OECD / MLC Marketplace: Innovations to address Climate Change
Event Co-hosted by the OECD i30 Group, OECD Environet and the Million Lives Collective | June 1st 2022
Blog post written by Parnika Jhunjhunwala (OECD Innovation for Development Facility), Benjamin Kumpf (OECD Innovation for Development Facility) and Zoya Dhakam (OECD Innovation for Development Facility)
The earth’s ecosystems and the life they contain are steering towards irreversible collapse due to climate change. Meaningful climate action will require political determination, working creatively together on a global scale to advance deep transformations, and diverse forms of innovation.
In the run up to the World Environment Day, the OECD Innovation for Development Facility (INDEF) along with OECD ENVIRONET and the Million Lives Collective (MLC), organised the second i30 Marketplace event on June 1st, on ‘Innovations for Climate Change’. This event aimed to facilitate discussions on scaling innovations and connect innovators with like-minded collaborators and interested investors from the i30 group and OECD Environet, representing members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee.
The event was kicked off by Benjamin Kumpf, Head of the OECD Innovation for Development Facility, highlighting the importance of diligently planning for scale, and the role that public sector actors, donor community and different stakeholders must play in supporting scaling innovation. The event was moderated by Eleanor Carey, Policy Analyst at Development Co-operation Directorate, OECD. In his opening remarks, Jens Sedemund, Climate Change lead at the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate, accentuated the role of innovation and donors in designing solutions that address the gaps in climate challenges and adopting strategic programmatic approaches that support an enabling environment for local innovators to achieve impact at scale.
Our first presenter, Jonathan Lehe, represented Precision for Development (PxD), a global non-profit in Asia and Africa that aims to end information poverty via the use of low-cost digital information systems. Their pioneering agricultural extension model delivers customised digital agricultural advice, facilitating two-way communication to smallholder farmers via their mobile phones, including SMS and interactive voice hotlines. Rigorous evaluations of these services yielded a benefit-cost ratio of 10:1 and demonstrated greater cost-effectiveness over time, with current service provision at $1.61 per farmer, per year. PxD incorporates insights from behavioural economics and human-centred design to optimise services for users.
With successful initial pilots on climate-smart agricultural advice in India, Pakistan, Kenya and Columbia, PxD aims to reach 30 million farmers over the next five years. They intend to achieve their vision to scale through Public-Private-Partnerships in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC), for example, in Odisha, India and Punjab, Pakistan where the government provided local connection through existing farmer databases. Since 2016, PxD scaled services to 6.1 million users, in all countries of operation. Other partners also include non-profits organisations such as One-Acre fund that provides financial assistance to farmers in developing countries.
PxD’s goal is to positively impact 100m of the world’s poor. The group is currently seeking to raise $50m to support 30 million farming households over the next 5 years to improve their yields, profits, and environmental sustainability. They are also actively seeking connections to government partners in low and middle-income countries, Ministries and Departments of Agriculture across Asia and Africa.
If you are interested in collaborating with them, please reach out directly to jlehe@precisiondev.org
The second presentation was delivered by Amit Kumar from JanaJal Water ATMs; a water services company focussed on making safe and affordable drinking water available to people in low-income settings. JanaJal WOW (Water on Wheels) is a completely tech-managed, GPS-monitored, battery-operated secure three-wheeler with zero carbon emissions, for last-metre delivery of safe water to the doorstep of households. Consumers can both place/schedule orders via a mobile app or subscribe to the water services by purchasing pre-paid cards. JanaJal primarily raises revenue via subscription and advertising contracts. It provides potable water at less than 5% cost of branded packaged water and has achieved impact, reducing more than 1000kg of CO2 emissions and more than 120m plastic bottles during its operations. Currently the organisation is based out of India and envisions to expand geographically however, COVID restrictions have limited their scale of operations.
A distinguishing feature of their model was reliance and engagement with local community members through one-on-one and community-based meetings on water hygiene awareness, recycling and water conservation sessions. Till date, JanaJal has created an impact of $207.8m and aims to ensure that consumers have access to clean drinking water at an economical price. The group is currently seeking to raise USD 150,000 to support commissioning a fleet of 25 JanaJal WOWs.
