Entrepreneurship and innovation can play key roles in advancing economic development, standards of living, and job creation. But not all business has a positive impact. The solely profit-driven form of entrepreneurship that champions revenue generation for the betterment of shareholders has not been effective in solving social problems and global issues such as climate change.
A growing trend towards “green” or “social” entrepreneurship is creating a new wave of business looking to find new solutions for the environment. For many islands with their own unique challenges, these forms of enterprise are essential ingredients for economic growth and achieving the other elements of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In the recent Virtual Island Summit, a panel of speakers from the Caribbean explored green technopreneurship and how it can be used to address issues in water, marine ecosystems, agriculture, and energy. In smaller nations that tend to have fairly narrow economic bases, low economies of scale and a high dependency on international trade, social and green entrepreneurship can lead to great initiatives towards solving not just the economic problems facing these countries, but also their sustainability issues.