Social Performance Indicators Blog

Happy Earth Day!

Posted by: Taea Calcut

A SABR microfinance client harvests lemons in Uzbekistan

In celebration of Earth Day 2010, we invite our readers to review the Social Performance Indicator Blog's previous Social Responsibility to the Environment posts, which examined the roles MFIs play in mitigating the environmental impact of financed enterprises. Feel free to share environmentally-conscious activities your MFI is doing in honor of the holiday (or year-round) in the comments section below!

Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Enterprises among Indigenous Populations: REFICOM-CDRO

Posted by: Katherine Oglietti

 
A CDRO client plants a tree as part of a reforestation project.
 

Interview with: Mirna Elizabeth Chaclán
Marketing and Social Performance, REFICOM-CDRO, Guatemala

CDRO was founded in 1981 by leaders of Mayan communities in Western Guatemala in order to promote integrated rural development in indigenous communities through an approach that respects Mayan Quiche traditions. CDRO works in conjunction with REFICOM (Red Financiera Comunitaria- The Community Financial Network). Due to its goal of assisting indigenous populations who are closely attached to the land, social responsibility to the environment is essential to CDRO’s programming. MIX interviewed Mirna Elizabeth Chaclán of REFICOM-CDRO, who gave us an overview of their written and informal policies on social responsibility to the environment.

REFICOM-CDRO created a written policy on environmental protection in 2008, promoting social responsibility to the environment among the enterprises it supports. Mirna explains: “We live in an important environmental zone, so we feel it is important to conserve the environment. We feel it is very important to establish an environmental policy to value the resources that we have, and secondly to have principles and norms that allow us to practice microfinance without affecting our environment.” The first way it works towards this goal is through classifying microenterprises according to their potential environmental impact in three tiers: high, medium, and low impact.

MFIs’ Environmental Policies: An Overview

Posted by: Taea Calcut

In a world where development discourse is increasingly peppered with terms such as "sustainability" and "green," what initiatives have socially-conscious microfinance institutions assumed to lessen the environment impact wrought by their clients as well as their own operations? Data from MIX Social Performance reports, which feature a "Social Responsibility to the Environment" (SRE) section regarding MFIs' environmental policies and activities, can help us to begin answering this question.

Graph 1: MFIs with SRE Policies Directed at Supported Enterprises (n=163)

First, what percentage of MFIs report having SRE policies directed at clients and client-owned enterprises? As seen in Graph 1, 81 or about 50% of 163 reporting MFIs claim to have written or informal policies, while another 11 or 7% are in the process of developing written policies.

The Triple Bottom Line: MFIs' Social Responsibility to the Environment

Posted by: Taea Calcut

The impact of microenterprises' activity on the environment can be particularly significant due to the low technological level, general lack of regulatory supervision, and absence of supporting infrastructure and services in their country of operations. Given these challenges, what role can MFIs play in mitigating the environmental impact of financed enterprises to satisfy a "triple bottom line" of sound financial, social, and environmental performance? Over the next two weeks, the Social Performance Indicators Blog will explore the ways in which MFIs have demonstrated their social responsibility to the environment (SRE), highlighting social performance data reported by MFIs to MIX as well as interviews with MFIs featuring SRE policies and initiatives.