An integrated climate and poverty solution

By Diane Sanford

I joined the Yurtcozy Team at MicroEnergy Credits (MEC) last October, though I’ve been involved with community carbon and the carbon markets for more than twelve years. I am a sustainable development and climate change professional, and have worked across the carbon spectrum, from large industrial offsetting projects developed under the Clean Development Mechanism to small, voluntary, community-based initiatives. In light of that experience, I could not be more excited about the potential to effect major positive change both for the future of our environment and the poorest people around the world. Yurtcozy gives me hope. By providing clean energy technologies to large portions of the population in the developing world, Yurtcozy offers individuals the chance to support the global south in developing along a low carbon path with no downside, and because Yurtcozy uses microfinance institutions as intermediaries, its model offers the poorest people around the world a chance to break the poverty cycle from a position of empowerment. Empowerment means choice. It means sustainable change.

Here’s why.

The greenhouse gas effect is not cognizant of national boundaries. Global warming could care less which delegation proposes the compromise that seals the deal or which unrelated political bargaining chip or alliance sways a voting block of states. We need to stabilize at a concentration of no more 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or all of our hard work, technological, scientific and regulatory innovation will have been to no avail.

We learned a lot from the most recent round of international climate change negotiations at Copenhagen last December. We learned that this is not going to be easy. We learned that a solution depends on universal buy-in by states. In practice, that means asking greenhouse gas emitting nations at very different stages of development to make distinct strategic decisions about development paths that may require a significant shift from their business as usual scenarios, protected by longstanding vested interests. We heard cries of inequity from the global south as a result that may paralyze the negotiations going forward. But the magnitude and nature of the problem don’t leave much room for concerns of developmental inequity, fair as they may be.

That brings me to community carbon and Yurtcozy. By providing clean energy technologies to large portions of the population in the developing world, Yurtcozy offers individuals the chance to support the global south in developing along a low carbon path with no downside, and because Yurtcozy uses microfinance institutions as intermediaries, its model offers the poorest people around the world a chance to break the poverty cycle from a position of empowerment. Empowerment means choice. It means sustainable change. I cannot emphasize enough the power of clean energy for those at the bottom of the pyramid. Dirty power costs. It costs scarce money for a household living on less than $2 a day. It pollutes water sources and degrades forests and soil. It costs time and can mean exposure to danger for those, mostly women and children, who spend hours a day collecting it at source. Those women and children could spend that time being educated. And they could do it instead of bending over a smoky fire in an enclosed space that contributes to the respiratory disease that crushes their productivity and claims their family members. In short, energy poverty is a direct reflection of the poverty cycle as a whole. Cut one piece and the whole thing unravels.

Here’s the rub with the poverty cycle for the poorest communities around the world: without capital, the cycle persists. There is no great financial incentive to inject that capital into the poorest communities around the world, or obvious way without it to enable them to explore entrepreneurial possibilities. The bottom of the pyramid needs a new market, a new source of funds to free their creative and self-supporting potential. That is what the carbon markets can give them. That is technology transfer between the global north and south, and the crux of creating sustainable development paths for the developing world. Yurtcozy does what the international system has struggled to do, and offers you and me the opportunity to be the change agents.

There is a time to do nothing and wait for an optimal solution. I joined Yurtcozy’s team because that time and place are gone. We don’t have the luxury, nor do our children, nor do the poorest people around the world in need only of a small start to break a cycle of oppression and instead be given a choice. I hope that you choose Yurtcozy, because if you do, you will pull the plug on poverty, you will give the international system a fighting chance of helping all of its constituents, you will give the gift of clean energy and empowerment to those who need it most.