Theme
Environmental Action & Climate Change

This content is also available in: Español, Português

"In 2015 and 2016, ANDE held roundtables on green inventing in Brazil, India, Kenya, Mexico, and South Africa with a diverse group of participants. The report compiles the findings from these discussions, from desk research, and from interviews with subject matter experts on the areas where invention-based entrepreneurs who promote environmental responsibility require ecosystem-level support in order to succeed."

READ MORE

"The international community is focusing ever-greater attention on green and inclusive business (GIB) models. But, while their relevance for solving social and environmental solutions is increasingly accepted, the question of how to support GIB models in development cooperation programmes is less clear. This Green and Inclusive Business Toolbox attempts to provide some options to tackle this issue. This toolbox defines green and inclusive business (GIB) models and describes the major challenges and opportunities GIBs face. It contains various examples of best practices regarding approaches from GIZ projects that work in the field of promoting green and inclusive businesses. The Green and Inclusive Business Toolbox aims to provide planning officers, project leaders and staff involved in private sector development and other sector projects with a set of tried-and-tested tools."

READ MORE

"This report identifies challenges and success factors for small, micro and medium businesses (SMME) in South Africa that use an inclusive business approach. It provides policy recommendations on how to support SMME spread their potential to tackle social and environmental problems in South Africa."

READ MORE

"The following report builds upon desk research as well as key observations from the workshop, "Financing Renewable Energy in South East Asia" workshop held in Phnom Penh in December, 2017. The event was an opportunity to address the current challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to access finance in SEA (with a geographic focus on Cambodia and Myanmar). We hope that this work will educate entrepreneurs on the type of financing available to them as well as serve as a reference for donors on why certain financing schemes are relevant and more successful in the RE sector and in the SEA region."

READ MORE

"From investments in publicly listed corporations based on environmental, social, and governance factors, to bonds issued to fund climate and environmental improvements; from micro-credit to small retailers through innovative credit assessments, to parametric insurance products improving the disaster resilience of countries, the world of sustainable finance is growing and becoming increasingly diverse.

In this report, we take a closer look at these innovations and more, highlighting how they are working to mobilize private-sector capital at scale to address social and environmental challenges. We also explore recent developments and potential opportunities in Asia's four largest economies: China, India, Japan, and Indonesia."

READ MORE

"The objective of this "Environmental Policy Toolkit for SME Greening" is to help governments in the European Union's Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) to design and implement key instruments to promote environmental compliance and green business practices among SMEs using the existing good practices in EU and other OECD countries.

The Toolkit focuses predominantly on environmental policy instruments to promote green behaviour of SMEs. It covers three categories of instruments: regulatory simplification and incentives, information-based tools (which comprise both providing advice and guidance to businesses and providing their customers and the public at large with information about their green practices), as well as financial and economic incentives."

READ MORE

"In this paper, we carry out a literature review of the studies investigating the factors that affect the performance and growth of clean technology start-up firms. The importance of clean-tech start-ups lies in their mission to protect the environment by facilitating the increased use of clean energy and environmentally friendly solutions. At the same time, the entrepreneurial nature of many of these firms enables introduction of radical innovations necessary for making breakthroughs in the industries of renewable energy and environmental technology that in turn are essential for the industry development. Given their significance, there are surprisingly few studies with the focus on the factors affecting the growth of clean-tech start-ups. Our search in leading management, entrepreneurship and energy journals has yielded a total of 13 articles, almost all of which focus on such external factors as policies. We argue that this gives us an incomplete picture of the factors enabling a clean-tech firm's development. As clean-tech firms are a subset of the population of new technology-based firms (NTBFs), we draw on the literature dealing with the factors that promote growth of NTBFs in order to build our framework for structuring the results. The analysis uncovers what future research areas can be pursued in order to gain a more balanced understanding of what enables the development of a clean-tech start-up. We suggest that in addition to the macro-studies of policies and regulations, future research needs to examine the individual and firm-specific factors, e.g. characteristics of the clean-tech entrepreneurs, teams, governance mechanisms and network structures. Furthermore, the existing focus on the environmental and innovative performance of clean-tech start-ups should be complemented by examining the alternative firm outcomes related to e.g. financial performance, social identity, alliance portfolio and internationalization."

READ MORE

"This report shows that the historic Paris Agreement on climate change that has recently come into force will help to open up nearly $23 trillion in opportunities for climate-smart investments in certain emerging markets between now and 2030. Based on the national climate-change commitments and underlying policies of 21 emerging-market economies, representing 48 percent of global emissions, it identifies sectors in each region with the greatest potential for investment—from climate resilient infrastructure in South Asia to clean energy in Africa."

READ MORE

"Historically, small enterprises have played an important role in technological innovation, often leading to the introduction of paradigm-shifting technologies and changes in the way we live. However, they face many challenges in maturing to a point where they survive and have positive social, environmental and economic impacts. They often have weak entrepreneurial support systems, fragmented linkages to climate technology markets and a lack of finance for entrepreneurial activities. These challenges are exacerbated in developing countries.

This paper identifies the challenges and opportunities for strengthening climate technology incubators and accelerators in developing countries."

READ MORE

"The purpose of this study is to shed light on the role that connections can play in helping green technology entrepreneurs innovate and scale up in developing countries, so as to inform the design of new public sector programs. Green technology entrepreneurs in developing countries need connection platforms for people, ideas, business models, transactions, as well as membership of expert communities. This study shows how cheaper, quicker and more efficient connections can be created among stakeholders of green technology innovation in developing countries. This is done through drawing insights from a variety of public and private programs that seek to promote connections between entrepreneurs in green technology and other sectors. The report is based on 14 case studies of different programs spanning more than 80 countries."

READ MORE