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When Will Clean Cooking Hit the Gas? An Interview with New Alliance CEO Dymphna van der Lans
In March 2018, Dymphna van der Lans was appointed CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an industry group representing businesses, investors and NGOs. The organization has since rebranded as the Clean Cooking Alliance and has set a new goal: to achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030. In this video interview with NextBillion editors, we ask van der Lans about how the alliance is helping to reach those goals – as well as the criticism it has faced about the sector's social impact.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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How to Build an Impact Industry: Four Strategies from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Almost 3 billion people worldwide cook with materials that are inefficient, unsustainable and polluting. Since 2010, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has sought to make clean stoves and fuels commonplace across the developing world, by building an industry that could deliver this vision. Colm Fay and Ted London at the William Davidson Institute share insights from the Alliance's efforts to catalyze this new industry, breaking down four key stages of acceleration and their lessons for other impact-based accelerators.
- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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The Switchback Solution: Is ‘Pay and Cook’ a Game Changer in the Movement to Popularize Cleaner Cooking Fuels?
For years, countless entrepreneurs have been trying to enable low-income people in emerging markets to move from traditional fuels to clean cooking fuels. But they've struggled with the same problem: customers’ tendency to switch back to traditional fuels when it comes time to buy refills for their clean cooking fuel tanks. Emmy Wasirwa at WANA Energy Solutions discusses his company's innovative solution to this challenge.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise
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WASH Away Inequity: Lack of Access to Safe Water is the Most Crippling Obstacle Limiting Human Potential
On World Water Day, consider that 844 million people (nearly 1 in 9) lack a drinking water source that is accessible within a 30-minute round trip from their home. But though this problem can be solved by installing a tap or rain harvesting system, the upfront cost of up to $200 is often prohibitive for people living in poverty. Water.org co-founder and CEO Gary White highlights the power of the poor, when given affordable financing, to provide their own solution to the global water crisis.
- Categories
- Environment, Investing, WASH
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Report: Recovery Lending Program Prevents Thousands of African Families from Falling into Extreme Poverty after Climate Shocks
A report released by DFID, World Vision UK and VisionFund International has revealed that an innovative market-based approach was central in building resilience to the El Nino climate shock that impacted East Africa throughout 2016 and early 2017. These findings are critical as climate change continues to impact the world’s most vulnerable communities.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Powering Communities Through a Surprising Source of Renewable Energy: Human Waste
Around the world, a staggering 2.5 billion people lack access to decent toilets. That leads to far too many people getting sick from preventable diseases. Anne Healy and Erin Crossett of Development Innovation Ventures say the good news is that some enterprising companies are experimenting with ways to make human waste disposal profitable in the developing world.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, WASH
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Nat Geo, GSK Launch Chasing Genius Challenge to Tackle Climate Change, Global Health
The challenge was inspired by National Geographic’s first scripted series GENIUS, based on the book, Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. Using the hashtag #chasinggenius, National Geographic has crowdsourced ideas and identified issues that the global community is most concerned about.
- Categories
- Environment
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It’s Global Health: Nobody Said It Was Going to Be Easy
Recent elections around the world have shown a tilt toward protectionism and nationalism, and that's not necessarily good news for global health. But, as we've seen during Health Care Month at NextBillion, those in the sector aren't taking their eye off the ball. Vanessa Kerry of Seed Global Health summarized: "Public health is an endeavor far greater than any nation’s individual interests or borders."
- Categories
- Health Care
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