Despite the solid entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes many Chinese, not many are able to start and expand small businesses. Access to credit is often no more than a dream for most of China’s 300 million people living below the poverty line in China. An attractive option for them is microfinance, commonly defined as small loans - as small as US$100- for impoverished individuals to help them achieve financial self-sufficiency.

Wokai.org is a “capital-contributing microfinance intermediary” trying to bring money to Chinese entrepreneurs who want to set up their own small businesses, by raising loan capital online from individual contributors for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in China. Its goal is to expand financial opportunities for the country’s poor (and mostly rural) population.

Though its primary goal is fundraising, Wokai also provides “capacity building” for microfinance organizations, which can mean anything from emotional support for first-time borrowers to computer training for loan managers.

Wokai.org American founders Courtney McColgan and Casey Wilson think that the website will not only be a fundraising platform, but also a community for people interested in supporting microfinance in China.

Through Wokai, people will be able to make loans online directly to individuals who have been selected by Wokai’s local partner MFIs. These MFIs in select clients, whose profiles are then posted on the Wokai website through profiles that outline their business ventures and loan request.
Contributors browse these profiles, select who and how much to finance, and then transfer money to Wokai through our online payment system. Once funds are transferred, Wokai distributes this loan capital to partner MFIs for allocation to micro entrepreneurs. At the end of the loan cycle, partner MFIs collect loan repayments and re-issue loans.

Like other “capital-contributing microfinance intermediaries’ Wokai is not legally a financial service organization, so it does cannot receive savings deposits, which means that the pool of money cannot grow and requires constant capital injections.

The website is scheduled to be launched in Mod-November, so stay tuned.

It’s inappropriate to restrict car purchases or license plate issuing to control the total number of vehicles. We need to take into account the overall situation of boosting domestic demand and maintaining steady, rapid economic growth.

said Wang Haiping, deputy head of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform here.

With the poor economic situation, officials are thinking twice about whether to close polluting factories, whether the benefits to the environment really outweigh the dangers to social stability

said Peng Peng, research director of the Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, a government-affiliated think tank here (Washington Post).

A slowing economy will use less resources, but is this bad for China and the workers making stuff out of those resources? Does China want to ensure consumption remains high (even of polluting goods) and is willing to do anything to keep it that way? Will China still be willing to accept the short-term financial costs for longer-term environmental (and, often, financial) gain? Will the recent trend in stronger environmental protection enforcement continue, or will the economy take precedent over all else, again?

A recent report by McKinsey and Co.(http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_IT_can_cut_carbon_emissions_2221)estimates that information and communications technologies (laptops, PCs, data centers, computing networks, mobile phones and telecommunications) could become the biggest greenhouse gas emitters by 2020. The figures calculated in the report factor in anticipated energy efficiency improvements for these technologies, making it quite alarming. The report claims “The adoption and use of information and communications technologies in China, India and other developing economies will account for much of this growth” as “emerging countries go digital.” The somewhat soothing news in the report deals with how information and communications technologies offset emissions in the general economy.McKinsey and Co. calculates that information and communications technologies will offset 5 times their projected emissions for 2020, so it seems that the IT sector is still on the positive side for the environment.

What I find to be interesting and where I like to think about what is possible is looking at not only how the design of these technologies can be improved, but how these calculations could change by the energy source. The manufacturing and use of PCs will double by 2020, mobile phones will triple and the biggest carbon contributor will be data centers. Using coal, oil or natural gas as the main energy source to power our computers and phone chargers will always be a dirty business; but how would the calculations given by McKinsey & Co. change when taking different energy sources into consideration? Even if the numbers would have stayed the same in relative terms, I think the report could have made an even bigger impact on the utilities end if it would have also included alternative energy sources for a comparative exercise. <

In any case, this is a must read report and is great for thinking about cradle-to-cradle design opportunities and impacts for the IT sector.

When the environmental costs of coal are considered, along with the impact of price distortion caused by current regulations, the total external costs of coal reached RMB 1745 billion in 2007, equal to 7.1 per cent of China’s GDP for the same year.

An interesting attempt to put a number on the costs of environmental degradation and impact on lives caused from the coal industry in China. This goes beyond vague statements or simplified injuries/deaths statistics to bigger picture, accurate numerical analysis.

Find out more about the true cost of Coal in China.

st week, the American Chamber of Commerce held its 4th annual CSR conference.

An all day affair packed with speakers, it was the end that many waited for.  They were finalists for the 2008 AMCHAM CSR award, and some had flown to Shanghai to accept rewards should their firm be the winner.

