Combating climate change by putting our planet first

This transcript has been generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio.

Gonzalo Muñoz: In the first years of my life, I all the time heard the logic of, 'You should try to leave the world at least a little bit better than how it was the day when you were born'. I've mostly been looking for ways for every single business in the world to be one that is dedicated to solving problems and never to increasing the problems of the world, and the problems that humans are experiencing.

Pavitra Raja, host: Welcome to Let's Fix It, the podcast from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the World Economic Forum that speaks to leading social innovators and finds out how they're fixing some of the world's biggest problems.

We're running out of time to combat climate change, and we need innovative solutions now. On this episode, we speak to two social innovators while using their ingenuity, drive and compassion to put our planet first and fight global warming.

Nthabiseng Mosia: So, Easy Solar. We've brought power to about 800,000 people now and we employ over 800, bringing solar solutions to people who need it more all the way to the last mile. I think that's what social entrepreneurship is to me. Like using business to be of a service.

Pavitra Raja: Subscribe to Let's Fix It on Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts and make sure to like, write and review us. I'm Pavitra Raja at the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Join me and learn how some of the world's brightest minds are quite literally fixing it.

My first guest, Gonzalo Muñoz, grew up surrounded by social entrepreneurs. However, it was only after his friend's unfortunate passing that Gonzalo started his first social enterprise. His career now includes running his own organic winery, building sustainable food businesses and running Latin America's first ever benefit corporation, TriCiclos.

Gonzalo has also played crucial leadership roles at the COP25 and COP26 conferences. These are some of the world's most important conferences on climate change. Gonzalo's story is one of resilience and compassion, and you're sure to be inspired after this one. Here's more.

Gonzalo Muñoz: Well, I'm Gonzalo Muñoz and I'm Chilean and Spaniard. I was born in Chile in a family where the concept of impact and transcendence was quite in the centre.

I worked my first 10 years in the business sector. I was a very young CEO, mostly in the food sector in Argentina and Chile and Spain. Then I realized that I should do something different, so I went into the circular economy.

I was quite concerned about the problem of waste increasing all around the world. So I co-created with another group of friends a company called TriCiclos that then later became the first certified B Corporation outside of North America. And through that, I also co-founded Sistema B and also participated in the expansion of the B Corp community all around the world.

Then at the same time, as a side business, I started also with a friend of the university, a winery. It's also a B Corp called Polkura that still runs nowadays one of the best Syrahs in the world. I'm being absolutely honest on that.

And then all of a sudden the president of my country called me to see whether I was available for taking a role in the COP25 process. Chile, at that time, was starting the incoming presidency of the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, and they needed someone to take the role of the high level climate action champion, meaning the person that has to mobilize all non-governmental entities from all around the world, and I was absolutely honoured to do that.

Probably he chose me because I was at that time, for quite a long time, a member of the Schwab Foundation. I'm saying this absolutely serious, my participation in the World Economic Forum and mostly around the social entrepreneurship community, how I was also involved on the new plastics economy and everything around the circular economy, was an expression of what needed to happen.

Also on the climate ecosystem, when mobilizing different actors, all the non governmental entities into implementing the Paris Agreement. So that has been my trajectory so far. I'm still working with the high level climate action champions at COP, now as the chairman of the advisory board, and also all the time back into my business with TriCiclos on the circular economy and Manuia, helping companies mostly to implement ESG [environmental, social and governance]. I am also very proud father of three amazing now young women.

Pavitra Raja: Gonzalo, you wear so many hats. You've been a social entrepreneur. You've been a business leader. You've been a COP25 climate champion. You wear a lot of hats so tell me, what are you fixing and why are you fixing it?

Gonzalo Muñoz: I worked for 10 years as a CEO of, let's call them traditional businesses or 19th century or 20th century businesses, that were mostly dedicated to growth and increasing the profit for the shareholders.

During the rest of my life, I'm mostly looking for ways for every single business in the world to be one that is dedicated to solving problems and never to increasing the problems of the world and the problems that humans are experiencing.

I do understand that in the past, probably in the early years, that was the logic of creating a business. I have a skill or I know how to do something, it has a need and I can solve that need, and therefore I can solve a problem.

