Pollinate Energy might have the solution.
One of the critical aspects of the negotiations this week has been the ongoing stalemate between development and climate action. While many developing countries are making incredible changes in order to decrease their emissions, such as efforts by China, Mexico and South Africa to mainstream renewable power within their energy matrix, there remains a critically strategic wall between developed and developing nations in terms of their ability and willingness to commit to roll out mitigation commitments based on renewable energy solutions that cross the divides between mitigation and adaptation.
And who could blame them. The cowardice of colonially developed nations not taking responsibility for the historical and ongoing massacre of the earth’s biosphere is abhorrent to a level that I can do nothing but commend developing nations’ negotiators for having the inner strength not to throw punches in the negotiating rooms, but to continue to push the process forward. One small stress-ridden, sleepless step at a time.
But in order to move these discussions forward, and create the type of post-2020 agreement that we all may be proud of, we are going to have to find innovative ways of connecting the nexus between adaptation, mitigation and development. Some examples of these type of innovative cross-over solutions were on display today at the UNFCCC side event on Addressing climate change while improving the lives of the urban poor.
As Farhna Yamin, moderator of the event and leading expert on the link between climate change and development policy noted that we now need to look for “solutions that cross the stale boundary between mitigation and adaptation.” If we can find these, we can change “the very way we think and approach the solutions to climate change.”
She’s right, in my own work with the Hydro-Empowerment network, developing community-based renewable energy systems across Asia, I have seen it. There is incredible potential. When you enable a community to take control of their own electricity generation in a way that builds on the environmental and social fabric of that community, you unlock an unlimited potential to not only alleviate energy and economic poverty, but also allow them to replace diesel generator systems, decrease deforestation and enable improved disaster preparedness.
This is also the story of Pollinate Energy, and their co-founder Katerina Kimmorley. As Katarina explained, Pollinate Energy was originally inspired while flying over the top of “world’s largest black-out, where 700 million people lost power across India” in 2012.
Following this inspiring experience, Katerina and a small but dedicated team developed a business model for distributing small scale, rechargeable solar power lights within slums around Bangalore. This was what she described as her “effort to solve mitigation challenges at an urban level” but at the same time combat indoor pollution from kerosene lamps, which have contribute to unimaginably high death rates, particularly among small children.
What’s more, she found a way to link this to poverty alleviation through a business model which puts community-based entrepreneurs at the heart of her mitigation efforts.
“We incubate local entrepreneurs – they go out to their communities and provide solar solutions to their communities”.
As a social business, local entrepreneurs will sell the small solar lights within their communities, and “the families pay back what they would in kerosene for 5 weeks”. After that, “they own solar systems that can last for the next 20 years”.
While this may not seem to some analysts here like a solution for solving the world’s energy problems, Pollinate Energy has expanded rapidly over the past 18 months, and has plans to cover the whole of India.
“In the last 18 months, we have reached over 500 urban slum communities across Bangalore, saving our customers 8.8 million Rupees in Kerosene. We have the aim of being in 15 cities in 2016 – reaching half a million people”, Katarina said.
But the potential to implement community-based solutions also lies in community-level governance systems that can use social ties to share resources and adapt to climate change.
This was highlighted by Dr. Vanesa Castan Broto from the University College of London, who described her own research with “Public-private-people-partnerships”. In her work with slum communities around Maputo, Mozambique, Dr Broto has found that community-based adaptation systems can not only increase resilience within poor urban communities, but that it can also result in significant cost saving measures.
Both of these approaches to climate change are experimental in nature, but Dr. Broto argued that,
“I really do believe in the power of experiments, I know people really like to make grand strategies but I think we can do a lot more through action”.
It is exactly this blending of action that is so often lacking within the UNFCCC negotiations. Understandably so, as national policies literally affect millions of people, and in some cases, billions.
But one has to think that given the urgency of our collective cause, that it is exactly this blend of experimentation and action that we will need to bridge the divides between developed and developing nations in the lead up to a global deal on climate change.
Of course, this cannot happen outside the confines of equity, historical responsibility and science – but one has to think that it can only be through political moves that mirror these social innovations that we will ever be able to bridge the gap between poverty alleviation and climate change.
*Image courtesy of Pollinate Energy’s incredible website, available here http://pollinateenergy.org/solution/