The Alliance between the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and SNV Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) has published a brochure (pdf, 20 pages) on its work in brokering new and inclusive business opportunities, i.e. sustainable business opportunities that are good business and benefit low-income communities, across Latin America.
The emphasis lies on brokering inclusive business opportunities between WBCSD member companies, members of the WBCSD Regional Network, and SNV's client base of small and medium enterprises, small producers, producer associations, as well as governments and municipalities. The Alliance's work program includes advocacy work to improve framework conditions for this type of inclusive business.
The brochure introduces the concept of inclusive business and presents the Alliance's work program across the 8 focus countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Peru), including examples of the business initiatives being pursued.
Other WBCSD-SNV Alliance publications:
Sounds like a great model. But advocacy for triple bottom line needs to include the impact of the products that are being utilized for inclusion of the poor in the value chain. I did a double take when I saw village women as entrepreneurs distributing Nestle products. Did this include the nefarious advocacy for infant forumla over breast feeding? And, in other instances, would it include distributing privatized bottled water as a substitute for local development of clean water resources? Similar questions can be asked about the local triple bottom line impact of agricultural products being incorporated into a multinational value chain; e.g. is food production replaced by commodity production because it better feeds a multinational bottom line? Potentially, with product impact safeguards, this is a great idea.
Posted by: Karl Ostrom | April 30, 2008 at 07:13 PM