Most of the business were probably in smaller communities. It was absolutely evident that your activity should never affect negatively the people surrounding you and the environment surrounding you.

Nowadays we have so many challenges, so many problems, so many crises. Some of them are being created by the business sector, and I understand that we are therefore in front of such an amazing opportunity.

How about changing the logic of those businesses that are being operated on a linear basis to operating as circular businesses? How do we operate in a way that we don't depend on fossil fuels, but rather on renewable energy?

How do we operate in a business that can really question all the hard questions inside the business and really try to solve every single and negative externality as we do in government?

How can we produce an amazing product in a way that can regenerate the ecosystem? Those are the things that I'm trying to bring into the business sector, both those small SMEs and startups that can therefore bring a lot of energy and even disrupt certain sectors of the economy. Also the big multinationals that have, of course, a harder time to change the trajectory. But if they do so, every single degree they change has a massive impact all around the world.

But then also how to positively influence the public sector in a way that the governments can really count on the energy, the capacity, the technology, the creativity that comes from the business sector in a way that will be available for solving public problems.

That's what I'm trying to fix. I think that it will be really hard to imagine that we will solve all the problems of the world, including those that are more urgent, without the capacity coming from the private sector, from the business sector, or from the financial institutions that position the incentives.

So that's what I'm trying to fix and I'm doing it in a way that I'm using several different tools and points of contact and influence, as a kind of translator. I think that I am someone that speaks the language of the governments, the languages of businesses, start-ups, the language of the NGOs. So that's what I'm trying to fix.

Pavitra Raja: I mean, you're trying to fix the entire private sector in the way it operates and make it into a more climate-friendly capacity. And that's no small task, by all means. Tell me a little bit about your journey. You went from being a social entrepreneur. You're a dad. You're all of these things. Tell me a little bit about your entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship journey.

Gonzalo Muñoz: Every single aspect of that is first, I use the word I co-founded. I never started anything by my own. So I'm really thankful for the people with whom I have been working in all of these hats, but also to all of those people that were here before myself and setting the conditions for me to build on what they have done.

In my case, my parents were absolutely instrumental on that. First, of course, setting the expectations. I come from a family where transcendence is extremely relevant. In the first years of my life, I all the time heard the logic of 'You should try to leave the world at least a little bit better than how it was the day when you were born'.

Please focus on how are you going to deliver impact that is somehow equivalent to the level of privilege that you have received. I am, of course, a very privileged person to have lived in that type of family with also the resources that I got from there.

There's something really important in my roots, in my family and in a certain moment, my my youngest daughter – who is now a 21-year-old fantastic woman who's studying in the university – she got cancer at the age of three years old, and it was a very nasty cancer.

She's now healthy, amazing. To understand that life can be extremely short, that we as humans are really weak, let's say. And what am I waiting for really doing what I think I'm supposed to do in this in this moment in time, in my short period of life?

So I started talking with this with a great friend of mine. He was an entrepreneur at that time, starting an amazing business, and I was also supporting him as an investor. We were having a conversation about what is the role of business and is it reasonable to imagine that you can run a business in a way that can not only generate profit, but generate profit in a way that you would be absolutely proud of everything that it's doing.

And Nico then died in an accident. So that was the moment when I say, 'Okay, it's enough. This is the moment for me to just start something different.'

But I am now really proud. I started TriCiclos with Manuel and Joaquin and Joaquin died two years later in an air crash. So I'm all the time carrying that experience, like not only the health moment of my own child, but also my two great friends that are here now – I always have two empty chairs on my side. They are here with me and I'm dedicating all my energy, all my time to also honour all the things that we were dreaming at that time and keep on carrying that passion and determination.

Pavitra Raja: Wow Gonzalo, thank you so much for openly sharing your story. I'm so glad to hear that your daughter is well and she's thriving and she's in university. From what you have talked about with your family, social entrepreneurship has always been in your DNA. What does that word really mean to you – the word social entrepreneur?

Gonzalo Muñoz: Well, probably the word social entrepreneurial has the two elements. An entrepreneur is someone that is capable and willing to create something new, is going to put all of his or her energy and and resources towards some goal through an organization.

