ABSTRACT
This chapter tells how a leadership of integrity addresses environmental challenges. It includes combatting deserts and reclaiming land. It reports the stories of environmentally conscious entrepreneurs. They include Yahaya Ahmed in Norther Nigeria who has invented and marketed cooking stoves that use only 20 per cent of the normal wood needed by villages for cooking meals, thus preventing trees been chopped for firewood. The author tells of an international Initiative for Land, Lives and Peace, which addresses resources issues, and how underground desert bushes are re-greening deserts, described by development agriculturalist and film-maker Dr Alan Channer as “perhaps the most rapid, farmer-managed re-greening in human history”. The chapter includes the story of Rajendra Gandhi who pioneered India’s largest rubber recycling company because he wanted to tackle an environmental issue. The author also tells the story of the Grampari village development scheme in Maharashtra. Its mission is “to build the capacity of rural society through thoughtful, community-led programmes in livelihoods, empowerment, health and environment, and local governance”. The author quotes the leading environmental journalist Geoffrey Lean as writing that “Tackling climate change can help, not harm, economic growth.” And, as in other sectors, going green is cost-effective for business.
