An oil pipeline to Canada's untapped Tar Sands deposits would create short-term construction jobs, but its effects on the climate could permanently destroy jobs elsewhere. Photo: rickz (Flickr)

Proponents of the proposed pipeline from Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands to the Gulf of Mexico claim that its construction would create jobs. But while the long-term employment prospects are debatable at best, the resulting long-term economic devastation is far more certain.

The recent decision by the Obama administration to deny a permit for the construction of the pipeline has received much press and been touted as a victory for environmentalists. But as climate activist Bill McKibben and his organization point out, stopping the extraction of the tar sands would be a victory for those far removed from the American environmental movement as well.

McKibben said in an interview with Green Prophet that “Any place that is already living close to the margins is in the greatest danger” when facing climate change.

This means the world’s poorest, already suffering from food shortages and decreased agricultural production, would be hardest hit by this carbon bomb. And scientific consensus backs up McKibben’s view.

Country Ranks, Estimated Percentage of Agricultural Productivity Loss by 2080: Potential Carbon Emissions from Canadian Oil Sands. Photo: Center for Global Development

David Wheeler, senior fellow emeritus of the Center for Global Development, compiled a recent study specifically tying the exploitation of the Canadian oil sands to increased agricultural losses.

Wheeler concluded that “full exploitation of Canada’s oil sands deposit would impose significant agricultural productivity losses on over 3 billion people in the developing world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.” He calculates that “combustion of the Alberta deposit would increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by 99 ppm, or 21.3 percent of the increase already projected to occur by 2100.”

Or, as reputed climate scientist Jim Hansen of NASA put it, tapping the tar sands would be “essentially game over for the climate."

Wheeler's findings show a "game over" scenario in poor rural regions, in particular, predicting agricultural productivity losses of up to nearly 13 percent in Africa and 9 percent in Asia. Wheeler, who also created a ‘Climate Vulnerability Index’ by country, sums up his findings powerfully and succinctly, stating "Put simply, the potential destructive power in Canada’s oil sands exceeds anything modern civilization has witnessed to date."

“This new report puts into stark relief exactly what ‘game over’ looks like: Millions upon millions of starving people across the planet," says 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn.

On the ground, countries projected by Wheeler to see further damaging impacts are already struggling with agricultural losses. Another 350.org co-founder, Phil Aroneanu, told Global Envision that “we have a plethora of anecdotal and story-based thoughts from our organizers around the world” of agricultural devastation and food shortages linked to changing climate patterns.

Drought-stricken countries in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia and Sudan, among others, provide some of the most poignant images of climate-related suffering. An Oxfam International report points out that 85 percent of Ethiopians depend directly on agriculture. And as a local farmer told Oxfam, “The rain doesn’t come on time anymore. After we plant, the rain stops just as our crops start to grow. And it begins to rain after the crops have already been ruined.”

And with the projections from scientists like Hansen and Wheeler, Africa’s farmers and communities appear unlikely to recover soon.

While McKibben writes that “Blocking one pipeline was never going to stop global warming,” and Obama’s denial of the Keystone permit may well not kill the project in the long run, the scientific and anecdotal evidence is clear: Vulnerable populations are suffering at the hands of carbon kings already, and tapping the tar sands will exacerbate their problems.

So the Keystone proposal may or may not be dead. But the political discourse around potential job-killing has mostly left out an important aspect: the killing of crops and livelihoods elsewhere in the world.

McKibben has said that extracting Canada’s tar sands would mean lighting the “fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” For now, at least, that fuse remains unlit.

You need two DNA sets to tackle big development challenges. You need a development DNA—an understanding of the particular needs and characteristics of your customers, the poor people that you're trying to reach. And you need business DNA—how do we structure solutions that are fit for purpose, scale and sustainability?

- Christ West, Director, Shell Foundation

Stanford Social Innovation Review, V9N4

Young Portuguese congregate in a park in Lisbon. Photo: Erik Mandell for MercyCorps

Amid its ongoing financial crisis, Portugal’s prime minister has a surprising message for his country’s struggling residents: leave.

It’s just one example of Portugal looking to emerging markets for relief as power dynamics of international economic relationships change.

Conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho suggested that moving to Portuguese-speaking countries and former colonies such as Brazil and Angola could be an alternative for young Portuguese hit hard by unemployment, according to IPS news. Coelho’s suggestion specifically focused on teachers, saying that other places could provide better job markets for educators. But the Prime Minister’s suggestion is being met with criticism, including from the governments of his imagined receiving countries for Portuguese emigrants.

