WBCSD-SNV Alliance: Creating inclusive business opportunities by linking local communities with big business

Advancing poverty reduction and rural livelihoods through sustainable commercial forestry

International companies investing in developing countries need to purposely plan for social equity and community participation in their commercial operations, right from the start - in addition to the usual profitability and environmental impact considerations. This is the main conclusion from the recent review of The Forests Dialogue's Forests & Poverty Reduction Initiative.

Called Advancing Poverty Reduction & Rural Livelihoods Through Sustainable Commercial Forestry (pdf, 29 pages), the review notes that: "The complex connection between forests and human livelihoods has led some to view forests as poverty traps, providing sufficient resources to maintain forest-dependent populations but not generating enough wealth to enable these populations to escape poverty."

Understanding the business contribution to development: Oxfam Poverty Footprint

Companies around the world are increasingly concerned about the impacts that their businesses have on societies in their home countries as well as abroad. For many companies operating in developing countries, impacts on society are related to the effects of their operations on development and poverty reduction, and in turn play an important role in determining the success of the business itself. Understanding the links between business and development can highlight real opportunities for enlightened businesses to make a positive difference.

In a recent paper (pdf, 14 pages), Oxfam set out to explain its Poverty Footprint Methodology, which helps companies to comprehensively understand how their operations affect the people in their value chains and the communities and countries where they operate. The methodology combines local assessments of livelihood impacts, value chain analysis, and an assessment of economic contributions into one comprehensive approach.

The nexus between information and communications technologies and social inclusion

A new World Economic Forum report titled Scaling Opportunity:  Information and Communications Technology for Social Inclusion analyzes how ICT is evolving to address the social and economic needs of the poor. The study notes that, as 4 billion people have access to the global communications infrastructure, the opportunity to create innovative and inclusively tailored solutions for connecting the unconnected is extraordinary.

The report notes that a primary catalyst of change in closing the connectivity gap is the accelerated adoption of mobile phones within emerging economies. Robust market competition, affordable pricing, liberalized regulation and bottom-up innovation have coalesced to create a vibrant multistakeholder ecosystem.

Best of inclusivebusiness.org in 2009

Happy New Year to our readers! We appreciate your continued interest in our work. A warm thanks also to those readers that provide comments and send through suggestions for topics. Keep them coming! To kick off the year, here is the “best of” list of the most popular articles posted on inclusivebusiness.org in 2009 in both English and Spanish.

German primer on inclusive business

The Emergia Institute has published a German primer on inclusive business titled Entwicklungsgeschäfte - Geschäfte machen gegen Armut (pdf, 92 pages) with the aim of offering a comprehensive, practical and engaging entry point for all companies, entrepreneurs and development experts who want to learn more about how to fight poverty through business.

The publication consists of three parts: Part I introduces the concept of inclusive business, the benefits and challenges to doing business with people in poverty; part II describes how to develop an inclusive business model from design to implementation and growth; and part III highlights promising sectors and countries.

Access to energy in low-income markets: what are the best business models?

1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity. 3 billion people still use traditional biomass for cooking. This has serious consequences on the affected populations in terms of health, education, well-being, or development.

A recent report (pdf, 2.2 MB) highlights different projects allowing energy access to poor sections of the population from developing countries. The study, produced by Ashoka, the world’s largest association of social entrepreneurs, and Hystra, a global consulting firm focused on addressing social and environmental problems, highlights that “market-based solutions for access to energy are powerful, necessary, and are ready to scale up. Entrepreneurs are in urban and rural areas, serving the needs of low-income people for cooking, lighting, communications, and income generation.”