Poverty remains the main challenge facing the countries that will be the home of 85% of the world's population in the decades to come. Some 2.7 billion people worldwide continue to subsist on less than US$2 per day. The challenge facing the global community is to eradicate extreme poverty and to foster economic development that benefits all while preserving natural habitats and biodiversity. Business is a core human activity, and it will be instrumental in bringing about sustainable development.

This new publication ( 3.2 MB) by the WBCSD Development Focus Area shows how companies can contribute to global sustainable development through their core businesses in a way that is profitable for the companies and good for development. It offers a business perspective on key challenges and opportunities for the development of poor countries, as well as key messages for companies and governments on how to promote sustainable business solutions that benefit the poor and the societies and environments in which they live.

The issues selected are not exhaustive, but they reflect both traditional areas for development actors and business. The issues are Ecosystems, Education and Training, Energy, Enterprise Development, Financial Flows, Governance, Health, Mobility, Trade, and Water.

This MobileActive Guide focuses on using mobile phones in fundraising campaigns. The guide features case studies from around the world, strategies for using mobile phones in fundraising, and a how-to section for organizations considering using mobile phones to generate support for their work.

We describe the current state of fundraising via mobile phone, it's promise, and shortcomings at this point. We feature a number of case studies from around the world, what we learned about effective fundraising via mobile phone, what the state of the technology is at this point, and where it's headed. We provide useful tips and resources for those who want to try using mobiles in their fundraising campaigns.

The contributions of immigrants to U.S. technology formation are staggering. While the foreign-born account for just over 10 percent of the U.S. working population, they represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and nearly 50 percent of those with doctorates. Even looking within the Ph.D. level, ethnic researchers make an exceptional contribution to science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citation counts, and so on. The magnitude of these ethnic contributions raises many research and policy questions: 4 examples are debates regarding the appropriate quota for H1-B temporary visas, the possible crowding out of native students from the science and engineering fields, the brain-drain or brain-circulation effect on sending countries, and the future prospects for U.S. technology leadership. This paper describes a new approach for quantifying the ethnic composition of U.S. inventors with previously unavailable detail.

(Harvard Business School Working Knowledge)

IBLF and the International Finance Corporation, in close collaboration with the UN Global Compact, have produced a comprehensive toolkit that business managers can use to identify, assess and implement responses to human rights challenges in new or evolving business projects.

This tool is designed to help companies understand in a proactive rather then reactive way where potential human rights challenges may lie in their evolving or future business projects, so that they can manage these risks and mitigate or eliminate them before they become a problem.

The Guide released today is a work in progress and is to be tested over the next two years to ensure that it is as practical and user-friendly as possible.

The Guide introduces an eight step process through which business managers and their colleagues can oversee the identification, assessment and implementation of measures that will strengthen their company's contribution to human rights protection:

Step One: Determine whether a full human rights impact assessment is needed

Step Two: Identify and clarify the business project context

Step Three: Set the baseline: articulate the local picture and conditions

Step Four: Consult with Stakeholders to verify the human rights challenges

Step Five: Assess the human rights impacts and consequences

Step Six: Present the assessment findings and recommendations to management

Step Seven: Implement a human rights management process

Step Eight: Monitor, Evaluate and Report on the Management Process

Companies can support or invest in social entrepreneurship in three main ways, all of which can also create benefits for the company:

* Through investing in social entrepreneurs and their organisation - either as a part of their core business operations in different parts of the value chain, or through their community investment activities.

* By engaging in public policy dialogue, advocacy, and institution building in order to create an enabling environment for social enterprise.

* By creating better internal climates, for example by encouraging employees to be innovative in developing new business models, products and services that combine profitable business opportunities with social or environmental solutions.

For more information and to find examples of how business and social entrepreneurs have worked together, read Harnessing potential: Why it makes sense for your business to work with social entrepreneurs

The least developed countries (LDCs) are a group of countries (presently 50 States) that have been officially identified by the United Nations as "least developed" in the light of their low income, weak human assets, and high economic vulnerability. UNCTAD, in past LDC Reports, has taken the view that the key to sustained economic growth and poverty reduction in LDCs is the development of productive capacities and related creation of productive employment. The Least Developed Countries Report 2007 corroborates this view by focusing on knowledge accumulation, technological learning and the ability to innovate as vital processes toward genuine productive capacity development in these countries.

Knowledge is becoming more and more important in the global sphere of competition and production. In this context, there is a danger that LDCs will be increasingly marginalized if they do not enhance the knowledge content of their economies and achieve economic diversification through learning and innovation. The Report shows that the current pattern of technology flows to LDCs through international trade, foreign direct investment and intellectual property licensing does not contribute to narrowing the knowledge divide. Sustained economic growth and poverty reduction are not likely to take place in countries where viable economic re-specialization would remain impossible in the absence of significant progress in technological learning and innovation capacity-building.

