KIVA

Kiva Promo from RMac Productions on Vimeo.

Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending.

The C.R.O.C.

Greenpeace' latest ironic campaign concering individual carbon offsetting in the US. I'd suggest to check out C.R.O.C. in order to get the whole picture. Fantastic!

Andrew Simms at the LSE

The NEF's Policy Director and Head of Climate Change and Energy, Andrew Simms gave an interesting speech at the LSE last Thursday:

Ecosia: The eco-friendly search engine

Ecosia is a environmental-friendly search engine that saves the rainforest while your're searching the web. At least 80% of their search income goes to a rainforest protection program run by WWF, which uses this money for the sustainable protection of rainforests in the Juruena National Park in Brazil.

It saves 2m² of rainforest with each web search you do. Their search results are as good as Google or Yahoo. So far (28.1.2010) Ecosia has saved 18,795,321 m² (22,479,204 yd²) of rainforest. They're not running any servers powered by alternative energy yet though. None the less I suggest you make it your browser's default start page!

Economics of climate change

Nicholas Stern, Chairman of the the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE, and author of the Stern Review, has argued that it is far more responsible to look at ways to invest in moving toward a low-carbon economy now, rather than wait to deal with the effects of climate change in the future.

He makes this argument through an economic analysis of the costs of investing in reducing carbon emissions, compared to dealing with the costs of floods, famine, water shortages, refugee crises and other hazards stemming from climate change. A webcast of his presentation for the session, 'Business as usual is not sustainable,' at the U.S. Climate Action conference is available here.

On a related note, the LSE hosts a number of events related to sustainability and climate change. There are 'Sustainability in Practice' lectures taking place this spring 2010, and there are also podcasts of past talks on the LSE events archive.

Stewart Brand: Whole Earth Discipline

Stewart Brand, the publisher of the Whole Earth Catalogue back in the 60's proposes a whole different view on slums. Villages of the earth are drying out and it's in town where poor people find opportunity, action and a cash economy. Slum dwellers are poor but intensely creative and urban. Considering population growth on earth in the next decades, squatters are building the world. Brand's notion is that slums do not undermine prosperity instead they help to create prosperity. Although I don't agree on every point with him, his TED talk is an interesting presentation about a completely different approach on the topics of cities, nuclear power, genetic modification and geo-engineering which will surely provoke widespread debate.

Jonas Bendiksen: The Places We Live

In addition to our discussions yesterday about alter-economies and population growth, an article on change observer: design observer gains insight into Jonas Bendiksen's work. Bendiksen, a Norwegian photographer, lived in slums for several months while recording and photographing daily life and people in slums around the globe.

Read the article
View the slideshow

Social lending platforms

Following on our discussion of (alter-)economies in studio today, you may be interested to have a look at 'webank,' which investigates alternative structures of finance, from lending to currency exchange.

Also check out this Nesta-related project:
>Big Green Challenge