System Ripples & The Interconnectedness of Global Challenges

This spring, over 2,500 delegates representing more than 60 countries convened in Singapore for the 6th Philanthropy Asia Summit. Their aim was to discuss collaborative giving and shared goals for the region and to share strategies for scaling impactful innovation. While the three-day summit was full of panels and keynotes covering a range of topics from climate to financial inclusion to health, there were some universal themes that permeated throughout. One of them being we are in a new era when it comes to philanthropy. There's been so much talk about last year it was the reduction in overseas development aid. This is Naina Bhattra, the CEO of AVPN. And this year it's about the growing poly crisis thanks to the war and the developments in West Asia. An estimated 20 percent of the world's oil makes its way through the straight of hormones every single day since last week shipments have all but cease. Deadly Israeli strikes were reported in southern Lebanon on Tuesday as tensions remain high. Overnight, the U.S. and Iran exchanging new strikes, Iran launching multiple drones in missiles towards neighboring countries, including Bahrain and Kuwait, which are home to U.S. military. I really think that we have to have local philanthropists, local sources of wealth and local experts step up and really see what is needed for our region and really try and be the answers and provide the answers ourselves. I think it's time. I mean, we're finding more and more societies are looking inwards. So we can't really say that we're going to depend on somebody else to come in and clean up our mess. We need to do it ourselves. And that's why it's really important that philanthropy starts at home is rooted in what is needed here and looks for solutions that actually have a local resonance. Hi, I'm Rob Sachs and this is Asian Innovation for Global Good, a special four-part series highlighting some leading innovators and thought leaders in Asia philanthropy. Our series was recorded at the 6th Philanthropy Asia Summit, which took place this May in Singapore. On today's show, System Ripples and the interconnectedness of global challenges, we're looking into how philanthropy in Asia is moving beyond individual projects and is driving entire systems to change in areas like vector-born diseases, improving financial inclusion and economic growth, and leading the energy transition. Now if you want to know more about how changes in the world are creating new challenges, look no further than the mosquito. This tiny little insect actually is the deadliest animal on the planet, by some estimates causing over a million deaths annually, and they do it one little bite at a time, acting as vectors for deadly diseases like malaria, West Nile virus, and dengue. This latter disease is becoming a particularly acute problem in Asia as climate change has increased the range of the atus agiptide mosquito, and now new regions are having to deal with outbreaks. A eradicating mosquitoes can be very costly and requires a lot of coordination and expertise. It also takes innovation, and that's what happened in Indonesia, where the Tahrir Foundation had been really investing millions of dollars over more than a decade to tackle the problem of dengue. This is Sean Sal, the CEO of Philanthropy Asia Alliance, the organization behind the Philanthropy Asia Summit, and the supporters of this series. What Sean is referring to is how the Tahrir Foundation, a family-based philanthropy-based in Indonesia, decided to invest in finding an effective deterrent to dengue, even if it took years of experimenting and failure. Undaunted, they invested heavily in the world mosquito program. Eventually the program came to believe that if they could breed mosquitoes at scale that were infected with a bacteria known as Wobakia, they could tackle the dengue problem at the source. Wobakia mosquitoes were released once a week for 10 to 20 weeks, and within a few months close to 100% of the mosquitoes had Wobakia. Years later, they still do. No one believed the Wobakia project or experiment would work, but they doggedly did it, and what's interesting was that it came out of a conviction and a very sad personal episode where family members were affected by dengue. They doggedly went into it, and the project produced evidence-produced results, and eventually for the government to take it up. And today, very, very happy to report that the dengue cases are downed significantly. The results are clear. Dengue cases have dramatically decreased in communities where Wobakia mosquitoes were released. This experiment was so successful that other countries like Singapore began adapting this approach. When these infected mosquitoes mate with female mosquitoes, their eggs will not hatch. The new facility in Angmokyo will allow Singapore to scale up a project that tests its effectiveness in controlling the mosquito population to fight diseases like dengue. Now when you drive around the streets of Singapore, you may encounter trucks with tiny little holes on the sides that release male Wobakia infected mosquitoes. But as Sean told me, this is just one example of philanthropy jump-starting innovation. A new initiative called PathGen is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to both strengthen early detection of infectious diseases and improve response capacity is done through analyzing big data sets that account for variables like population, environment, and climate. And as Sean tells me, this program could be a game changer for public health agencies. What the philanthropy Asia Alliance and some members have funded is really a project whereby five countries come together to build a machine learning model, where then that Asian context built into it, whereby the next pathogen, the next virus you detect, can then be input into the system and then very quickly mate sends off, which basically means how do we respond to it. So hopefully that will put us in a far better position than what it does during COVID. And this experiment project will eventually be expanded to 14 countries. The practice that Sean is talking about, creating models that can be replicated, doesn't just go in one direction. Part of the aim of the philanthropy Asia Summit is to bring in a range of practitioners who can spread knowledge and best practices from all parts of the world. This is what attracted our next guest to attend. And Carolina Suarez, CEO at Latin Pacto, the Latin American Social