In this talk we propose a strategy for producing scalable, economically efficient combined solutions to climate change mitigation, poverty, and health inequity. The first element of this strategy is creating a development credit market that can complement carbon credits by efficiently funding verified, ancillary poverty reduction and health improvement benefits. A next step is the creation of the systems for producing, selling, distributing, and financing the production of these new social and economic commodities. The production and distribution systems for development credits need to decrease transaction and distribution costs so that the poorest, most isolated and most marginalized communities can actively participate in the market without a majority of proceeds going to high-paid middle-men. After describing the concept and strategy, we also present an update on a set of demonstration projects, preliminary conclusions from our implementation experiments, and ideas on the way forward.
Robert Van Buskirk is a Program Manager at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Van Buskirk received a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from the University of California in 1984, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 1991. His Ph.D. is for studies on the fluid dynamics of the Great Red Spot of Jupiter.
In 1993 after two years working on engineering studies in support of Native American water rights with Natural Resources Consulting Engineers, Dr. Van Buskirk joined the University of Asmara in Eritrea, East Africa as an Assistant Professor of Physics. During his four years in Eritrea he was one of the founders of the Eritrean national electronic mail system, and moved to the Eritrean Department of Energy in 1995 to help found the research programs in stove efficiency, wind energy resource assessment, and solar energy resource assessment. Then after one year of practical experience working with business and technology in Asia as a technical project manager with a Hong Kong computer networking start-up, he returned to California at the end of 1998. Robert joined LBNL in 1999 and has been building economic cost/benefit models for energy policy analysis, striving to constantly enhance the accuracy, resolution, detail and speed of policy impact calculations. Policies arising from this analysis will reduce US CO2 emissions by hundreds of millions of tons over the next few decades. As a volunteer Dr. Van Buskirk has been assisting sustainable energy and water development and technology transfer projects in Africa, including wind energy development, carbon crediting for improved stoves and sustainable land use, efficient solar lighting for rural villages and national energy efficiency standards. Currently his sustainable energy and development projects in Africa are active in the countries of Eritrea, Tanzania, Ghana, and Senegal.
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