Press conference ON ENVIRONMENTAL AWARDS

 

The five winners of the first cycle of SEED Awards for entrepreneurship in sustainable development were announced today at a Headquarters press conference by a panel of officials in the environmental and development organizations, in the context of the thirteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development.

The winners represented a veritable “how-to manual” of small-scale, bottom-up partnerships that linked community and business, science and livelihood, and environment and development, according to Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Joining Mr. Toepfer in presenting the award winners were Olav Kjorven, Director of the Energy and Environmental Group of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and Achim Steiner, Director General, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).

SEED stood for Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development and was inspired by the need for private-sector partnerships highlighted by the outcome of the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development, Mr. Kjorven explained.  The winners were chosen from among 263 small-scale partnerships submitted.

Mr. Steiner said that the awards were a way of documenting the fact that real people were working on practical ways to change business to meet the goals of the Johannesburg Summit at the small-scale level, where new ideas could be found.  They were also a way of encouraging the risk-taking that entrepreneurship required when it was built on new ideas, and to raise the profile of those kinds of initiatives.

After the panellists’ statements, Mr. Kjorven introduced the principals of the winning projects:

-- “Cows to Kilowatts”, of Nigeria, in which community groups joined with researchers from Thailand and elsewhere to instal a biogas plant that extracted energy from abattoir effluents and help relieve pollution.

-- “Environmentally-friendly Rice”, of Cambodia, Madagascar and Sri Lanka, a collaboration between farmers, researchers and businesses, in which systems of rice intensification are used in a multiple beneficial manner.

-- “Seabuckthorn Berries into Business”, of Nepal, in which the vitamin-rich berries are harvested in a sustainable way for local consumption and export.  The project helps to improve livelihoods and to safeguard indigenous knowledge and biodiversity.

-- “Indian Ocean Wonderland”, of Madagascar, a partnership between the local community, international non-governmental organizations and researchers for the first experimental, community-run Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the country.

-- “Water for All,” of Bolivia, a community/private sector partnership which provides access to low-cost water to the municipality of Cochabamba.

In addition the five winners, $40,000 would be made available to two of the 12 runner-up projects.  “We don’t want only to praise”, Mr. Toepfer said, “we also want to invest.”

After the presentation of the winners, a correspondent asked how Governments were cooperating with the initiatives, especially those involving indigenous people.  The representative of the Bolivian water project said that the UNDP was acting as facilitator between the project and the municipal government.

The involvement of so many entities was one of the objectives of SEED, Mr. Toepfer said.  “The eye-opening effect for others is one of the most important effects”, he concluded.

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