Brazil and Angola both shot down this suggestion quickly, stating that they had no need for teachers from Portugal, IPS reports. Ana Maria Gomes, a leader of Portugal’s opposition Socialist Party, also criticized Coelho, saying "that is the last thing a prime minister should say... because no matter how complicated things are, we can and must pull out of this.”

Yet given recent economic trends, it makes sense that a struggling European country like Portugal might consider unorthodox solutions.

Brazil, the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking country, recently surpassed Great Britain to become the world’s sixth largest economy, reports The Guardian. Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) described Brazil’s economic rise as part of a larger trend. He told The Guardian that "Brazil has beaten the European countries at soccer for a long time, but beating them at economics is a new phenomenon. Our world economic league table shows how the economic map is changing, with Asian countries and commodity-producing economies climbing up the league while we in Europe fall back."

This global shift of economic power, evident in Brazil’s rapid growth, is seen elsewhere as well. The emerging power of the so-called BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) has been widely recognized for a while now, with trade in manufactured and resource-based commodities fueling the rapid growth. And the global financial and Euro-zone crises have accelerated the divide in growth between emerging economies and traditional economic powers.

Including the BRIC countries, 19 of the 30 predicted largest economies by 2050 are currently emerging markets, according to HSBC. And Project Syndicate reports that changing patterns of innovation and research and development will further fuel this shift, pointing out that in 2000 so-called developed countries only accounted for 76 percent of global R&D, down from 95 percent in 1990.

News of the rise of emerging economies isn’t new, but these figures pose a problem for struggling countries like Portugal. And the trend of turning to emerging countries for financial assistance signals a rebalancing of power likely to last.

Coehlo’s suggestion for emigration coincides with news that the Chinese state-owned Three Gorges Corporation bought 21 percent of Portugal’s largest power producer from the debt-burdened government, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The largest-ever Chinese investment in Europe further illustrates Portugal’s precarious situation. As another Chinese state-owned enterprise, China State Grid Corporation, bids on purchasing Lisbon’s national power grid operator, Portugal shows its willingness to sell assets to emerging economies to stay afloat.

“The European economy needs blood, but not in the form of a transfusion,” said Wang Yiming, a senior Chinese economic policymaker. “We need to create new blood by promoting investment.” In other words, China doesn't want to simply loan cash to the West. But it’s willing to invest in concrete assets.

Wang’s statement demonstrates China’s view of itself as an economic savior. If troubled countries have assets to sell, emerging economies are willing and able to buy.

So China is buying shares of Portugal’s utilities, and Brazil doesn’t want its unemployed emigrants. The Portuguese example shows that emerging economies now have more choices when it comes to global economic relationships.

Five hundred years after Portuguese landed in Brazil, have the colonial winds reversed? Maybe not entirely, but emerging economies now have a comparatively better hand to play. And for countries like Portugal, the game of economic power is no longer stacked so strongly in their favor.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Yesterday's news could be tomorrow's biofuel. Photo: Lisa Batty (Flickr)

Why not do something useful with those stacks of holiday cards languishing at home? Like re-charge your cell phone.

Japan has taken recycling to the next level: Sony recently unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype. How does it work? Engineers use the enzyme cellulase to break down paper matter into glucose sugar. Combine a few more enzymes with a dash of oxygen and you get a bona fide biofuel.

The process is pulled right from nature, researchers explained: it's used by white ants and termites, which use digested wood as a form of energy.

The paper-fueled battery is still in the early stages of development, but even low-output experiments have big potential. If brought to market, the prospect of using paper waste to recharge mobile phones or run small devices such as fans or lights is a bright spot on the innovation frontier. Whether off-the-grid in rural Africa or struggling with energy payments in the U.S. or Europe, turning paper waste into usable energy can play a part in alleviating poverty.

Perhaps the newspaper industry can capitalize on this green initiative to generate a little green of its own.

Candles provide a light in the dark for those without access to electricity. Photo: Sara Y Tzunky

Is microfinance the solution to energy poverty? If partnered with renewable energy, it could prove to be true.

Energy poverty—a lack of access to electricity, fuel and more efficient cooking technologies—affects over two billion people, according to the United Nations' Rebeca Grynspan, making it a huge development priority.