Investor Network in the Real. And we're here in Singapore, but this is something where philanthropy and these tools of bringing together investors, the impact investors, these are tools that can be replicated anywhere, and different parts of the world can learn from each other. What are you learning from what's happening here in Singapore and Asia, and what are they learning from you about the innovations you're bringing and you're doing in Latin America? Actually, it is the first time that we are coming to the Philanthropy Asia Summit and we are signing an MOU with the organization. And the idea is how we can extract and discover between Asia and Latin America. As you mentioned, we have a lot of practices that we can learn and then lessons that we can exchange as well between both regions. So something that we're promoting and the impact is how we can create more collaborations beyond the common and the usual actors, you know, beyond the U.S., it is that our common is stakeholder and bringing new doors and new opportunities for collaboration. So being here, it is our first time that we are coming and it has been amazing to seem a lot of similarities in terms of climate issues that we are dealing with and how we can learn from each other with climate issues. One thing Suarez was excited to bring to the summit was the success she had in Latin America on a project that brought together funding from a range of sources. In Peru is our green catalytic fund with a particular focus in the Amazon Basin. And what we are doing there is connecting a corporate, such as Bayer and Coca-Cola with the Inter-American Development Bank, Amazonia forever, that is a division from the same bank and the green-climate fund. And how we want to work with that is how we are supporting intermediaries to universities and how they will also support entrepreneurs. So it's been a real ecosystem in the region and I think this model, this full fund, can be replicated here as well because something that we should enforce working from the philanthropist how you can be a good convener and how you can use your capital more in a more catalytic way. So it is the main role that I feel like we can play at this moment is being more catalytic bit a convener of different initiatives. So it's something that we are promoting in truly an impact. Part of Suarez's success is growing the space in bringing in large funders who have the cap. capital and understand the risk and rewards of making an impact investment. That same thinking of using capital and partnerships to create broader, long-term impact is increasingly shaping the private sector as well. MasterCard, through its Center for Inclusive Growth, is leveraging the scale of its global payments network and data capabilities to build a more inclusive financial system, which says, "Shameena Singh, the founder and president of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth." It's the social impact tub of MasterCard, and we started it in 2014 as part of our company's commitment to bring a billion people into the formal financial system through financial inclusion. And when you're a network platform that has billions of cardholders, hundreds of millions of small businesses and merchants, and tens of millions of financial institutions, the notion of connecting the dots across the network becomes really, really important. And that's where the power of data comes in. So they're not just extending credit, but they're also collecting massive amounts of data on how local financial systems work. Shameena and her team are now leveraging that knowledge to figure out how they can build a more inclusive financial system. If you can put that data in those analytics and the network to use for social impact, it creates an entirely different construct around what you can achieve. And that's really what the center is trying to do is bring all of the assets of MasterCard together in service of people in the planet. And that's sort of a new model, I think, of even corporate philanthropy, where we hear a lot of discussion about the ways that corporations can use their assets for impact. And I think the Center for Inclusive Growth at MasterCard has taken the additional step to actually try to bring that to action. So how does this work in a practical sense? A lot comes not just from having altruistic motives, but doing the legwork of understanding directly from marginalized populations, what are the barriers preventing them from having access to capital? In Pakistan, for instance, gender discrimination in the legal code was preventing many women from obtaining financial freedom. So the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth stepped in to try and find a solution. Shuba Chandraan, Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, at the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, explains. In Pakistan, the regulations stipulate that they need to have a male guarantor to be able to access capital. So through this partnership, we address that issue by really just studying to understand why that is so, both culturally, but also how women can independently access capital. And that's how we kind of stumbled on the fact that women generally tend to get gold as dowry, and this is an asset sitting at home. And then we worked with financial institutions and then with the central bank to kind of bring gold to the fore as an alternative collateral that could sit as a guarantee for these women to be able to access capital. So we did two things. That women could guarantee women rather than men. And second is that gold could also play the role of collateral for women to access credit. Can you define for me what you see as financial inclusion and how you're able to maximize your resources to help bring that about? Sure. So financial inclusion quite simply is the ability to save, store, and spend money safely. And it could be in an account, it could be on your phone, it could be on a card. But the idea is that you're part of a system that allows you to access financial services in a way that extends your capability and allows you to reach your productivity and your potential versus sitting in what many people do in this region around the world in a cash-based economy, where the only way to transact is face to face. And when you are dealing with a lot of cash, there are lots of byproducts related to crime corruption and things like that that we have found don't really serve. We really are looking to be a part of a financially included system. And