Environmental Sourcebook for Microfinance Institutions

This sourcebook is designed to help MFIs improve their lending activities, and, specifically, to:

• Understand the importance of environmental well-being to the success of micro- enterprises;
• Improve the environmental performance of micro- enterprise projects and programmes;
• Improve the quality and expand the range of MFI activities;
• develop management techniques and programming options based on environmental motivations.

Presents environmental guidelines for:

• Food processing:
  • Understand the role of the micro-enterprise in the local economy and its importance to the community as a creator of employment;
  • Address any concerns community members have regarding the micro-enterprise;
  • Ensure that drinking water sources or other productive uses of local services and resources are not compromised by the introduction of the food processing activity;
  • Use more efficient technologies and processes.
• Aquaculture:
  • Resolve all conflicts relating to common property resource ownership that characterise many aquaculture operations and that may jeopardise the operation;
  • Maintain the highest construction standards possible;
  • Use preventive management practices such as refiltering water or limiting the impact of salt water effluent by diluting it in a large water bed.
• Urban-based micro-enterprises: the choice of location should be the one for which the fewest adverse environmental impacts are anticipated, taking into account current land-use, adjacent uses and inherited problems;
• General environmental health and safety guidelines:
  • Assess any health and safety risks to workers as a result of dust, fumes, odours, or pollutants;
  • Rearrange work space to reduce risks, facilitate order and cleanliness and improve efficiency;
  • Impress upon everyone the importance of keeping a work area clean, remove all rubbish from the work space and situate receptacles for waste and debris in convenient locations;
  • Ensure proper ventilation of indoor operations;
  • Ban smoking and drinking.