Fact Sheet
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC
January 4, 2008

Purpose of Initiative:

The Supporting Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SEED) Initiative, established at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, promotes and supports the important contributions local entrepreneurial initiatives and partnerships are making towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation. To achieve this objective, the Initiative:

• Advances the partnership paradigm, through engagement at international fora as well as through the Initiative’s global SEED Award (a competitive award scheme designed to publicly recognize and highlight the most worthy partnerships), and publications;
• Supports nascent partnerships with targeted services for SEED Award winners to help them strengthen their initiatives and to scale up and;
• Enhances technical knowledge/understanding of how partnerships function through research activities and by making lessons learned available to policy makers and partnership practitioners.

Partners:
Governments: Germany (Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety), Netherlands (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), South Africa (Department of Science and Technology), United Kingdom (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), and the United States Government.
International Organizations: The World Conservation Union (IUCN); UN Environment Program; UN Development Program; and the UN Global Compact
Private Sector: Swiss Re

Targets:
Advance the Partnership Paradigm

• Demonstrate the important contributions partnerships are making to help accomplish the MDGs at major international events (e.g., UN Commission on Sustainable Development, future international fora on Sustainable Development Partnerships, etc.); and
• Conduct a global partnership award process, which includes an international search for the most promising entrepreneurial initiatives and partnerships.

Support Nascent Partnerships

• Provide SEED winners with targeted capacity-building support services for 12 months that are designed to assist each partnership implement its goals and scale up its impact.. This effort includes development and implementation of a strategic, targeted partnership support plan for each of the SEED Award Winning Partnerships in collaboration with each of the Winning Partnerships, local stakeholders and SEED partners through a participatory workshop and thorough needs analysis;
• Conduct regular assessments during the period of support to assess each partnership’s progress and next steps based on each initiative’s Partnership Support Plan; and
• Highlight the progress of each of the winning partnerships through the Internet, other publications and at relevant international events during each cycle to demonstrate the ability of locally-implemented partnerships to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals and the goals in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.

Enhance Technical Knowledge/Understanding of How Partnerships Function

• Conduct research and publish a biennial “SEED Initiative Partnership Report,” (2006, 2008, etc.); and
• Expand collaboration with private sector and civil society organizations to increase policy-makers’ and partnership practioners’ understanding of partnerships.

Progress Toward Targets:

I.  Advancing the Partnership Paradigm

The call for submissions to the SEED Awards 2006/7 was announced in May 2006 and ten finalists were announced in late 2006. The five winning partnerships, selected from over 260 applications, are from Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Sierra Leone and Vietnam; they were announced in May 2007.

Bridging the Gap, in Vietnam, is developing marketing high value-added products derived from the sustainable cultivation of traditional medicinal plants while improving the livelihoods of ethnic minority communities. This SEED winner was also named a finalist for the 2007 BBC World-Shell-Newsweek “Global Challenge.”

In Peru, T’ikapapa is linking small mountain farmers who produce local varieties of potatoes with high-value niche markets in urban centres. T’ikapapa is making an important contribution to biodiversity conservation and promoting environmentally friendly technologies for potato production while fostering local farmers’ associations and open access to technological assistance/innovation and market information. This SEED winner was also named the winner of the 2007 BBC-Shell-Newsweek “World Challenge.” Now in its third year, this global competition rewards projects that not only make a profit but that makes a difference at a grass roots level (http://www.theworldchallenge.co.uk/potato.php)

In Ecuador, Cultivos Ecuandinos, , also in the Andes, is reintroducing native species of agricultural crops, particularly cereals and tubers, to diversify crop production, reduce soil degradation and improve local food security. The partnership has created a women’s organization in three communities that is selling the surplus crops, and will help to build capacity in economics, financing and marketing.

Brazil’s Projeto Bagagem will improve the livelihoods of low income Brazilian communities by setting up and developing local community-based tourism. The initiative actively involves the local communities in developing travel itineraries that feature successful local development and biodiversity. To reinforce local participation, Projeto Bagagem offers a 2 year capacity building programme to local youth, enabling them to own and manage tourism activities in their area..

And, in Sierra Leone, a traditional healers’ association, an academic research institute and their NGO partners are planning to create the Tiwai Health and Fitness Centre. The Centre, based on the principles of West African ethno-medicine, protects biodiversity by providing sustainable livelihoods for local communities.

At international fora, SEED representatives highlight the impact entrepreneurial initiatives and partnerships are making to deliver needed services and make progress towards the MDGs. Examples include:

• In October 2007, the South Africa’s Deputy Minister for Science and Technology hosted a four-day workshop for representatives from each of the SEED winning partnerships. The workshop provided the winners with an opportunity to interact with their SEED peers, as well as to exchange ideas and experience with public and private sector representatives and four of the 2005 SEED winners.

• May 2006 UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD): SEED provided on-the-ground examples of partnerships to government policy-makers as well as representatives from civil society and the private sector. This included the presentation of Cows to Kilowatts, a Nigerian partnership that is developing new technology to transform abattoir waste into gas for cooking and heating which is cheaper than that currently available, thus simultaneously preventing environmental degradation and providing a cheap and clean source of energy.