According to the AMCHAM release:

The 2008 winners were selected from a strong field of 50 projects and 37 companies, both large and small.

and

This year’s competition showed a consistent improvement in the understanding and implementation of CSR in China. Compared with previous years, a growing number of companies have developed mature programs with comprehensive strategies and structures to integrate corporate governance, community outreach, environmental stewardship, and employee health and safety into their core businesses.

the winners:

CSR Excellence in China Award: Intel
CSR Partnership Award: FedEx Express China & ORBIS International
CSR Award for Small Businesses: PMI Shanghai

Special Recognition:
For outstanding achievements in sustainable community development:  Tecsun Homes & Changjiang Civilian Education Foundation
For exceptional and longstanding CSR achievements: Shanghai Pudong Development Bank

When I read this release, I was happy to see that programs I have known and worked with were receiving recognition.  Intel, FedEx, and PMI are all firms that have very passionate employees in the area of volunteering, and their CSR managers are all people whom understand how to develop a high quality CSR program platform.

Where I was a bit troubled though is that this was the first time I begun to ask myself about the credibility of an award was, and what the role of CSR awards should be.

When I first began working with AMCHAM’s CSR committee 4 years ago, there was a real sense that we were in the lead position of something very important, and that through these awards we could promote members to create better programs.  More importantly though, we believed that these awards would also catalyze Chinese firms as well, and that is why we made the decision to include a category for Chinese firms.

However, when looking at the list of finalists, I am not sure this has been done as both Coca - Cola and Mary Kay were previous winners, and Intel, Corning, Cargill, and KPMG have had some of the strongest applications in the past…

So, was the goal of promoting stronger CSR programs really accomplished?

With only 2 Chinese applications, was the second goal of promoting CSR among Chinese firms really accomplished?  Especially as Pudong Development Bank was a previous winner?

Taking that to another level, with 2 of the 5 firms recognized having previously won, does that make their award any more or less credible?  A debate we had often was whether or not previous winners should be considered at all, whether they should be considered in different categories, and if considered, what was the best way to ensure that the same program was not winning over again.

Not trying to take anything away form the winner, who I will again say have great programs, the other issue I had with these awards was that for the 2nd year in a row it was an international charity that won the award. For me, as a manager of an international charity, where I believe this is counter productive is that many of the international NGO - while having good programs - simply do not need the recognition in the same way a Chinese NGO does.  We are able to develop stronger programs as our networks in the international community (where 99% of funding exists) are stronger, we benefit from resources that local NGOs do not have, and arguably.. it is more important to highlight local groups that have developed strong programs, and thus highlight the local capacity that has been developed as a result of AMCHAM’s push into the local community.

In the end, what I hope will come about next year is that we will see a much larger local presence, and a change of the old gaurd.  It is clear that the recent financial issues the world is facing will impact CSR funding, but there are dozens of firms who were not represented (either they did not apply or were not strong enough) that I hope will be.

Our friends at WethicA have released their recent newsletter What Constituents a “Responsible Purchase”?.

It is an important topic for many in China, and it is a topic that has evolved from making sure no children are in the labor pool, to ensuring your painted items are not lead paint based, to develop sustainable practices when designing, manufacturing, and selling products.

If you like the article below,and would like to learn more about their services, you can go to their website here

Most of our customers are western buying companies wanting to improve labor conditions in their supply chain worldwide. Most purchase from other countries besides China extending our work with our clients to countries of some of the following: India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Turkey, Morocco, Romania, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia. Different country conditions often prompts the question “is it a responsible purchase”. Another way to ask the same question is if we should stop working with this country because of its general lack of social awareness.

I have mulled over this question even before becoming formally involved with social accountability and corporate social responsibility. The first time I asked myself this was in Morocco ten years ago. Every week, the prevalent garment industry there dispatched thousands of trucks crossing the Straits of Gibraltar with finished goods to more affluent Europe. It was common to witness Moroccan children climb onto the back of the trucks or trapped themselves amongst the goods to enter Europe despite the fatal risks of lack of water and food during the journey, dangers associated with jumping on moving trucks, and getting caught by law enforcement officers. At this time I felt the responsible approach was to buy things in countries like Morocco where in spite of conditions, it brought jobs to people that needed it. Jobs, however low-end, meant opportunities and could reduce the desperation of these youths risking their lives on those trucks. In the years since, my outlook has shifted dramatically after being exposed to absolutely horrendous working conditions that can not be considered as any type of opportunity except only for owners to exploit their laborforce.I have seen how such harsh and dangerous working conditions have slowly and surely destroyed the physical and mental state of employees leaving a demoralized and hopeless workforce. I am confronted again with the same question if it responsible to work with such factories.

Sure, I can argue the creation of jobs.

But at what cost?

