Cash and Voucher Assistance for Income Generating Activities can be designed to support green businesses and green jobs, with grant conditions requiring environmental impacts to be identified and demonstrated to be actively reduced.

Targeting women as income providers; and promoting joint household decision-making in income use;

It is important to assess whether women have equal access to the labor market and to identify barriers. Without access, widows and female-headed households may be forced into poverty and environmentally harmful coping mechanisms.

Without equal access to job opportunities and entrepreneurship supports, livelihood activities performed by women tend to be less formal and more dependent on natural resources, exposing them to protection risks, and making them more susceptible to climate change impacts.

Air pollution
Soil pollution
Water pollution
Deforestation
Desertification
Eutrophication
Climate change
Loss of biodiversity and ecosystems
Natural Resource Depletion
Impact on wellbeing/mental health

Grants for income-generating activity can directly influence environmental impacts, including the sustainability of natural resource use, potential air, water, and soil pollution, solid waste production, re-use, recycling or pollution and disease vectors; sustainable sourcing of inputs; water and energy use; potential for chemical pollution.

For business development support (for income-generating activities, small-medium or large-scale business development), distribution of assets, machinery, and cash in an area of insecurity: insecurity can lead to conflict and the displacement of people, the abandonment of business properties and assets, creating a problem of waste management.

Support to commercialisation and income-generation activities: use of un-recyclable packaging and labels to boost commercialisation creates waste if the product is not absorbed by the market.

Increased levels of waste produced in the local market that is not covered by the waste absorptive capacity may lead to environmental degradation.

Increased use of IT for commercialisation and financial transactions leads to increased consumption of energy and production of IT waste.

Grants for income-generating activities will directly influence the environmental impacts of livelihood activities. All sources of money can be used in ways that affect the environment negatively or positively including influencing the amount of air, water and soil pollution produced; solid waste generation and management – including whether waste is minimised, reused, repurposed, recycled, dumped, or burned.

Conditions can be put on grants that influence pollution, natural resource use, energy use, and energy types, whether ecosystems are protected and whether harmful chemicals or additives are used and whether efficient transport, storage, and distribution happen.

For business development support (for income-generating activities, small-medium or large-scale business development), distribution of assets, machinery, and cash in an area of insecurity: insecurity can lead to conflict and the displacement of people, the abandonment of business properties and assets, creating a problem of waste management.

Support to commercialisation and income-generation activities: use of un-recyclable packaging and labels to boost commercialisation creates waste if the product is not absorbed by the market.

Increased levels of waste produced in the local market that is not covered by the waste absorptive capacity may lead to environmental degradation.

Increased use of IT for commercialisation and financial transactions leads to increased consumption of energy and production of IT waste.

Low rates may force people to damage the coping mechanisms. Choose environmentally sensitive options for income generation whenever
possible

Include prescreening and stipulations such that ecosystem integrity is a condition of lending.

Make the business case for protecting the ecosystem one aspect of the livelihood microfinance lending program.

Promote microfinance mechanisms that enable lending to women and poor and disadvantaged groups, not just wealthier individuals; poor and disadvantaged people are often more dependent on natural resources, especially during times of crisis. Microfinancing can help tide them over shocks and reduce additional environmental pressures.

Consider incentives that do not encourage people to over abstract natural resources for their new LHs, e.g. recycling LHs;

Set up entrepreneurial business hubs.

Grants can be conditional including sustainable sourcing of inputs/materials/natural resources. You could explore incentivising opportunities to re-use waste from other livelihoods, such as plastic for creating insulation or building blocks for construction, or for processing to make clothing, bags, storage containers.

Conditions could go further, requiring assisted people to develop green economy livelihoods such as supplying, installing, or maintaining renewable energy – solar, hydro, wind, wave power generation, or conservation agriculture.

You could explore opportunities to require the formation of entrepreneurial innovation learning hubs encouraging people to share ideas, collaborate and support each other to develop low-impact, profitable businesses.

Identify potential air, water, and soil pollution, solid waste production, water, and energy use and set grant recipients conditions on achieving efficiencies in order to receive the next stage of a grant.

Opportunity to create cooperatives, link them to local markets and local government, and provide an environmental service. For example, PADF in La Guajira, Colombia, worked with recycling cooperatives, helping them to incorporate displaced Venezuelans, training them to do the work well; training them in community outreach so that the population separate their waste and put it out on the right day; identifying routes and how to provide appropriate coverage in streets too small for vehicles, etc. the livelihoods project became a way to foment integration of refugees and also link them to a formal and necessary service.

Cash and Voucher Assistance for Income Generating Activities in Iraq have been designed to support green jobs, with grant conditions requiring environmental impacts to be identified and demonstrated to be actively reduced.

This has led to reductions in energy use, waste production, and recycling. One person supported with IGA training and a grant has demonstrated his business is thriving repairing televisions, radios, and household appliances.

# of IGA grants incorporating conditions on reducing environmental impacts or creating environmental benefits

Prevention of environmental damage

Mitigation of environmental damage

Time and resources to assess livelihood opportunities, environmental impacts, and design conditionalities to encourage the identification and reduction of environmental impacts.