We need more sustainability solutions — can global innovation competitions help unearth them?

This text initially was revealed on Ensia.

Smoke rises between homes from fuels being burned for cooking, threatening each the setting and human well being by way of carbon dioxide emissions and indoor air air pollution. In the meantime, diapers that haven’t been correctly disposed of are polluting waterways and sewage techniques and turn out to be a possible supply of illness. What do these two seemingly distinct issues need to do with each other? For starters, they’re two of many hazards that the residents of Kibera — an off-the-cuff settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, and one of many largest such settlements in Africa — need to dwell with day by day. However each additionally have been seen as a chance by the founders of a Nairobi start-up referred to as LeafyLife that goals to recycle used diapers to supply an affordable, sustainable and clear gas.

Dennis Muguta, Melvin Kizito and Peter Gachanja, founders of LeafyLife, needed to overcome many challenges when bringing their invention to life. As in lots of different low- and middle-income international locations, coaching, funding and assist for budding entrepreneurs is just not simply accessible. Based on the newest report of the International Innovation Index, except for China, each one of many 30 international locations main in innovation is a high-income economic system. In response to this want, giant gamers within the worlds of economics and innovation, together with the World Financial Discussion board and the European Union’s European Institute of Innovation and Know-how (EIT), have began initiatives to make innovation extra numerous and assist sustainability entrepreneurs, reminiscent of LeafyLife, worldwide.

International sustainability options

The ClimateLaunchpad competitors, organized yearly by EIT Climate-KIC, a public-private partnership funded by EIT, is one such initiative. Contributors obtain intensive teaching in entrepreneurship whereas the highest 16 finalists additionally achieve entry to a enterprise faculty for cleantech entrepreneurs, and creating start-ups obtain mentorship, coaching and entry to buyers who assist them flip into totally fledged cleantech companies.

In the event you’re a startup in an rising market, typically buyers need you to come back and base your self in London, or in Silicon Valley or someplace, earlier than they provide you cash.

After profitable the competitors in 2019, the entrepreneurs at LeafyLife have been capable of safe funds, companions and collaborators to assist them advance their invention. Diapers are advanced waste, says Muguta — to have the ability to produce a clean-burning gas, they need to be cleaned and deconstructed into their constructing blocks, a few of which then might be become a gas gel. Chemists by commerce, Muguta, Kizito and Gachanja welcomed the engineering assist they obtained from their newly acquired collaborators.

“I’d say all of the companions that we have now at this second, is due to ClimateLaunchpad,” says Muguta. “The acceleration program that ClimateLaunchpad has been taking us by way of has outfitted us with various information.”

One other initiative, UpLink, is a worldwide platform aiming to find breakthrough sustainability concepts. Hosted by the World Financial Discussion board, the platform crowdsources improvements by bringing collectively innovators, consultants, buyers and choice makers with the purpose of working towards the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. UpLink launches challenges on completely different themes, reminiscent of ocean well being and reforestation. After evaluation by an skilled committee, finalists obtain mentoring, consideration for funding alternatives and publicity on World Financial Discussion board platforms.

“One of many massive imaginative and prescient features of UpLink is that we are able to do extra to assist underrepresented markets, geographies, segments,” says John Dutton, head of UpLink. Half the finalists of the primary Ocean Options problem got here from rising markets, he says. The winner within the “tackling ocean plastic” class was a Myanmar-based firm referred to as RecyGlo, which goals to supply a sustainable recycling and waste administration system for Southeast Asia that features waste assortment, waste consciousness coaching, recycling and waste auditing providers. Via illustration on the World Financial Discussion board, the corporate was capable of get an introduction to the federal government in Indonesia and has arrange workplaces in Singapore and Malaysia.

Obstacles to innovation

Whereas such applications are a promising solution to floor concepts that in any other case may be missed, Soumitra Dutta, founding editor of the Global Innovation Index, cautions that they can not resolve all of the challenges that low- and middle-income international locations face in the case of innovation. “I feel the problem in rising markets is just not that individuals don’t have concepts. Individuals have concepts,” Dutta says. “The problem is the nation context, the institutional setting, the entire infrastructure, the entire political, regulatory setting. All this stuff aren’t supportive, typically.”

LeafyLife has to this point solely relied on the funding it obtained as a prize from the competitors. Nonetheless, to maneuver ahead, it should purchase buyers, which is one other problem. “It’s at all times increased threat for a western investor to put money into rising markets,” says Dutta. “In the event you’re a startup in an rising market, typically buyers need you to come back and base your self in London, or in Silicon Valley or someplace, earlier than they provide you cash. It’s a really human tendency to need one thing that’s essential for you near you.”

I feel the problem in rising markets is just not that individuals don’t have concepts. The problem is the nation context, the institutional setting, the entire infrastructure, the entire political, regulatory setting. Individuals have concepts.

As a solution to make it simpler to search out buyers for international initiatives, UpLink co-designs its competitions with skilled organizations in addition to enterprise funds. The second Ocean Solutions challenge, for instance, was co-designed with the Nature Conservancy and with Aqua-Spark, a enterprise fund wanting to put money into entrepreneurs engaged on sustainable aquaculture options.

Whereas there’s nonetheless a protracted solution to go to make these applications really accessible all around the world, the invested effort is already paying off within the case of LeafyLife. Though the corporate’s know-how remains to be within the growth stage, it has been distributed to some households already. In low-income international locations, indoor air pollution from utilizing low-cost fuels reminiscent of charcoal and kerosene accounts for 6 percent of premature deaths yearly. “By substituting charcoal and kerosene, we’re in a significant means, impacting the well being of residents of this area,” Kizito says.

Among the world’s greatest issues ready to be solved are in international locations the place entrepreneurs don’t have entry to the identical kind of sources as, say, their counterparts in Silicon Valley. But the folks dealing with these issues each day could also be the most effective supply for options. With applications reminiscent of UpLink and the ClimateLaunchpad, revolutionary concepts from wherever may have a greater likelihood of turning into options — and serving to folks in all places.