Living without electricity simply makes you poorer. Kerosene lamps are expensive, ineffective and fill a home with hazardous fumes. But without a lamp, it's impossible to work or study after sunset. Cooking over an open flame pollutes the lungs and requires hours of wood-gathering, a huge loss of productive time. This is where simple solutions (like more efficient cookstoves) can yield huge impacts.

As a weak economy shrinks international funding pools, countries need to be increasingly wiser and more creative in their resource management. It’s worth noting that a lack of infrastructure presents the rare opportunity to build right the first time. By funding sustainable energy initiatives through microfinance, two things can happen: (1) Programs aiming to reduce energy poverty can work closely with locals and make more informed decisions by relying on indigenous knowledge; and (2) Money stays in the local economy, creating avenues for future investment and wealth generation.

Mercy Corps is combining these two endeavors to address energy poverty. The organization's Energy for All (E4A) program, funded by the European Commission, began in May 2011 in the country of Timor-Leste. It's primarily focused on lighting, cooking fuel needs and natural resource management. Because the population of Timor-Leste heavily relies on crops for fuel, food and income, they are especially vulnerable to shocks. Without access to energy, their problems are exacerbated, true for most poor people in developing countries.

Mercy Corps utilizes a market-driven approach to address energy poverty issues: By remaining external to the market, they strengthen the local economy and seek to create linkages where gaps in service exist. Simply donating materials or stoves undermines local businesses and acts as a disservice to the community. But upfront costs of adopting new technologies is often a major barrier, so Mercy Corps is partnering with microfinance institutions in Timor-Leste to initiate loans.

Mercy Corps' comprehensive survey compiled and assessed the needs of local households, to paint a clear picture of the specific needs and challenges of the community. The outcome is a program design that will implement solar power, improved cook stoves, seed storage and sustainable forestry initiatives.

And a performance tool developed by the Grameen Foundation, the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI), will help local microfinance institutions determine whether the services they provide are effective or not.

Additionally, the E4A program is establishing alternative energy centers that will demonstrate their sustainable business models to the local market, with a special focus on rural off-grid areas.

I had the opportunity to visit Soft Power Health in Kyabirwa, Uganda, an organization testing an improved community cook stove. Access to a seemingly simple cook stove not only improves the health of the user but requires less fuel and reduces cooking time. By easing access to tools like this, the group is educating the surrounding community with hands-on instruction and use, the first step in technology adoption.

The concept of energy poverty received international attention last year when the UN announced that 2012 is the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. They are seeking opportunities to scale up efforts that will achieve universal access to modern energy services. As part of the Millennium Development Goals, the UN has set a target date of 2030.

That's an ambitious timeline for getting electricity to everyone, and it's unlikely to happen without the for-profit sector. This makes it imperative that governments, lenders and non-governmental organizations implement market-based solutions that allow communities to lift themselves out of poverty through developing a robust local economy. Microfinance-backed renewable energy can be the first tool in this process.

Many organizations are taking the lead in implementing energy innovations where the need is great. What other programs and innovations d you know of that address the needs of people without energy access?

Could soccer help the developing world score more electricity? sOccket, a plug-in soccer ball that captures energy during a game and uses it to charge LEDs and batteries, could be a game changer.

Developed by four Harvard University students connected by their travels to Africa and other developing nations, the idea for the sOccket was originally kicked around for an engineering course assignment, explains the Harvard Gazette. Their ingenious concept involves inserting a soccer ball with an inductive coil mechanism that transforms the toy into an eco-friendly portable generator. The kinetic movement of the sOcket ball propels a magnet through a coil that induces a voltage to generate electricity.

The newest ball requires as little as 10 minutes of play time to generate three hours of energy on an LED light. "The beauty of sOccket is that a kid in a developing nation can play a game of soccer after school, leave the playground, take the ball home, plug a basic lamp into a built-in fixture and have enough light to do homework," observes the blog Social Innovation.

Currently most African nations use kerosene, an expensive and toxic substance, to power their homes. However, sOccket is sidelining the oil-based fuel. With over 46 million soccer players in Africa alone, soccer has become the continent's most electric sport.

Industrial emissions are a major source of CO2 contributing to climate change. Photo: United Nations Photo (flickr)

The ongoing global financial crisis should not impede the fight against climate change. That's the concern coming from a surprising corner of the world: China.

As the latest round of UN-sponsored climate talks continue in Durban, South Africa, Chinese officials warn that financial hardships in Europe, the United States and elsewhere are no excuse for inaction on climate change.

