Theme
Environmental Action & Climate Change

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With support from The Lemelson Foundation, ANDE conducted interviews with 13 representatives from a select group of funders and impact investors to identify barriers to and opportunities for funding climate entrepreneurship. While not an exhaustive list of funders, these representatives provided practical insight on how climate entrepreneurship is seen among funders focused primarily on climate action and/or entrepreneurship and how greater funding could be allocated to the intersection.

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Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, with a total GDP of over USD 2.7 trillion. However, its progress is threatened by the increasingly adverse impacts of climate change. Entrepreneurship has a leading role in developing solutions to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. This report evaluates the current support ecosystem for climate and environmental entrepreneurs in six developing Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Through ANDE's data collection and analysis, this report offers insights on the set of organizations supporting entrepreneurs that aim to address climate change mitigation, adaptation, and non-climate related environmental protection challenges.

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"Os empreendedores nas economias em desenvolvimento são vitais para enfrentar as mudanças climáticas e promover o desenvolvimento sustentável e resiliente. Os países em desenvolvimento sofrerão alguns dos piores impactos climáticos. E também têm um enorme potencial para encorajar a mitigação e adaptação nos níveis local e regional. No entanto, os empreendedores nas economias em desenvolvimento enfrentam desafios e barreiras distintos quando se trata de abordar as mudanças climáticas. Este relatório pretende servir como uma visão geral da literatura atual sobre a interseção entre empreendedores e ação climática, bem como um chamado à ação."

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Based on a review of existing literature, this paper discusses to what extent and how SMEs can
deliver green and inclusive growth. The OECD defines green growth as aligning economic growth and environmental objectives. Specifically, it involves transitioning to a resource-efficient, low carbon economy and preserving environmental resources while seizing the economic opportunities that this transition generates (OECD, 2015[9]). Similarly, the World Bank defines green growth as “economic growth that is environmental sustainable.” Put it more concretely, it means “enabling developing countries to achieve robust growth without locking themselves into unsustainable patterns” (World Bank, 2012[10]). Meanwhile, inclusive growth involves raising “societies’ welfare or living standards broadly defined.” It is a multidimensional measure of growth and includes both income-related measures of well-being and non-income elements such as health and education. Inclusive growth also emphasizes the question of distribution; that is, how are aggregate changes in measures of growth distributed across households and individuals (Boarini, Murtin and Schreyer, 2015[11])? Simply, green and inclusive growth involves a transition to an eco-friendly, low-carbon economy and simultaneously, broad improvements in societal welfare. Thus, the paper is concerned with discussing to what extent greening SMEs delivers widespread societal welfare gains."

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"The purpose of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of the incubator and accelerator approaches towards climate technology entrepreneurship in developing countries. Because an accelerator is a specific type of new venture incubator, this paper will also more broadly consider the suitability of incubators and note the recent emergence of hybrid forms of incubator-accelerators."

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"From the backstreets of Addis Ababa to the offices of Silicon Valley, people are transforming ideas into products that are used by society. Entrepreneurs, as such people are known, are vital to the growth and prosperity of communities. But what role can entrepreneurs play in tackling climate change? How can we help entrepreneurs to rise to this challenge? This policy brief seeks to answer these questions. It highlights the role of entrepreneurs in developing technologies, business models and services that society can use to achieve low-emission and climate-resilient sustainable development. It also suggests ways of encouraging, guiding and supporting entrepreneurs in their efforts to innovate climate technologies. This TEC Brief is part of a long-running series of policy briefs on innovation produced by the Technology Executive Committee. It focuses on the central actor in the innovation process: the entrepreneur."

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"Entrepreneurs in developing economies are vital to addressing climate change and promoting sustainable and resilient development. Developing countries will experience some of the worst climate impacts. and they also hold enormous potential for encouraging mitigation and adaptation on local and regional levels. Yet, entrepreneurs in developing economies face distinct challenges and barriers when it comes to addressing climate change. This report is intended to serve as an overview of the current literature on the intersection of entrepreneurs and climate action, as well as a call to action."

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"This issue brief is a part of a series formulated by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) India chapter. It aims to contextualise the findings and strategy regarding our key urgent issues and the small and growing business (SGB) sector outlined in ANDE’s globally focussed issue brief, Climate and Environmental Action in the SGB Sector, at a regional level. This brief is a starting point for conversations on environmental action and is meant to help shape ANDE India’s strategy for the region. This is not meant to serve as an exhaustive collection of the research/literature on the topic, and proxy data points have been used to best represent the state of the SGB sector."

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"This paper presents an aligned yet customizable framework of indicators for measuring farm-level sustainability in smallholder agricultural supply chains. These indicators are proposed primarily in the context of performance measurement, but can also be useful for more in-depth impact evaluation studies. The proposal is not for one single common set of indicators, but rather for using the same indicators when asking the same types of questions at the farm and household level. The authors argue that using the same indicators when asking the same questions in smallholder supply chains will increase comparability across data collection efforts and ensure that the community is building on the common understanding of how to gather credible, affordable, and useful data that facilitates learning."

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"The Global Cleantech Innovation Index (GCII) programme investigates where, relative to GDP, entrepreneurial clean technology companies are most likely to emerge from over the next 10 years - and why. Drawing on a wide range of factors and sources, the study seeks to answer the same question as the 2012 and 2014 GCII reports, namely: which countries currently have the greatest potential to produce entrepreneurial cleantech start-up companies that will commercialise clean technology innovations over the next 10 years?"

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