Raising the standard of living for the 3 billion people worldwide living in undeveloped rural areas requires identifying and removing bottlenecks to growth. It also requires low-carbon technologies to support growth without incurring destructive climate change due to increases in CO₂e emissions associated with growth.

Although specific bottlenecks to growth vary – in some villages it is access to electricity, in others it is farming technology or water – there are a set of basic needs that must be met. These include food, water, energy, communication, access to capital, and education and training. In each of these categories, there are sustainable low-carbon options for development that require innovative implementation and financing plans. Given projections for global increases in energy and agriculture-related emissions, low-carbon rural development could avoid several billion tons of CO₂e annually by 2020.

Market-based Approaches
As with cell phone technology – where developing countries leap-frogged the old landline technology and rapidly deployed cell towers – there is an opportunity for villages worldwide to leap-frog costly transmission infrastructure and instead deploy distributed renewable energy generation. Accessible financing, technology and knowledge transfer, and local leadership are all critical.

Creative approaches to financing for developing villages are a cornerstone of development, and financing needs to link to sustainability objectives. Micro-finance, as pioneered successfully by the Grameen bank, can be applied to a number of small-scale investments such as low-cost solar-powered stoves and lighting.

Larger community development projects will require new financing models but present a large opportunity for new markets, particularly with the evidenced trend of rising incomes and non-farm incomes reported by the U.N. in their 2008 report on Sustainable Development Trends.