Topic: poverty

This is the first in a series of three issue briefs based on a three-day workshop held by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the DOEN Foundation in March 2012. Through the workshop and subsequent interviews, WRI brought together the experiences of 25 socially oriented energy enterprises, organizations, and financiers who understand the energy needs of low-income consumers in developing countries. Their collective knowledge can help entities involved in delivering renewable energy to rural communities and inform policy recommendations to improve and expand distributed renewable energy services in developing countries.

This first brief describes four common core business strategies employed by the enterprises and provides examples of how these strategies were implemented.

Using case studies primarily from developing countries, this report outlines the key building blocks towards creating a shared agenda for more inclusive and sustainable human development.

It demonstrates how strategic investments in growth industries, and in the ecosystem services that account for up to 89 percent of the so-called “GDP of the poor”, can reduce social inequity, boost employment and promote environmental sustainability.

This report informs investors about the market potential of the clean energy industry serving India’s rural Base of the Pyramid (BoP) market, by looking at its opportunities, challenges, and potential paths to growth.

This report uses mapping data to examine the spatial relationships between poverty, livestock production systems, the location of livestock services, in order to ensure that government investments in the livestock sector benefit smallholders and high-poverty locations.

This working paper sets out a framework to scale up locally-driven solutions to ecosystem decline, climate change and poverty.