Financing a Tragedy of the Commons?: Microfinance and Sustainable Environmental Development in Uganda.

In recent years microfinance has garnered growing attention in the government, banking, and non-governmental arenas as an alternative to largely unsuccessful state-run and multilateral development and aid programs. Proponents of microfinance suggest the industry is well-equipped to assist many of the world’s over four billion poor. However, there are still many questions about the impact of microfinance on the quality of life for the poor, and much debate about what “solid” evidence there is to support it as a contextually relevant form of economic development. The research presented in this paper focuses on one component of community sustainability and quality of life that is inextricably linked to poverty: the natural environment. Environmental conditions are of paramount importance to many of the world’s poor due to their reliance on natural resources for both subsistence and income, yet they remain absent from microfinance theory and practice which often focuses on broad applicability rather than locally-informed interventions. Logically and intuitively, there is much potential for microfinanced enterprises to incorporate the local natural environment either as a source for inputs or a sink for outputs. This paper explores the relationship between microfinance-led poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability based on field work with microfinance and sustainable development NGOs in the US and Jinga, Uganda. It uses contextual analysis gauge the potential to create an environmentally-informed microfinance intervention to improve quality of life for the poor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]