If you are interested in collaborating with them, please reach out directly to amit@janajal.com or connect at https://www.janajal.com/joinus.html
The third presenter, Josh Thomas, CEO at Pastoral, brought to our attention that livestock farming contributes to 14% of total emissions causing climate change, which are unequally distributed towards low-and-middle-income (LMIC) countries. To make livestock farming more equitable and sustainable for farmers earning less than 5$ per day, Pastoral provides a subscription-based precision livestock farming (PLF) tool which delivers actionable data on grazing management, animal location and pasture evaluation to livestock farmers in LMICs. Described as ‘fitbit for livestock’, Pastoral modifies the fundamental features in common digital PLF platforms in wealthier countries (IoT animal tracking, virtual fencing, water availability, animal health, etc.) to fit within the price point and technical limitations of livestock farmers in LMICs, balancing affordability with long-term sustainability, putting people over profit.
Pastoral has witnessed 30%-40% increases in farmer productivity and profits as well as 30% reduction in climate and land impact, mainly due to the need for lesser staff to track animals and reduced land degradation and environmental erosion. Currently, Pastoral uses low-cost and free public satellite datasets from the World Bank, FAO and UNDP, providing ultra-simple solutions in chat box format which may take the form of telegrams in Uzbekistan, and more formal platforms like WhatsApp in other LMICs. Pastoral understands that the shift in technology is to change efficiency from the way farming was conducted ancestrally and ‘focus on non-flashy technology but rather technology that works’.
Pastoral prides itself in being the only sustainable livestock venture on earth and is co-incubated by UNDP which has helped them launch in Uzbekistan in partnership with the local government. The venture is now seeking mixed investment and grants, amounting 550,000£ to expand into and scale-out in more complicated geographies like Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, and India. They are also seeking partnerships to unlock new markets and sponsorship for satellite data API keys.
If you are interested in collaborating with them, please reach out directly to josh@karakoram.co
Our final presentation was by Evandro Holz, CEO at Clurb. Clurb relies on the B2G (business to government) or B2B2G (business to business to government) model, engaging with city, regional and national governments, as well as international institutions that work with governments to design targeted tools. The organisation offers software service and/ or project-based service depending on context to develop the cost and implementation structure. Embedding principles of leaving-no-one-behind in their operational and business model, ACCTION ensures their services are accessible to LMICs. Winner of the #Innovate2030 Challenge of BMZ’s Digilab, CEO Evandro highlighted ‘bringing policy into action and action into policy’ as the premier goal of the organisation.
Their first tool ACCTION provides a disaster risk management and warning system for cities, specifically designed for low-income countries. In efforts to make disaster management much simpler, ACCTION employs a web- and mobile-based tool that allows cities and citizens to work together in preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters and crises. ACCTION intervenes by simplifying technical complexity of existing tools and combining them into a single platform to allow even the least resourced cities to take action locally, in a structured and collaborative way.
Moving forward, ACCTION envisions to raise financial investments of €600,000 to support continued technological advancement of the tool by adding new features (e.g., data mining) for increased autonomy and impact of tool use. They are actively seeking engagement with research institutions and international organisations to reach a wider portfolio of cities for application of the tool, in the form of partnerships and joint projects, as are being conducted in India and Brazil.
If you are interested in collaborating with them, please reach out directly to evandro@clurb.net
This event aimed to highlight that climate change is a complex problem, that scaling requires vision and collaboration across donors, among other things. Innovations such as the ones presented constitute building blocks in larger transformation processes. These require diverse forms of innovation and political will.
Further reading:
Read more about several innovations for development on the website of Million Lives Collective: https://www.millionlives.co/ or please write to: admin@millionlives.co
Further Resources on Climate and Environment data tools:
● Environmental Insights Explorer- Building, Traffic Emissions, Solar Readiness
● Climate Trace- A platform for independent emissions reporting.
● Global Forest Watch- A platform providing latest data and technology that empowers people to better protect forests.
● Illegal Fishing Watch- Sharing knowledge on human activity at sea to enable fair use of the ocean.
● Global Surface Water Explorer- Platform to support better informed water management decision making.
● Floodly- Flood prediction
● Fire Maps- Wildfire Early Notification Map
● US Climate Resilience Toolkit - Several tools to manage climate related risk and activities.
● Climate Analytics - Several open source tools for climate projection.
● Tools for Climate Change Adaptation- Several tools to manage climate related risk and activities.
● Climate Toolbox- A collection of tools for addressing questions relating to climate monitoring, forecasts, and projections.
● NASA Center for Climate Simulation- Several tools to highlight weather analysis and forecasting.