Our experience in many developing countries gives WethicA the tools to analyze this issue extensively. Naturally, some countries have better general working conditions than others. But this by no means automatically assures every factory in “good working conditions” countries are up to those standards or even close, and vice versa with “bad working conditions” countries. More importantly, crucial differences in living costs, government policies and social organization prevents the application of any feasible global benchmark of absolute best or worst. Very often, a good situation in one country is considered a poor one in another. Taking in the overall situation of a country on to its own scale is key to identifying the good factories to use as the benchmark. Returning to the original question: should companies stop buying goods from one country because the general working conditions are worst than other countries? If that is the case, this will halt the potential of any progress, in particular with the good factories, throwing out all hope in achieving real improvement in that country. This can not be a responsible solution either.

Once again, we need to select the best factories with real potential for sustainable improvement based on the individual country’s benchmark, not a global standard. This I feel is the only responsible solution.

On Saturday October 25, Crossroads attended the Fall Eco Design Fair, which brought together over 25 businesses and groups committed to well-designed and environmentally aware products. Walking through the narrow strip of tents, I was warmly greeted and handed information ranging from bamboo clothes and items, FSC-certified paper products (http://www.alocalprinter.com/uk/fsc-certified-paper/), environmentally-friendly diapers, an organic produce section and more. While taking a stroll around the area, I did a couple of quick interviews. Below I asked a designer, a worker from Greendesign, a university student and a worker from Studio Maki what sustainability and CSR meant to them.

The Devil finds work for idle hands is a quote that I (and others) talk about when discussing China’s labor market.  It is not so much a matter of if there will be problems from large scale layoffs, just a matter of how big the problems would be.

So, when reading the recent AFP article Laid-off workers in China say prospects grim I took interest in the paragraph:

Laid-off migrant workers said job prospects elsewhere in southern China looked grim as soaring prices for raw materials and shrinking demand from the crisis-hit US and European economies squeeze manufacturers in the region.

“We thought about going to Shenzhen or even Shanghai. But then factories are also closing down in those places,” Song Xiaoguan, 25

Surely an issue the central party is going to be keenly aware of, for many in China who have left their families to work in the city, a lot is at stake.

China Crossroads was formally invited to attend the fourth China forum on environment and development over this past weekend in Beijing. The forum was sponsored by SUEZ Environment; organized by the All China Environment Federation (ACEF) and the Center for Studies on China’s Circular Economy and Environmental Assessment and Forecasting; and hosted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  Many experts from all over the world came to present their findings to further support a future low carbon cleaner, greener China.

Walking into the conference room area presented me with a contradiction that stayed with me the entire weekend. I don’t mean to be overly-critical, but the first thing I saw was nicely laid out plates and perfectly placed tongs to be used for individually packaged buns, cakes and biscuits?? This promptly got me to thinking about the environmental contradictions we all have in our lives; especially for we wanna-be environmentalists who often fall far short of the mark of being environmentally friendly.

We travel around attending conferences about CO2 reduction yet probably contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere from our travelling than the average person who doesn’t even think about environmental protection.  On another note, below is a summary of some of the interesting presentations.

• The U.N. is going to launch Carbon labeling and Eco-labeling soon in China.

• SUEZ Environnement (not misspelled!) has a project in Saudi Arabia that de-salinizes water and turns it into electricity.  In Mexico, SUEZ has a variety of projects that turns wastewater into fertilizer into energy. In Shanghai, they have the SCIP project that turns toxic waste into energy in the form of steam. In Hong Kong they have a project that treats landfill gas and turns it into energy. All of these projects can be seen at    http://www.suez-environnement.com/.

• The Forum really stressed the concept of “common but differentiated responsibility.” A speaker commented that at the Bonn Summit, developed countries made a lot of promises but never carried them out and that technology transfer hasn’t been enough in China.  At this point, I desperately wanted a speaker to get up at some point in the conference and look at China’s environmental challenge as a tremendous opportunity for China to rise and lead as an example. Instead, I heard more complaints and comparisons that made the West look bad (which are justifiable). Such statistical comparisons aimed at pointing the finger, however, do not move us forward.

• Watson Gin, California Department of Toxic Substances Control Chief Engineer, talked about “green chemistry” and how California was going about committing to the concept of a cradle to cradle production mode. First was the passage of the SB 509 (Senate Bill 509) and the AB 1879. Following this, he said that it is essential to disseminate information on toxic chemicals, account for chemical toxicity, train new generation of science and engineers and include green chemistry into the Environmental Education Initiative. The above steps will eventually lead to the ban of certain consumer products, which I find fascinating.