With the Kyoto Protocol about to die, the global financial crisis could add another dimension to the already complex relationship between rich and poor countries when it comes to climate change.

China’s top climate official said a global pact to fight climate change should be a top priority for developed countries, even as they face severe economic challenges at home. "After the financial crisis, every country has had its problems, but these problems are just temporary," Xie Zhenhua, vice-director of the National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters, according to Reuters. He expressed concern that rich countries will break their promises to help poor ones mitigate and adapt to climate change.

According to The Economist, the vast majority of ‘climate finance’ for developing countries comes from western nations. Over $75 billion a year, or more than 75 percent of climate finance to the developing world, comes from a combination of private donors and multilateral and bilateral banks funded by taxpayers in wealthy countries. These sources have been hit the hardest by the global financial crisis.

"Climate change hasn't become less important because of the international financial crisis, but it has become less prominent," Xie said.

Developing countries, meanwhile, would be hit hardest by climate-related disasters. They lack the infrastructure and financial resources to deal with problems they have had less of a hand in causing. The 2010 climate talks in Cancun included a commitment of $30 billion to poorer nations to adapt to impacts of climate change, and an increase to $100 billion a year by 2020 for this ‘green climate fund.’ Now, says China, even the initial $30 billion commitment seems unlikely to be met.

China might seem an unlikely voice of support for carbon cuts, as it has surpassed the United States as the world’s leading producer of CO2 emissions. Under the Kyoto protocol, China was deemed an emerging economy, and not bound to the stipulations placed on developed countries. Yet China has pledged to reduce its emissions intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, and hopes western countries sign on for an extension of the protocol’s commitment period. Kyoto signatories Canada and Japan have already refused to extend the protocol’s requirements. The United States has also said further negotiations are off the table.

That means the Durban discussions themselves may well determine the direction of climate funding and its impacts. And without climate action, the financial crisis could soon seem like a small-scale problem.

Erik Mandell is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in public administration and global leadership at Portland State. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Anger over food prices helped lead to Muammar el-Gadhafi's assassination Thursday. Photo: Thierry Ehrmann (flickr)

Muammar el-Gadhafi gave Libya's people plenty of reasons to hate him. But it may have taken climate change to do him in.

That's the interesting perspective of CSR Talkwire's Francesca Rheannon, who explained last March how, across the Arab world, climate change begat draught begat famine begat unrest:

The recent sharp rise in food prices was the spark to the flame fanned by decades of tyranny, beginning in Tunisia, spreading to Egypt and now roiling Bahrain, Algeria, Oman, Yemen and Libya. Libya imports fully 80 percent of its food; the other countries are also heavy food importers. … While other factors play a role, climate change has been the major driver behind higher food prices.

In May, a study in the journal Science estimated that climate change was responsible for a 3 percent drop in global wheat and corn output, enough to drive commodity prices up 20 percent from where they would otherwise have been, Reuters reported.

The cost of food was just one of many factors in Gadhafi's bloody assassination Thursday. But if the world's fossil fuel dependence continues to drive up global temperatures and food prices, the world's poorest won't be content to be the only victims of climate change. Starving people take governments and leaders down with them—sometimes through violence.

Gadhafi's many sins made his government especially vulnerable. But history may remember him as the canary in the climate-change coal mine.

A SELCO technician installing solar panels. Photo courtesy SELCO

This article was reposted on The Christian Science Monitor's Change Agent section.

Harish Hande is democratizing electricity. In India, nearly half of all households lack power. Hande has made it his life’s work to change that, and he’s doing it with affordable, sustainable technology.

Hande is the managing director of SELCO, a social enterprise in Bangalore, India, that develops sustainable technology to improve the lives of India’s underprivileged masses. In the past ten years, Hande says, SELCO has increased Indian fuel efficiency, enhanced the financial power of India’s rural banks, and improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of low-income Indians.

Dr. Harish Hande.

In a September talk at MercyCorps in Portland, Ore., sponsored by the Lemelson Foundation, Hande told SELCO’s story to an enthusiastic audience. It was a glimpse into the potential of sustainable technology and the difficulties of motivating charitable service in a profit-oriented culture.

SELCO works to customize products for underprivileged consumers, using sustainable values to cut costs and improve lives. In India, “sustainability is not getting subsidized," Hande explained. "Sustainability is subsidizing other industries.” SELCO ‘subsidizes’ the work of India’s poor, he said, by providing sustainable technology that boosts productivity and income for poor workers.

