvenient Truth?

Al Gore has done an amazing job of publicising the global warming phenomenon. Road shows, documentary films and books have all at one time or another been conduits for his environmental message. And powerful it is. But the problem remains little understood, it seems, in the American press. Many of those that bother to take any interest still maintain that global warming is a myth, or some kind of conspiracy by the Greens, or just plain wrong. The truth, inconvenient as it may be, is that there is absolutely no dispute among scientists that the planet is warming. Whatever chart or computer model you look at quite clearly shows that the environment is warming, that it started to increase at an unprecedented rate following the industrial revolution, and that last year was the warmest on record (even beating 2005 which, ironically, was previously the warmest).

The dispute is whether or not human activity is the cause of this unprecedented warming, or whether what we're seeing - or should that be feeling? - is just part of a natural cycle. But it makes a complex subject even more difficult for everyday folk to grasp when even the press don't seem to be able to explain the basis of the argument properly. Maybe it's another ploy by lobbyists, that strange 'phenomenon' that seems to dominate so much of American politics.

Today the west coast of the United States, around California, was several degrees warmer than it should have been. I had a great time chilling out in my VW camper van. Bees were busy pollinating newly bloomed flowers (not a good sign) and people were busy walking around in t-shirts, eating ice cream, enjoying the sunshine. Ski resorts further inland were shut just like many in Europe, with absolutely zero snow to speak of. And experts interviewed for one of the national TV stations didn't seem to think it had anything to do with global warming. No wonder people on the street are confused. In a nation which more than any needs to take serious action, they aren't even at the point of acceptance, let alone action. By all means dispute the causes of global warming, because democratic processes allow that, but don't deny that it's happening, please! That doesn't help anyone.

If Al Gore was to write a sequel to his 'Inconvenient Truth' it should probably be called 'Cruel Irony'. Because the cruel irony of the whole global warming saga is that it's going to be those people, and most likely those countries, which have done least to contribute to the problem that will suffer the most. Once again, Africa looks like being particularly hard hit. But in one further twist, Australia - one of the few industrialised countries which sides with the United States and disputes global warming, and refuses to even discuss curbing greenhouse emissions - is right now suffering what many believe to be its most severe drought in a thousand years. Politicians, fuelled by public opinion, increasing concern and a steep rise in farmer suicides, have finally begun facing up to the possibility that something really is happening. For many, if this is the future for Australia then something needs to be done, and fast. Better late than never.

The United States has suffered its fair share of adverse weather over the past year or so, with the destruction in New Orleans dominant in most people's minds, and a record hurricane season to boot. But many Americans haven't yet had their 'Australia moment', nothing major enough to cause a big enough shift of opinion. But how major does it have to be - bigger than Hurricane Katrina?

That change will come. Americans won't be immune forever. But for all of our sakes, please make it sooner rather than later. The clock is ticking for all of us.

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