But the word social is the one that changes that towards sometimes increasing the risk. So someone that is capable of trying to fill gaps of things that are not normally being addressed by running personal risks in order to pursue common good driven by your values and not just by the recognition, by the money or whatever it's going to generate pursuing social good and the level of risks that, say, a normal entrepreneur would not consider.

Pavitra Raja: Gonzalo, tell me a little bit about TriCiclos. You started to TriCiclos, why did you choose to start this organization? Why was the circular economy so important to you?

Gonzalo Muñoz: So TriCiclos means three cycles, referring to the triple bottom line. As I said, like the three of us, Manuela, Joaquin and I, we were inspired on the logic of trying to change how business operates and trying to create the business that is run by the logic of questioning every single negative externality.

And through that, not only create more value, but also position the company in a way that makes it more love, and therefore it will increase your revenues. That was the logic. Initially, we iterated like 40 different types of business models.

So for example, Joaquin was so inspired on the logic of housing for the immigrant. He was also analyzing different business models that could help solve the situation of homeless people.

Manuel was much more into food and how the two of us had been working for several years in that sector. He was analyzing much more on how to provide healthy food, in a very attractive way, for mostly schools and universities.

In my case, I was very into waste and recycling and eco-efficiency and and we even tested many mechanisms for expanding solar power plants and solar devices. And it took us rapidly in to not only circular economy, but specifically into packaging in terms of which type of elements, plastic elements mostly.

So I was really aware that in a traditional food sector, or in every type of system that is packing, at least at that time, there was no incentive whatsoever to analyze how that material is going to potentially go back to the system, not to be dumped in the environment.

If we change the mindset of citizens, if we create solutions that will flow in a proper way but also send the right messages to the companies, we can also send the right messages to the politicians. So we say in TriCiclos that waste is nothing than an error of design, and also our mindset and the way we consume is wrongly designed, and therefore there are mechanisms where we can design in a better way.

Pavitra Raja: For us to fix this issue, most of us don't think about trash that way. Most of us don't think about the consequences of our actions. What needs to happen to fix this problem?

Gonzalo Muñoz: It's a combination of factors. How do we help companies to be much more aware? If I have to ask for one thing: increase the cost of dumping waste. If dumping a ton of waste would cost $1 million, then no one would be generating it – as simple as that.

If we were capable as humanity to understand the damage that we have been generating in the ecosystem and how much that is related to damages, small fraction of that damage. Simple as that, increase the cost of dumping one ton of waste worldwide. Period.

Pavitra Raja: If you are a social entrepreneur wanting to influence policy and business the way that you have, what would be one piece of advice that you would give them?

Gonzalo Muñoz: If you recognize the work of others that have been here before you, that will make the trajectory, your organization, yourself, much brighter. To work with the humbleness to understand that you are not alone here and that you're just one element in a whole chain of people and organizations and history, that have been working to solve that – that will support the solution of the problem rather than support yourself. You're not here to serve yourself. You're here to solve a problem that needs to be solved.

Pavitra Raja: That was the inspiring Gonzalo Munoz, founder of TriCiclos and high level climate champion for COP25. Now, don't go anywhere because after the break, we're going to hear from Nthabiseng Mosia, a social entrepreneur who was lighting up lives in Sierra Leone.

Linda Lacina: I'm Linda Lacina, host of Meet the Leader, the flagship leadership podcast from the World Economic Forum, where top leaders from business, government and more share how they're tackling the world's biggest challenges. Leaders like activist Jane Goodall.

Jane Goodall: You've got to reach the heart. It's no good arguing with the head.

Linda Lacina: Or leadership expert John Amaechi.

John Amaechi: You can find your inner giant, no matter what.

Linda Lacina: Or leaders like former Vice President Al Gore.

Al Gore: We have to be willing to make bold moves.

Linda Lacina: Or even CEOs like Verizon's Hans Vestberg.

Hans Vestberg: If we want to lead other people, you need to start with yourself.

Linda Lacina: Only from the World Economic Forum, this is Meet the Leader.

Pavitra Raja: Welcome back to Let's Fix It, the podcast from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum. In this episode of Let's Fix It, we're hearing from social entrepreneurs who have made climate justice their mission.