For example: Most street vendors in India use kerosene lights, which leave a substantial carbon footprint. Perhaps more importantly, kerosene costs about 15 rupees per day. So SELCO offers these street vendors solar lighting for about 10 rupees a day: a 33% personal savings. Those savings can make all the difference for many of SELCO’s clients.

SELCO’s recent success belies the difficulty it had in getting off the ground. According to Hande, his venture is quite unique, making it difficult to gain traction in Indian culture.

First, how do you convince entrepreneurs that values are more important than sales?

Most salespeople “sell up,” meaning they sell to clients who are of a higher socioeconomic standing than they are. But SELCO's sales team “sells down” to people with little expendable income, and Hande feels it's ethically unacceptable--contrary to SELCO's business, in fact--to sell clients products they don't need. This complicates SELCO's worker training, and in a caste system like India’s, these relationships are all the more difficult.

Another challenge for Hande: recruiting young employees. How do you convince economically minded parents that joining a not-so-lucrative industry is a solid decision? As Hande explains, his “biggest question is, 'How do we convince our parents?’” India’s economy is growing fast, developing a success-oriented culture that prioritizes profitable career choices over service-minded work.

And once you’ve convinced the parents, how do you get urban youth to think and care about the rural poor? Satisfying these conditions is key for recruiting what Hande calls "holistically oriented" salespeople who care about what they do and whom they do it for.

Yet despite these difficulties, SELCO is bringing sustainable technology to India’s underprivileged classes, improving their lives and helping the environment with more than 115,000 new solar energy systems in the last 15 years. Overcoming the cultural barriers, Hande has found a ready supply of holistically minded entrepreneurs. SELCO’s base has grown quickly in recent years, and the resumes keep coming in.

Wind catchers on a cistern near Yazd, Iran, that help to keep the water cool. Photo: birdfarm (flickr)

Part of a Global Envision miniseries about Portland State University's effort to become the "Consumer Reports" of developing-world technology. Read the introduction.

Sometimes, it turns out that the wisdom of the ages is wrong. Portland State University’s Green Building Research Lab is out to tease science from superstition.

Cultures around the globe have adopted unique tricks for coping with the peculiarities of their local environments. But how much of the wisdom behind conventional designs and survival methods is rooted in real science?

That's the question that led PSU researchers to the Persian wind catcher.

Long before the unprecedented heat waves of the last decade, whose increased frequency National Geographic links to climate change, both the Middle East and the American Deep South developed building styles that allow for greater air circulation. The American dogtrot house, recently profiled in an article by The Atlantic, is a bit hard to find since the advent of air conditioning, but Persian wind catchers have been around for several hundred years and still dot the arid landscape around the Persian Gulf. The idea is that open-faced towers on the ends of a building draw in cooler, moving air from high above the ground; the air is pulled through the lower portions of the house and then up and out another tower.

Both the dogtrot house and the wind catcher are culturally accepted ways to beat the heat, but PSU asked: How well do they actually work? They put tiny models of each house into a self-constructed wind tunnel that can measure exactly how—and how well—they work to circulate air. A machine attached to the tunnel creates bubbles that lack an electromagnetic charge, which means that they simply float along on the air currents, providing a seemingly magical way to visually track airflow through the models. Researchers hope they can use the test results to help develop new building designs.

Testing traditional solutions to timeless problems like this one not only tells us something about other cultures; it also shows how old design principles could be melded with current technology to produce more efficient, livable, and sustainable spaces. And if the PSU labs are onto something, maybe your children—or grandchildren—will grow up in a house with a wind catcher.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

The falling costs of electronic fingerprinting make it a promising tool for cash payments of wealth from extracted resources. Photo: Dave Bleasdale (flickr)

Spy movies turn voices into passports, retinas into passwords. And modern fingerprint readers might be on the verge of helping developing nations turn oil revenues into cash transfers.

That's what Alan Gelb and Caroline Decker argue in a compelling round of research published this summer by the Center for Global Development. When people enroll in a cash payment program, their fingerprints or irises are scanned electronically; these are then used for identification before each future cash withdrawal.

It's called biometrics, and Gelb and Decker say it's a great way to fight fraud:

Evidence suggests that even well designed transfer programs experience 10-20 percent leakage, if not higher…We estimate that in a typical cash transfer program, savings from biometrics can cover initial costs in only 15 months and save an additional $60 million after five years. This is in addition to providing an auditable trail of the entire program and facilitating more efficient payment mechanisms.

