Recap of Net Impact Conference: Part I

This past weekend I attended the Net Impact conference at Cornell University. It was sponsored by the Johnson School of Business and its purpose was to bring together MBA students and professionals interested and focused on sustainability and corporate responsibility. I felt a little out of place the whole weekend as many of the discussions were off topic for me but I definitely brought something new to the table- an angle to the sustainability discussion that many of these people had not thought about. Many times over the weekend these students were commended for their commitment to sustainability and environmental change- but as some of the panelists pointed out it is mostly motivated by economics. While I don’t doubt that the majority of the people there truly have a passion for saving the environment I can’t help but be skeptical about their motivations. We come from a place of health. In our world, the driving force for sustainability and environmentalism is human health. In their world they are motivated by dollar signs.
I will break this blog into two separate posts so that I don’t overwhelm you with information.
I attended some interesting panels throughout the weekend. The first one I attended was called “Creating Access to Clean Water: A Top Down vs. Bottom Up Approach”.
The two main points that I took away with me was the importance of community building. When trying to create a social movement it is essential to get the community involved and let them be the owners of the project. You must have buy in from all the stakeholders or your venture will never succeed. Secondly, Kevin Mc Govern, Founder and CEO of the Water Initiative and professor at the Johnson School, made an excellent point that I had never really thought about before. His company provides filters for people in Mexico to filter arsenic, fluoride, and pathogens. We all know the ill health effects of all three of these things and understand the need for these filters. He said that his company is for profit and he doesn’t feel bad about it at all. Non-profits can go into a country and do work and then leave because their money ran out or some other reason. The two main problems that communities face from NGO work is abandonment and maintenance. For profits don’t leave as easily and usually stay in the country for a much longer time to see things through because their product and their reputation are on the line. A good example of this would be the digging of tube wells in Bangladesh by UNICEF. The majority of the wells contained arsenic and there was consequently a major arsenic poisoning of the Bangladeshi people. UNICEF has worked to fix this problem on a small scale. But ultimately, they are not claiming responsibility for this. In my Water and Infectious Disease class we talked at length about the important role women play in providing clean drinking water and clean water for sanitation for their families. The world over women are usually the keepers of the household but in many poor areas girls are the ones walking the 10 miles to fetch the water. So it is important to target them to teach them about water, sanitation and hygiene (aka WASH). Here is an interesting factoid: if you teach boys your return is 1:1 but if you teach girls your return is 1:10!!!!!!!