by the way, that is something that MasterCard made a commitment to do over 10 years ago was to really connect the business strategy of MasterCard to a social impact strategy. And that strategy allowed us to connect our doing well by doing good, by saying the more people that join the financial system and can transact in a safe manner, but in a digital manner potentially down the road would help serve MasterCard's business interest as well because we're a digital payments company. You've talked about the need to stay humble and to remember that when you're in these meetings, you have to remember who you are serving and it's, quote, "not the people sitting at the table." And it's about individual people finding a better way to live their lives and having opportunities they didn't have before. Well, I mean, I think the philosophy is to listen first. And I think that has been something that has characterized all of us at the center is that we really approach this with humility. But how we do it is that we listen to the people that we're trying to serve and really try to understand what it is they're looking for, what it is that they want and need. And I'll tell you what's really interesting is that for most people we talk to, they kind of understand what they need, they know what to do with assets with money and things like that. It's not about that for them. They just need a chance. And that's what I've learned is that women, people who are not traditionally seen as worth the risk, usually work twice as hard, know as the first answer they always get. So they're really resilient and really creative about getting to yes. And I think that our job is to make sure that we enable that to happen faster. And it's not just multinational companies that are embracing this people's centered approach. Increasingly, governments are doing it as well. One example is the Malaysian state of Sarawak, where the right honorable Datuk patingi tantri abang haji abdu raman zohari bintun datuk abang jio peng has championed new projects in sectors like energy, transportation and banking, with the goal of achieving economic autonomy to uplift all of Sarawak. You must use your fiscal strength to improve people, particularly the community. This includes the community in the interior areas, the rural people. I'll give you an example that when we install solar power six years ago from diesel-generating power, that gives opportunity for the rural people to have access power and do small businesses, including their own handicraft and so on, you know, this economic activity. And that will change the life of our community. In other words, your development must be community-based. And number two, as you know, we need carbon sink from the forest, as well as their own land, owned by them. We can encourage them to plant fast-growing trees or plants that become a basis for carbon trading. And that will also pass to them. This is what you call community-based formula. What is important now is how you manage it and then create awareness on the people, the importance of green technology and the balance development, while they so can benefit from it. And everyone is education. Education is the key for you to fight poverty. That will increase what we call the household income, once they got the ability to participate in the growing economy. For that, education is important. That's why I mentioned about free, tertiary education, where the government paid for the whole lot. And, you know, there have been a lot of countries doing this, including Norway, Germany as an example, and we used that model as part of our effort to transform our people. For Premier Abang Johari O'Pang, this people-centered approach also underpins Sarawak's clean energy transition. Rather than viewing decarbonization as an end in itself, he sees it as a way to generate economic growth, while improving lives and creating opportunities for future generations. Sarawak has done its part from 2017, where we have introduced an institute, what we call low-carbon energy, from hydro power, low-carbon gas, biomass, as well as solar. That will help to generate our economic growth, while at the same time, with that economic growth, we are able to change the economic development towards better society for the future. Throughout the summit, one message came through again and again. Meaningful change requires collaboration, long-term commitment, and above all, action. Whether tackling dengue, advancing financial inclusion, or accelerating the clean energy transition, the conversations underscored the importance of looking beyond individual projects to the water systems that shapes people's lives. At the end of our conversation, PAA's Sean Sal shared the one message he hoped participants would take away from the conference. And the participants to think about is really, apart from all those sessions we curate, with great effort to make sure that people understand what a one-health situation is, what sustainable agriculture in Asia is looking like, the site conversations in the corridors, the people they meet, hopefully there will be a lot more partnerships and programs that come out of it. So let's act, but let's also act with purpose today. In our next episode, we'll explore the challenges and opportunities that are specific to Asian philanthropies and here from those who are making the case for impact investing as a whole. Impact investing, that whole approach of deploying capital was developed in US and Europe. In Asia, it's still nascent. So we spend a lot of time explaining the approach, explaining how you go about it. We do a lot of sector studies, telling people, okay, these are the lay of the land, these are the opportunities, these are the things that you wouldn't watch out for. You do case studies, our current climate adaptation report has a library about 50 case studies of players, from investors to family offices, to family companies and startups, all on their sort of journey. And we hope that these kind of inspire and have a little sense of recognition for people who are exploring the space to say, okay, I can kind of identify with that. That's next time on Asian Innovation for Global Good. Our podcast is a production of the Philanthropy Asia Alliance and is produced by F.P. Studios. For more on PAA and to see videos from this year's Philanthropy Asia Summit, check out our show notes for links to the program and to some of the work of the leaders and innovators you heard from today. Thanks for listening on Rob Sachs.