Gelb and Decker also persuasively argue that biometrics can be great for voting and banking records, too. But they're especially interesting as a way for resource-rich countries to divvy up the revenues from their natural wealth. The researchers estimate, for example, that Libya's pre-war oil exports added up to an annual windfall of $6,250 for each of 6.4 million citizens.

Find a way to put most of that cash in the hands of residents, perhaps by way of a national trust fund, and you'd have some very nice working capital for up to 6.4 million business ventures or school tuitions.

There are two reasons resource-extraction cash transfers are a particularly promising application for biometrics:

Ongoing payments: The 15-month payoff period for biometric systems makes them ideal for large-scale programs that maintain long-term relationships with cash recipients. Resource extraction is a years-long process.

Decentralized wealth: Resource-rich nations have been dogged by what Gelb and Decker call "governance problems associated with the concentration of large rents in the hands of the state." By creating an efficient channel to spread that wealth to individuals, biometrics could make make it harder for future autocrats to consolidate power.

Even James Bond might be impressed by that.

Mobile phones are increasingly important throughout the developing world. Photo: ICT4D.at (flickr)

Around the world, mobile phone technology is being touted as a life changing path from poverty to prosperity. Instant price data from global markets, mobile banking, credit card transfers on the go, mobile classrooms, remote-control irrigation and even apps that repel mosquitoes are just a few of the ways that mobile phone technology is leading the fight against poverty. But, for the world's rush of new mobile phone users, there's just one problem. Where to plug in and charge?

As mobile technology continues to advance and build pathways out of poverty for many in the developing world, answers to the charging issues are popping up in the developed world.

University of Wisconsin researchers are developing a new technology that could charge mobile phones by harvesting the kinetic energy that humans create when walking, said the BBC. In Kenya, the solution is bicycles. Inventor Pascal Katana and students from University of Nairobi have made this simple, popular mode of transportation into much more. The energy from cycling simultaneously charges mobile phones for a start-up cost of only 350 Kenyan shillings, or $4. And in a few years, a mobile phone or laptop user may be able to recharge by simply pointing the device at the sun, says NPR.

Ideas like these can be a big help in developing countries, where the ever-increasing abilities of mobile phones are in great demand. Nearly 60 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa use mobile phones, according to a 2010 study by Jenny C. Aker and Isaac M. Mbiti. A mobile phone acts as much more than a tool for communication — it strengthens the relationship between impoverished people and global markets and creates new business opportunities for local communities.

To gain access to these income boosting business opportunities, mobile phone technology will be a crucial tool moving forward. And both accessible and affordable ways to charge the devices will be instrumental in poverty alleviation. Check out the video below to see how these opportunities are coming about as the power is flipped on — or, in this case, cranked.

Water, a little bleach and a plastic bottle are all Filipino entrepreneur Illac Diaz needs to light up the world. He's out to make lighting free and safe, one slum at a time.

Until now, nearly three million people in the Philippines have gone without electricity, according to philstar.com. Those with access often use unsafe or illegal technology, creating disastrous effects. For example, 2,520 electricity-related fires were reported in 2009. In the Philippines, through the My Shelter Foundation, Diaz is implementing Solar Bottle Bulbs to diminish these problems. A used plastic bottle filled with water and a touch of bleach is placed in a hole of a tin roof. For up to five years, 50 watts of light fill up the once-gloomy windowless shack any time the sun is out, Diaz told Reuters in the video above.

Although WattWatt.com reports that the idea originally started with mechanic Alfredo Moser of Brazil, who used the creation locally, Diaz attempts to spread it worldwide. With an MIT student design, Diaz has brought the appropriate technology farther, with his two-hour seminar about the simple product. The invention is something that is so simple, cheap and sustainable that anyone can create it and maintain it themselves. As Diaz says, the three rules of appropriate technology are that people can find it, they can replicate it, and most importantly, they can make a business of it. Not only does the Solar Bottle Bulb bring free, sustainable lighting to places that haven't had it before, they also create a new market for people to install the bulb at small costs.

The only downfall of the Solar Bottle Bulb is that the idea only works during the day. But that hasn't stopped nearly 300 households, small businesses and schools in San Pedro, Philippines, from installing the Solar Bottle Bulbs.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act has generated many jobs in the clothing manufacturing sector, especially for women. Photo: Jenny Bussey Vaughan/Mercy Corps

Most Americans may have never heard of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, but their closets probably contain at least one article of clothing imported as part of it.