Have you ever felt discouraged like you don't have what it takes to make real change? Well, so has my next guest. And despite all odds, Nthabiseng Mosia is transforming the lives of 700,000 people.

Her company, Easy Solar, is providing remote communities with affordable, renewable energy. Despite being a successful social entrepreneur, Nthabi gets candid about not feeling good enough and facing imposter syndrome, and yet she perseveres to shape a better future for her community. Here's the incredible Nthabiseng Mosia.

Nthabiseng Mosia: At Easy Solar, we're fixing fundamentally what I call an injustice. So I was born during the apartheid era in South Africa. My father was in exile, and he left his country for 20 years to fight for political freedom and it's interesting because I grew up with that example in the Rainbow Nation.

And I think I always had this thing in me to fix an injustice or address an injustice when you see it – so very much, let's fix it and we have a multitude of problems.

And then I think I just kind of stumbled in some ways through my life experiences. First, you know, when I was in high school, we had load shedding in South Africa, which meant, you know, the grid would go out when I was studying for my exams and, you know, we didn't really have a generator or any backup power. So we would study by candlelight. No joke.

And yeah, I think that was kind of the first experience I had of like, 'Oh, power is actually foundational to almost everything in life.' I travelled across the African continent, very privileged to have done so through my first job.

Across all of those places, I just saw that you can't really talk about development on the African continent if you don't have like the foundation of any modern economy, which is power, right? Electrification began in the 1880s in Britain and the US and parts of Europe at that time, you know, in the early 2000s it was like, 'Why does 60% of one whole population not have access to something we figured out at least a century ago?'

I was like, 'Well, I don't have all the answers to this.' So I went to go and study and I went to do a grad school programme focusing like on energy specifically, and trying to think about how renewable energy can help tackle both energy access and climate change – which was also like for me, like a another injustice that the African continent has to face and bear the brunt of.

Yeah, I went to grad school and I met my co-founders there. We came up with this idea. I was really interested in working in West Africa, because to me it was a region that there was some level of development on the power grid, but there was not enough happening. Whereas eastern and South Africa there was quite a bit.

So we started the company in Sierra Leone where, at the time, 95% of the population didn't have access to power and in Liberia it was 98. And so, yeah, I think the problem we were trying to tackle was just this grave injustice, which was concentrated at like a scale that I didn't even know could [exist].

Like, you know, I'd heard of countries about 20 or 30% power, but when you have 95% of the population, you're literally you're living in different worlds. You're living in different planets.

Pavitra Raja: Tell me a little bit about Easy Solar and what exactly do you do in terms of giving power to people? And you talked a little bit about climate justice, which is also very important to you and again, you're right, the Global South is facing the brunt of something that the Industrial Revolution caused, and now the Global South is being asked to cut emissions. So there is a bit of injustice there.

Easy Solar as taking that into account the need to provide power, but also the fact that this needs to be renewable and it needs to be accessible. So how exactly are you bringing solutions to those problems?

Nthabiseng Mosia: I think, first of all, I love solar and the most amazing things have happened, I think, over the last 20 years. Number one, the cost curve of solar is insane. You kind of look at it 20 or 30 years ago and now it's literally possible to electrify an entire household in a rural village in Sierra Leone for roughly $200. Right? You can give them basic lighting and appliances.

The other thing that's really cool is once you get somebody like a couple of panels, a battery, an inverter, you can upgrade them over time because you just add battery and panel capacity.

It's what they what we call "modular" in the industry and it's also smart. All of our solar systems have smart internet of things technology embedded in them, so we can communicate with the systems.

So what happens is we find agents in rural communities. We train them up, we give them materials, and we work with like the local village structures, or chiefs and elders, and then we hire that person as a commission-based agent, and they go and find people who are off the grid.

Most people actually in the markets we operate can't afford a $200 solar home system. So what we do is we use this technology and people pay a deposit, which is like 10% of the value of the price, which is quite affordable for most people.

And then there's a timer that runs in the system and so we can communicate with them. Then a person signs up to a payment plan, and once they pay the next instalment, the system keeps working. And once they finish paying off, it's theirs. So they finish paying off anywhere from six months to two years, and then it's free.