• 2nd International Forum on Sustainable Development Partnerships in Morocco (2005): Through a partnership marketplace and in thematic discussions SEED representatives profiled several case studies of successful partnerships, including the Agua para Todos/Water for All Partnership in Bolivia. This partnership demonstrates how local entrepreneurs, civil society and local governments are working together provide access to water in an underserved population and contribute towards the Millennium Development Goal of halving by 2015 the number of people without access to fresh drinking water; and

• The initiative’s 2004 call for proposals for the first biennial SEED Awards resulted in over 1,200 organizations from sixty-six different countries submitting 260 partnership proposals. Over 90% of the proposals focused on developing countries. Two-thirds of the submissions addressed water, energy, health, and agriculture, while the remaining one-third represented diverse areas such as eco-tourism, recycling, cleaner production, and the empowerment of women. SEED finalists were selected in early October 2004, and the inaugural class of SEED winners was announced during the 13th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

II. Supporting Nascent Partnerships

Targeted Support Plans for each of the 2007 SEED Award winners were developed through a collaborative process with SEED Service Providers and each winner. Based on those plans, capacity building services will be provided through May 2008. The outcomes of these support activities will form a key element of the SEED Initiative’s 2008 Partnerships Report, to be published in the spring of 2008.

From May 2005 through August 2006, the five SEED Award Winners received partnership capacity development services which ranged from a partnership broker based in their community who guided the nascent partnership, to the provision of technical assistance (e.g., business support and financial planning), to opportunity building through leveraging the networks of SEED partners. The partnership’s accomplishments, with help from SEED, include:

• Madagascar’s Partnership for Community-Run Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), provides protection for marine species, thereby allowing them to replenish and diversity. Since the partnership’s launch in 2005, the number of MPAs has grown from one- 1200 square kilometre area to thirty-two MPAs protecting 10,000 square kilometres. Largely as a result of the partnership’s lessons learned, Madagascar’s national government has introduced new national fisheries management legislation. All this strengthens the foundation for future eco-tourism efforts in the country. In 2007, this 2005 SEED winner also received the prestigious “Equator Prize,” given by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in recognition and celebration of outstanding community efforts in equatorial regions that reduce poverty through biodiversity conservation.

• Bolivia’s Agua para Todos/Water for All partnership, designed to provide households in Cochabamba’s southern section not yet connected to main water pipelines with access to potable water at an affordable price, has provided 1,000 households with improved water quality at lower prices. The partnership has now supplied 50,000 additional people with water and is now planning to address wastewater treatment and management, particularly with a view to re-use for agriculture;

• Nigeria’s Cows to Kilowatts partnership is creating a source of domestic energy, abate water pollution and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by operating on run-offs from one of Nigeria’s largest slaughterhouses. With support from the Nigerian Government and UNDP, the partnership’s first plant is on track to be completed by spring 2008; Nigeria’s Ministry of the Environment has included the Cows to Kilowatts model in its National Environmental Sanitation Policy for slaughterhouses. If the plant proves successful, it will be replicated in a minimum of six additional cities in Nigeria.

• In Nepal local communities are putting indigenous berries into businesses. Through the harvesting and processing of the native Seabuckthorn plant for cosmetic and medicinal use, this initiative will combat land degradation and secure income generation. The partnership is now training local communities and other Nepali initiatives are replicating the partnership’s model to scale up their own efforts. The partnership’s next steps include developing international markets for seabuckthorn products; and

• The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) Global Marketing Partnership utilizes a set of practices for producing rice that reduces water and agrochemical input and significantly increases rice yield. The partnership currently operates in over 40 countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Since 2005, the SEED Initiative has provided expertise and crucial connections to advance the partnership’s international marketing goals. Through an additional grant from the U.S. Department of State in 2007, 4,000 Cambodian rice farmers will move out of subsistence farming and into commercial farming using eco-friendly SRI cultivation methods.

III. Increasing the understanding of partnerships

In October 2007, SEED’s Annual Partnerships Forum took place in South Africa. This was an opportunity for senior decision-makers and partnership practitioners from international and local business, civil society and the public sector to meet together, and share their experiences.

Chaired by South Africa’s Deputy Minister for Science and Technology, Derek Hanekom, the Forum included over 80 participants from the private sector, civil society (e.g., community projects, academia, and non-governmental organizations) as well as SEED Winners and the SEED Secretariat. Mr. Jay Naidoo, Chairman of the Regional Development Bank of Southern Africa delivered the keynote address, which set the stage for active discussions between expert panelists and 2005/2007 SEED Winners on “success factors for partnerships” and “scaling-up and replicating partnerships.”

In May 2006, the Initiative held its first SEED Forum designed to enable partnership practioners, partnership winners from the SEED Initiative, the World Bank’s 2006 Development Marketplace and the World Business Awards, as well as policy makers, to discuss their own experiences, and opportunities for collaborating. The Forum also provided the venue for SEED to release its first Partnership Report which focuses on the benefits and challenges of local ownership, the complexities of mixed financing models of partnerships, and business management skills in partnerships.

To promote the partnership paradigm and to enhance technical knowledge and understanding of how partnerships function, in April 2005 the Initiative in collaboration with Columbia University, launched an international network of twenty institutional members to conduct multistakeholder partnership research.

Next Steps:
Over the next 12 months, each of the 2007 SEED winning partnerships will receive targeted support services specifically designed to help them scale-up their activities. In parallel, the SEED Initiative studies their progress in order to share good practices, offer lessons to inspire others, and make evidence-based recommendations to policy makers and partnership practioners to better support and unleash local partnerships creativity.

Resources: To date, SEED partners have invested over one million dollars (USD). In addition to financial support, each of the partners has provided major in-kind contributions.

Primary Points of Contact: The SEED Secretariat is hosted by IUCN in Gland, Switzerland. SEED Secretariat – Helen Marquard, Executive Director (Phone: 44 1420 48 8544; Email: helen.marquard@seedinit.org) U.S. Department of State: John Matuszak (Phone: 202-647-9278; E-mail: matuszakjm@state.gov\)

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