The act — AGOA, by its acronym — was passed by Congress in 2000. It’s a free-trade deal between the U.S. and a number of Sub-Saharan African nations that eliminates quotas and duties for certain goods. It allows African products to compete with those from other regions on a more level playing field on the U.S. market. 87 percent of these imports consist of petroleum and minerals, according to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations. That’s not all, though, as Florizelle Lizer, the assistant U.S. trade representative for Africa explained to the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs:

The main focus of our efforts and our capacity-building assistance related to AGOA has always been to promote new nontraditional and value-added exports from Africa like apparel, footwear, processed agricultural products and manufactured goods.

This is where you’ll find AGOA’s selling point for the average Joe or Joanna in one of its member states. It’s created tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs, and many of these new employees are women. Some of the largest gains are in clothing manufacturing. For a poor, landlocked country like Lesotho, clothing exports tripled and 50,000 new jobs appeared following its entrance into AGOA, according to a report by Lawrence Edwards and Robert Lawrence. It’s also helping to empower women by providing them access to a regular income, comments Zambia News Features.

There’s a catch, though: AGOA says the materials used to make products exported to the U.S. must be manufactured in the exporting country or, at the very least, in another AGOA state. But being able to manufacture fabrics on an industrial scale is a tall order for developing nations that don’t already have that kind of infrastructure. Luckily for them, another piece was added to AGOA a few years after it debuted. It’s called the Third Country Fabric Rule, and it allows African countries to import their fabric from other parts of the world, manufacture the finished product at home, and then export it to the U.S. under AGOA.

The Third Country Rule doesn’t quite sync up with AGOA, and must be renewed more frequently. AGOA itself isn’t up for revision until 2015, while the Third Country Rule is set to expire in 2012. In May, AllAfrica reported that the U.S. had said that "its market would no longer be accepting garments whose raw materials could have been sourced from outside the exporting country." Since then, a U.S. congressman submitted a bill to extend the Rule until 2015, though an article from Forbes argues that recent U.S. actions concerning AGOA constitute a kind of "benign neglect."

Not everyone is in favor of AGOA in its current state, though. Some call it a fig leaf for the oil industry or a cap on the growth of African manufacturing. U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is a supporter, but in a recent speech at the AGOA forum in Zambia she pointed out some of its shortcomings, according to Procurement News. She said African governments need to work on providing greater support to manufacturers — citing the example of an American business that chose to import from Vietnam instead of an AGOA because Vietnamese government subsidies meant that the factory there could churn out products more quickly. Clinton also criticized the fact that countries "export only a handful of the 6,500 products," eligible under AGOA, while "the most common export is still a barrel of oil." Others see the Third Country Rule as actually stunting the growth of local textile industries. It might be cheaper to import from Asia in the short run, but local businesses could suffer the long-term.

But in the minds of many, allowing the rule to lapse — or even threatening to let it do so — makes investors nervous and hurts countries’ long-term prospects. Here’s hoping congressional inaction concerning your clothing’s origin won’t cost an African woman the shirt off her back.

Margo Conner is a senior at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, majoring in international affairs. Read her other contributions to Global Envision.

The rail systems in India carry coal, but are too small and slow to bring in the quantity needed to make the kind of difference that Adani can. Photo: degahk (flickr)

When the government fails to provide, the savvy entrepreneur fills the gaps—but not without criticism.

India’s government has long failed to keep up with its own rapid development, leaving rural regions without electricity despite abundant coal reserves. Gautam Adani, an Indian entrepreneur, stepped up to develop the much-needed electrical infrastructure that encourages India’s growth, says a recent New York Times article.

His operation is far from homegrown. His coal mines are based in Indonesia and Australia and his transport ship is Korean-made. His ability to tap into the global market allows him to do what the government can’t, faster and cheaper than it could.

This global approach allowed Adani to circumvent logistical and political barriers within India. The rail system is ill equipped to transport coal, the New York Times reported, and mining requires uprooting protected forest areas and tribal groups, something politicians are hesitant to permit.

But despite the development, local fishermen argue that Adani may have done more harm than good. He has brought in few jobs and is blamed for the depletion of sea life essential to the region's economy.

India’s rural poor may have electricity now, but many remain skeptical that it came at too high a cost.