As the world becomes ever more globalised, international businesses are faced with an urgent need to forge stronger ties to the local communities in which they operate.

While these challenges are particularly pronounced for foreign firms with affiliates in developing countries, they are relevant to domestic developing country firms as well.

In developing countries, business linkages with local small-medium enterprises (SMEs) - including procurement, distribution, and sales - offer large firms an avenue through which to address some of these concerns.

The challenges for businesses, however, are in the implementation. Many large firms are, in principle, interested in developing relationships with local SMEs - however, such relationships can also be costly to form and maintain, and as a result, they rarely develop easily or smoothly.

A new publication by IBLF, Harvard University's Kennedy School and the International Finance Corporation explores some of the challenges and opportunities in the practice and scale-up of business linkages between large firms and small-medium enterprises in developing countries.

Business Linkages: Lessons, Opportunities, and Challenges provides 21 case studies from companies leading in this area, and highlights lessons from their experiences.

1. Minera Yanacocha (Newmont and IFC)
2. Eagle Lager, Uganda and Zambia (SABMiller)
3. SMEs in the value chain (National Business Initiative)
4. Economic linkage program in Rajasthan, India (Cairn India and IFC)
5. Prominp, Brazil (Petrobras and Partners)
6. Private sector initiative, Sub-Saharan Africa (SBP)
7. Anglo Zimile, South Africa (Anglo American)
8. Agricultural supply chain improvement, global (Ecom Agroindustrial Corporation)
9. Gulf of San Jorge SME program, Argentina (Pan American Energy)
10. Partnership for enterprise development in Africa (UNIDO and Microsoft)
11. SME development and linkages in Chad (ExxonMobil and IFC)
12. Vietnam Business Linkages Initiative (International Business Leaders Forum)
13. ACG/BTC linkages program, Azerbaijan (BP and IFC)
14. Diavik Diamond Mines, Inc, Northwest Territories, Canada (Rio Tinto)
15. Supply and distribution linkages with SMEs, global (Nestle)
16. Barclays microbanking, Ghana (Barclays Ghana with the Ghana Cooperative Susu
17. Collectors Association and Ghana Microfinance Institutions Network)
18. Distribution and retail linkages, Global (The Coca-Cola Company)
19. Aspire SME facilities in Africa (Shell Foundation and GroFin)
20. Empowering micro, small and medium retailers, Brazil (Tribanco)
21. Sustainable tea initiative, Kenya (Unilever and Kenya Tea Development Agency)
22. Small business development group, Kazakhstan (Chevron)

Scojo Foundation's network of entrepreneurs selling reading glasses in India demonstrates how market-based development models can provide much-needed services to the poor while stimulating economic growth, according to a case study released today by the World Resources Institute.

The case study, What Works: Scojo India Foundation, authored by Sachin Kadakia and Nico Clemminck of Columbia Business School, is an analysis of Scojo India Foundation's business model and best practices.

The work of Scojo India Foundation tackles presbyopia, or blurry up-close vision, while providing employment to hundreds of microfranchisees. While presbyopia causes inconvenience for those in high-income countries, where a quick visit to the drugstore for a pair of inexpensive reading glasses will remedy the condition, presbyopia in developing countries can have considerable adverse impacts on the precarious working lives of the poor. For weavers, mechanics, goldsmiths, and others whose livelihoods depend on near vision, a lack of access to reading glasses can impede productivity and significantly decrease their income and ability to feed their families.

Markets hold significant power to create or combat poverty. Increasingly, international development initiatives focused on economic growth and/or poverty alleviation are guiding markets toward working better for the poor. These initiatives are pushing for significant changes in the business-enabling environment to open markets for private-sector growth and small enterprise (SE) participation. They are enhancing the competitiveness of developing-country economies by linking small-scale producers with supply chains that sell to global markets. They are enabling small-scale producers to reap more rewards from global market participation by finding commercial solutions to the barriers that exclude small-scale producers from the benefits of higher value markets. And they are promoting program and policy shifts that help the poor improve health, sanitation, education, and other areas of their lives by supporting local market systems in which small enterprises play a critical delivery role.

These poverty eradication initiatives fall under the broad banner of Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P), the focus of the 2004–5 Reader. This document " Making Markets Work for the Poor " presents the M4P framework and shares practical lessons from a wide range of development experiences that illuminate workable paths to pro-poor market development.

"Stakeholder Engagement: A Good Practice Handbook for Companies Doing Business in Emerging Markets" draws on IFC's own learning as well as the current thinking and practices of our client companies and other institutions to provide the good practice "essentials" for building and sustaining constructive relationships over time as a means of risk mitigation, new business identification, and enhancing development outcomes.

The Handbook offers new and detailed guidance in a number of areas, including gender, indigenous peoples, grievance mechanisms, sustainability reporting, management functions, and the integration of stakeholder engagement activities with core business processes.