Goal Program
The conference "Breaking the Barriers for Investment Plan B" is part of a larger program. It is a component to achieve a marketplace where knowledge, practitioners, regulators, government and investors come together to realize projects in the following areas:
1. Energy-efficient and transition;
2. Population pressure on land and water and restoration of biodiversity;
3. Urban renewal;
4. Food;
5. Eradicate poverty and stabilize the world and
6. Mobilizing the company: economic and attitude change.
As a starting point, we take the goals and solutions as described in Plan B by Lester Brown.
The aim of the program "Breaking the Barriers for Investment Plan B" is to break the barriers that stand in the way to expand the level of investments for projects that contribute significantly to a sustainable development of the global economy and our use of land and water as outlined by Lester Brown in Plan B. One of the major barriers is the political feasibility to achieve results, a recent example is Copenhagen.
Creating a selve organizing capacity & the role of investors
We want to enable everyone who feels involved by the goals mentioned above, to organize themselves to face the complex challenges when realizing these goals, both online and face-to-face, through knowledge and resource sharing. We want to create a place where this can occur, a marketplace.
The above picture of a Meshwork visualizes this: from chaos to a structure with connections. The knowledge and the will to handle the problems is the driving factor and one of the role of the investors is to create a sucking force. Without funding we can not achieve a stable structure, money is like the plasma around the connections that takes care of the stability.
Helping to break the barriers for investors
From the initial discussions with investors, the following major barriers emerged:
• Lack of knowledge among investors to be able the over see the complexity.
• Inadequate overview of projects and the associated opportunities and risks..
• Lack of sufficient scale for large investors.
• The role of the regulator and government is not optimal. For the long term investments investors see the government not as a reliable partner.
• The investor is not rewarded enough for the positive side effects that are being realized with the investments.
• The investor has insufficient assurance of the government that the government is able to manage the public risks of the investments sufficient.
The marketplace can help to create:
• a better understanding between government, regulators, businesses and investors;
• an overview of projects for banks and asset managers so that these projects can be pooled for the end investor and
• investor confidence that the complexity can be better controlled by the self-organizing character of the marketplace.
Transform willingness into results
Conversely to the barriers, we have the knowledge and implementation capacity to effectively transform our society. There are enough innovative companies in the industry with solutions, but they run against boundaries, in terms of finance but also within the government.
This while the will of officials in various government bodies to make a difference is definitely there. Also more and more investors realize that future (system) risks and opportunities are related to whether we are or are not able to make our economy more sustainable, they are addressing it where possible their concern and with an increasing responsibility. But investors see too often that they are insufficiently rewarded for external benefits that they realize with their investments.
The program aims to transform effectively the willingness into concrete results. In a practical way we want to connect knowledge, regulators, government, companies and investors within a common framework together, so:
1. The cooperation will be improved;
2. Synergy and the oversight will be supported and
3. At the same time cost, turnaround time and risks will be reduced will realizing projects.
Marketplace - Meshwork
We have established a common marketplace where we will us current proven online forms of cooperation. This marketplace builds on the previous experience this summer in Brazil based on a special form of cooperation through a Meshwork, where a program is launched to achieve a dramatic 80% CO2 reduction in 2020.
This marketplace is the place where knowledge and the parties can come together, to realize projects - both local, national, regional and global - to ensure that:
• We use in more efficient manner energy and produce renewable energy;
• Cities can provide clean air and efficient transport;
• To create solutions for the growing population pressure on land and water, so that cities and agriculture can handle in harmony the use of land and water;
• In the future, we actually can feed a world of eight billion people;
• We can stabilize the fertile soil and enhance the biodiversity;
• We can stabilize the world population and eradicate poverty.
Features Marketplace
Features of the marketplace are amongst others:
• The mobilization of knowledge, regulators, government, businesses and investors;
• Sharing knowledge and best practices between locations, topics and projects;
• Linking investable projects to investors and
• to realize economies of scale through, by expanding proven success on a small scale or in a region, to other locations and themes, for instance by setting up investment funds to mobilize the financial resources.
