Geoffrey York, Globe & Mail (Canada) May. 24, 2010 — In the remote interior of Congo, the news was buzzing around the villages: a Canadian company needed workers for a seed farm to produce jatropha plants, a new biofuel for global markets.
The company asked for 20 workers to arrive at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning. “You wouldn’t believe it – there were 800 people who showed up, some of them a few days before, and they slept on the road,” says Louis Tourillon, founder and CEO of Carbon2Green, a Montreal-based company.
“Those people need the work. They need what we’re bringing there. And without climate change, we wouldn’t be there doing that. The potential impact of what we’re doing is just mind-boggling.”
Africa has long been known as the biggest victim of climate change: the region of the world most vulnerable to the droughts and floods that are expected to increase in the coming decades. It’s a serious threat: water scarcity alone could affect 250 million Africans by 2025. But some entrepreneurs and financiers believe that Africa can also benefit from the economic opportunities of climate change. They hold a radically different vision of the climate trends, seeing the chance for jobs and development, instead of just doom and gloom. (Read more)
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