The Rockefeller Foundation continually seeks, considers, and evaluates innovative funding approaches that build more resilient households and communities and foster more equitable growth around the world. Each time we identify a new area of focus within one or more of our five issue areas, we begin to hone our strategy, during an exploratory phase. Because not every potential intervention will result in effective outcomes, only the most promising work in exploration will become Foundation initiatives.
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa Market Access
Overcoming chronic poverty and hunger in African countries remains one of the world’s greatest challenges. The Foundation is funding methods of reducing poverty by increasing incomes through linking millions of small-scale farmers to more efficient local, national and international markets.
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Business Process Outsourcing Growth and NGO Efficiency
Poor and vulnerable communities could benefit greatly if the development sector became a more efficient service provider and driver of job creation. To foster more innovative and effective operational practices, the Foundation is seeking to encourage development institutions to use shared business services and local providers (in East Africa) for both back office and core development functions.
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Carbon and Poverty Reduction
Much of the international discussion about combating climate change has focused on how developed countries can reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from the energy, transportation and industrial sectors. One promising response has been the development of carbon markets, where credits for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and for carbon sequestrations can be sold and traded. The Rockefeller Foundation is exploring ways to ensure that such carbon markets contribute to both mitigating climate change and reducing rural poverty in the developing world.
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Cities and Information
The majority of the world’s population now lives in cities. These dense urban areas are becoming increasingly layered with information technology (cellphones, sensors, etc.) that can provide real-time information about the functioning and use of city infrastructure as well as about the inhabitants and their activities. City planners and managers can track information on transportation flows, water usage, crime, and vulnerability to other threats in ways that were impossible less than a decade ago. Innovative analytical tools that deal with vast quantities of information will provide insights into the dynamics of our cities. New web and mobile systems are allowing citizens greater engagement with their city and its leaders.
The Foundation is probing critical questions: What will the data and information tell us about our cities? How can this information deluge be leveraged to empower poor and vulnerable people with more active engagement and a stronger voice in the decisions of the city? And can this emerging technology and information be used to build community resilience and sustainable growth as well as to improve the way we perceive and manage our cities?
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Gender
Particularly in many developing countries, gender inequities exist in education and training, legal and policy reform, and access to and distribution of resources. The Foundation is considering the best ways to increase opportunities for women and girls.
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Innovations for a Metro Nation
With the current housing crisis having exposed the vulnerabilities of US housing and urban policies, the Foundation is helping the country reinvent its existing systems. The intention of our efforts is to spark fresh ideas for creating effective regional governance, reforming housing markets, addressing the entrenched inequality and growing vulnerability of households, responding to changing demographics, and helping cities adapt to climate and energy constraints.
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Land Tenure
The Foundation is exploring how to assure economic security by promoting fairer property and inheritance rights in developing countries.
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Networks for Urban Innovation
During the next two decades, nearly all of the urban growth that is projected to occur will take place in the developing world. By 2030, 80% of the world’s urban population will be living in developing countries. In spite of this growth, these affected cities often lack the capacity to absorb this population increase. The Foundation is taking a multi-sector approach to helping these urban areas cope with the demands of already-scarce resources, new health risks, and the negative effects of climate change.
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Smart National Power Grid
Creating a new national power infrastructure could have a profound impact on the ability of the United States to dramatically reduce carbon dependence, improve energy efficiency and security, and enhance climate resilience. Yet the identification of sites of the transmission lines (above or below ground) remains a major barrier to such progress. The Foundation is exploring solutions for transmission line siting—whether related to policy, regulatory or technological issues.
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Smart Power for Environmentally-Sound Economic Development
Some 1.6 billion people, or one-quarter of the world’s population, do not have access to electricity. The Rockefeller Foundation is exploring whether the massive and rapidly-growing infrastructure of cell phone towers in India and East Africa can be harnessed to help provide clean energy services and universal electricity access in poor communities.
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Sustainable Employment in a Green US Economy
In response to the disproportionate effect of the current recession on the economic security of low-income workers, the Foundation is focusing on the green employment sector. This effort aims to maximize the “green” growth areas of the economy, such as opportunities presented by the demand for home-energy retrofits, while benefiting low- and moderate-income workers.
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Water
Access to water for drinking, irrigation and public health is critical to economic and social development. Globally, it is estimated that 1.1 billion people lack safe drinking water and nearly 2.5 billion--more than 40% of the world’s population—live without access to adequate water for sanitation. Together, unsafe water and inadequate sanitation annually kill at least 1.6 million children under the age of five. Moreover lack of adequate water resources for irrigation, livestock rearing, fishing or aquaculture limit household productivity and food security in many parts of the world.
The Foundation is looking for the most innovative methods of protecting and delivering this essential resource. As just one example, it is exploring multiple-use approaches to water service delivery. This new model takes an integrated approach to people’s various water needs in the planning, finance and management of water services for different domestic and productive uses.
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