We offer a warranty and then over the lifetime of the system – which can be, you know, roughly, I think in in a good scenario, eight to 10 years – you have six to eight years of free power. Then what we usually do is we'll upgrade people over time – so upgrade your battery and your panel.

We really work through local community structures. We have people that we employ in those communities. And then we really price these systems at a level people can afford.

But we don't just stop with people having a basic system. So we are bringing in solar TVs, solar freezers. We're looking at what we call productive use, which is like agricultural equipment, solar water pumps that can actually like bring people's income up.

Pavitra Raja: So we talked a little bit about your personal journey as to why energy is so important to you as a source of power. You went to study overseas and came back. Tell me a little bit about your journey as a social entrepreneur. Did you always know that this is something you wanted to do? And also, what does that word really mean to you?

Nthabiseng Mosia: No, I don't think that was something I thought I wanted to be. I think, as I said earlier, I think I'd always been kind of a restless spirit in that I just felt very uncomfortable with just the kind of way people accepted how broken the world was in many ways.

I said no to a lot of things, but I didn't really know what I wanted to say yes to until I think energy became my cause. My journey to being a social entrepreneur was a very convoluted one, I think.

You know, my parents didn't have too much and so there was a pressure to provide some level of economic stability. And so people didn't go off and, you know, do those things. So I did my degree and, you know, I went and I did the conventional route. I did, you know, internships in investment banking, hated that.

Kind of went into management consulting, it was like a cool thing being able to solve problems for clients and learn a lot of skills really quickly. I think when I decided eventually to go study, it did feel like things ... the nail hit on the head.

I wouldn't say I fell into entrepreneurship naturally, in that I had student loans so I couldn't really afford to pay for myself. I had like a full scholarship to school, but actually just to live in New York, I had to take a loan to pay for rent and stuff.

I think when I was deciding whether or not to apply for a job or continue doing this project... It was literally just a classroom project at the beginning and we had entered some like business plan competitions. We had won some seed funding.

So for me, the tradeoff was really, do I, you know, take lucrative jobs, go into renewable energy project finance, which is what I really wanted to do, really build like large wind and solar projects across the continent.

And yeah, weirdly enough, nobody really understood this. Once again, I fell in love with Sierra Leone. I fell in love with the company. I fell in love with the idea of waking up every day and having a real impact on people's lives.

I don't think that's something, it's – I'm trying to put it into words – but it is just this calling, a call to action and a call being of service, I would say. And I think that's what social entrepreneurship is.

It's like leveraging models of business, which I think can be quite effective to reaching a lot of people, but with a heart, with a purpose, with this idea of 'I'm going to use this profit making crazy capitalist world to be of service. And actually, I'm going to measure it not just by endless growth, but by endless impact.'

Pavitra Raja: That's beautiful and so inspiring. And one of the causes you feel very strongly about as well is empowering women across the African continent as well. Tell me a little bit about why this is such an important aspect of your role as a social entrepreneur and as a woman from the African continent.

Nthabiseng Mosia: To me, like, I've been really fortunate in my life that my dad and my mom really emphasize education. And to me, education is everything. It's something that you once you have, nobody can take away from you. I mean, so I think even beyond like social enterprise opportunities, like that's the foundation.

I mean most African women are like entrepreneurs if we're real. Everyone I know has a hustle, they're really the heads of the household in some ways. And, you know, my mom was an Avon lady, and she was selling chillies and she had like five or four different things she was doing to supplement the family's income. And she was just this like incredible saleswoman.

But based on time and, you know, generations, I've been the one that's been lucky enough to, and I think hardworking enough, to kind of take her passion and make something of myself with the world's tools.

But I think we don't give enough of the world's tools to African women. Representation matters. I don't think when I grew up I saw a lot of examples of African women who didn't come from much but made their journey and then actually like told how you get there, because it always seemed like this like insurmountable sort of hill, or you needed to have intense networks, or you need to be connected.

And no, it's just like you make a series of choices and you set out a vision and an intention, and you do everything in your power to get there. Take that leap. Find those people who believe in you. Don't think you're crazy.

