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08/28/2008 08:12 AM

2008 SEED Awards Announced

SustainableBusiness.com News

Five highly resourceful and innovative local entrepreneurial partnerships were celebrated as the SEED Initiative announced its 2008 SEED Awards for Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Development.

"The SEED Awards again underline that creative and entrepreneurial solutions to many of the pressing challenges facing the world are being found." Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director, said. "It is now vital that these shining examples are federated and mainstreamed across communities and countries to maximize their undoubted and potentially significant impact."

The 5 winning partnerships, each of which will receive from SEED a package worth $25,000 of tailor-made support services, international exposure, and networking activities to assist its development from a project idea to a sustainable enterprise and to create real impact, are:

--In Brazil, partners in Pintadas Solar are triggering community approaches in the semi-arid Northwest to water-efficient crop irrigation and biofuel production to address climate change adaptation and mitigation, and food security and poverty.

--In Cameroon, Guiding Hope partners plan to expand their production of organic, fair-trade honey from the remote Adamoua savannah to reach international markets and to become Cameroon’s largest exporter of high quality beeswax, as well as building an international market chain for the community-owned soap- and candle-making businesses.

--In India, local businesses and an NGO have teamed up with a UK university and identified an essential oil from high altitude Himalayan oregano as an antimicrobial agent that could be used in handsoaps and surface disinfectants in hospitals as a preventative against the bacterium Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

--In Nicaragua, a university research centre, a women’s cooperative, an NGO and experts on solar technology will launch a cooperative business that will produce and market solar products made from recycled solar cells and solar cookers adapted for local needs.

--In Thailand, tsunami-affected communities on the Andaman coast plan to expand employment opportunities through community-based tourism while the proceeds will support local projects such as handicraft marketing, a community centre, recycling, and youth-led conservation programmes.

An International Jury, composed of global experts across a range of sectors, advised the SEED Initiative on the selection. Jury members were deeply impressed by the promise of these projects, each of which is likely to be able to scale up its activities considerably; some might be replicated elsewhere.

This third round of International Awards represents a significant scaling up of SEED’s efforts: formerly a biennial competition, the SEED Awards are now given annually. The 2008 call for proposals was met by an overwhelming response: close to 400 applications from over 100 countries worldwide, representing the collaborative efforts of some 1629 organizations from the private and public sector, including non-governmental organizations, women’s groups, labour organizations, public authorities, international agencies and academia.

Supporting Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development--the SEED Initiative--is a global network for action on sustainable development partnerships, founded by IUCN, UNDP and UNEP, to deliver concrete progress towards the internationally-agreed, aspirational goals in the UN’s Millennium Declaration and the commitments made at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.