• Peak Oil Production: This is a huge topic that is dominating a lot of sustainability discussions.  According to Graeme Lang, Professor from the Department of Asian International Studies at City University Hong Kong, we already hit our peak discoveries in the 1960s and most oil experts do not expect any more major discoveries to occur. Production has been peaking the last decade and the last peak will consist of multiple mini-peaks and then sharp decline. The speaker gave numerous examples of urban re-localization that will help cities wean themselves off oil.  Check out www.peakoil.net.

• An idea that dominated the conference dealt with the reduction of urban sprawl in order to reduce energy use via less transportation, localized resources, etc. In accordance with this idea, vertical cities are better than suburban sprawl even though a Hong Kong architect presenter expressed dissatisfaction with Hong Kong’s vertical veneer.

• For me, the most interesting talk was by Yao Xin on Digital Environmental Protection and the way China is going about reducing Total Pollution Load (www.dept.ac.cn). He talked about a system that can sense and then send out warnings to factories in other provinces that are close to going over their pollution limit and an online supervision data and environment information data including pollution forecasts.

• Yu Xiaoxuan, Vice Director of Construction & Environment and on the Olympic Organizing Committee, cited Greenpeace’s China Olympics rating of 5 as evidence of China’s Green achievement (versus Athens score of 1 given by Greenpeace). I took this as a positive sign that a government official (or a person with high status) looked to an NGO’s work for legitimizing the Committee’s work. Hopefully this will become more of a trend.

Last Thursday October 16, GIGA continued its lecture series with a talk by EDAW, a leading landscaping firm that has carried out many projects throughout China. Arne McRadu, Senior Landscape Designer and Jason Jones, Senior Environmental Planner, discussed EDAW’s sustainable master planning process and gave numerous case studies that highlighted some of the firm’s innovations and challenges in China. Below is a quick summary of each 10-minute clip:

Part I: Mr. McRadu discusses how EDAW has incorporated sustainability into its practice since 1939. In order to better achieve sustainability, EDAW has a developed a DEEP practice: Design, Economics, Environment and Planning. They aim to “produce places, products and services in a way that reduces the use of nonrenewable resources, minimizes environmental impact and puts people in the natural environment.”  In terms of landscaping within China, wetlands have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Many people cite climate change as the culprit when, in fact, it is poor local management issues. As a result, many of EDAW’s projects have involved wetland restoration. Mr. McRadu then begins to go through the principles of EDAW’s master planning.

Part II:  Mr. McRadu finishes up with the 10 principles of EDAW’s master plan (resilience, economics, responsiveness to location, place making, movement, energy, water, material waste, hinterland and sense of belonging) and jumps into the Chongqing National Forest case study. In the villages near the earthquake area, tourism began attracting a lot of business through forested areas that eventual lead to overdevelopment and the government’s demolishment of the local tourism businesses. EDAW was contracted to go into the area and re-habilitate the area. Mr. Jones talks us through the project and gives a more concrete idea of how a place can become “overdeveloped.”

Part III: Mr. Jones goes into more detail about Chongqing’s water treatment strategy and EDAW’s lessons from case studies in Denmark and Poland. He then gives an overview of the Kunming Dianchi Lake wetland and water system case study. EDAW is contracted to develop resort facilities next to one of China’s most polluted lakes.  This challenge brings up discussions related to wetland management issues. This clip ends with a list of the different types of wetlands planned for the area such as a wetland ecological park, wetland botanical garden, wetland maze and an artificial beach wetland.

Part IV:  Mr. Jones go through a couple more case studies. He starts with the Mangrove Park and then works his way through the Shenzhou resort and Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park. All of these projects have great descriptions and the Shenzhou resort section discusses the relationship between social impact assessments and development projects. In addition, the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park (largest in China)  section leads to a discussion on the role EDAW plays when working with factories.

Part V: In this last section, Mr. Jones gives a great introduction to a pilot urban storm water runoff management system in Beijing. This was quite an amazing project that consists of an automated system of culverts that are triggered by meteorological reports of rainstorms. It really makes you wonder the limits of human innovation when resources, such as water, are scarce. The clip ends with a discussion about golf courses and their ecological impact. My question: is constructing golf courses a sustainable landscaping practice?

Learning about the many projects EDAW is doing in China was interesting and really inspiring in terms of what can be accomplished when experts coordinate their work for the sake of making a landscape functional and healthy. I do wonder, however, what would happen if there would be firms out there doing pure re-habilitation landscaping (instead of building resorts etc.). Anyone know of any? I also wonder where you draw the line in terms of what is deemed as “sustainable landscaping” when you know some client demands are ecologically detrimental. I think EDAW takes a good approach of trying to persuade and do the best to make the project as ecological as possible; but when should a firm say no?