Yes, access to power networks matter, so it's not just about a dream. I'm very passionate about that. To say the reason why I'm here today is because I made decisions to learn from the places that had really defined the way our world works.

And it's really unfortunate that we don't have enough of those on the African continent, and so many of us have to go abroad, but I think we have to come back. There's so much brain drain happening now.

And I don't think you have to like go and come back. I think there are a lot of amazing stories of people who are who started it from the beginning, but I think that's my journey and so I can speak to that.

But I will say there is a little bit of imposter syndrome sometimes of like there is a sense of 'even though I have done amazing things, I'm like, oh, am I here?' Because, you know, they need somebody of this group and I think we are living in an age where representation is becoming increasingly important.

So it's this weird thing of even when you're on the stage, you're doubting yourself. And I just want to share as well that, to me, true courage is having those voices in your head and getting up on the stage and saying, 'This is so much important, more important than whatever I'm thinking about myself in this moment.' And I have to like tell myself that that's not me, 'I am good enough and if I wasn't good enough, I wouldn't be here.'

Pavitra Raja: Since we look backwards now looks to towards what advice would you give to your younger self? Now I want to know a little bit about what excites you about the future.

Nthabiseng Mosia: I just feel like I was born at the right time and I'm in the right industry, and like all the clouds are aligning and we're finally at this like inflection point as a society, where we realize this kind of industrial society that was built on all the wrong things needs to change.

And the voices that are contributing to this conversation are the people that have felt sometimes the biggest brunt of that. So for me, what excites me is we are on the verge of, I think, one of the most incredible revolutions in the energy space.

And I do hope we get there fast enough in that our entire energy system literally has to change. We know we are at the end of the hydrocarbon man, as Daniel Yergin puts it in his book, where we kind of mined into the world and we exploited these millions and millions and billions of years of, you know, carbon that was stored in the ground and we had exponential energy from that.

But now we need to find other ways to still have as prosperous societies, but build on more sustainable technologies. So I'm literally in a place where we can electrify and build, bring power to people.

We can reform even transportation systems in a clean way. It's almost like Africa has a, you know, we're almost lucky - I don't want to say that in some ways - in that we never really built our society to be fully industrial. And now suddenly we get to do it, I would say, in the right way.

I think there are some injustices in that, in that we are having to rise above a problem we did not create. But I think it's incredible that we get to think about grids in different ways.

There's an example people use about the mobile technology revolution and how we leapfrogged mobile infrastructure. And now literally we're bringing power at scale to people using solar home systems that are smart.

Think about it, a rural village in Sierra Leone or Liberia, the first time they have access to power, it's a smart, bidirectional sort of standalone system. Not only that, they're like also having financial inclusion as well, because all of their systems are recorded in a remote payment infrastructure. And it's all green, right? It's carbon neutral.

I wake up every day and be like, I'm in the right place at the right time, doing the right things for the right people, and this is long overdue.

I think the future for the African continent is ... I'm so excited to see what it will be like when we actually have 100% of people on the grid, having smart technology, finally participating in not just the First, Second and Third, but the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

I'm excited to see what happens because I just see it in a small little cove in my work, what it means for children to have a good experience when they're studying at night. And I kind of go back to my own experience and to know that someone's potential is not limited by energy, they're not contributing to the climate problem, even though they will face the brunt of it.

But I think, of course, you can lament about all the injustices, but I can't imagine anything more fulfilling than just waiting to see what happens when Africa's potential is unlocked.

Pavitra Raja: That was Nthabiseng Mosia, co-founder of Easy Solar. Want to hear more inspiring stories of how social innovators are fixing it? Well then check out our website www.schwabfound.org.

Thanks to our guests today – Nthabiseng Mosia and Gonzalo Muñoz. Please subscribe to Let's Fix It wherever you get your podcasts and please do leave us with a writing or a review.

This episode of Let's Fix It was presented by me, Pavitra Raja, and produced by Alex Court with thanks to Amy Kirby and Jerry Johansson for editing, and Todd Burchill for sound design.

Special thanks to our partners WhatsApp Foundation and thanks also to our executive producers Georg Schmitt, Robin Pomeroy and Francois Bonnici. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more inspiring stories.