 regulations such as Union Budgets, State Budgets, national climate funds (National Clean Energy Fund [NCEF] and National Adaptation Fund [NAF], for example), private climate finance (Clean Development Mechanism [CDM], for example), and international climate finance (Green Climate Fund [GCF] and Global Environment Facility [GEF], for example), this acts as another barrier.
What’s more, international climate finance institutions and facilities such as the GCF require applications from a dedicated accredited entity or a qualified financial institution working with an entity accredited by the GCF, to propose approaches that deploy financial solutions for MSMEs.
There have been a number of mechanisms and programmes supported by the World Bank, GEF, and others, that have been successfully implemented to bring the benefits of climate finance or development finance to MSMEs, specifically to help them transition to modern, energy-efficient technologies.
However, participation of MSMEs in these schemes has been limited due to a number of factors, including the necessity of an upfront investment, procedural requirements such as preparation of detailed project reports, energy and emission audits, and so on. These are not feasible for a large number of small and micro enterprises since they don’t have the capabilities or resources to do this.
What can we do to enable climate finance flow to MSMEs?
There have been a number of attempts to reimagine climate finance and work on the challenges that exist in the current ecosystem. For example, the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises has ongoing initiatives to create awareness among MSMEs about new technologies, along with several incentives and schemes to support them.
Instead of eligible MSMEs chasing climate finance, the ecosystem should look for eligible enterprises and deliver climate finance to them. While this may sound like wishful thinking, it can actually be built on the blocks of the new initiatives currently being provided by the ministry.
The existing MSME databank can be further developed to collect data which tells MSMEs whether they are suitable for climate finance, and then guide them accordingly.
The existing Data Analytics and Technical Coordination (DATC) wing set up to support the MSME sector can be leveraged to understand the vulnerability of a given enterprise to climate risks and develop support measures for them.
Direct benefit transfers (DBT) can be leveraged to deliver subsidies and social welfare benefits to MSMEs.
The next set of measures needs to focus on the existing eligibility requirements of MSMEs for climate finance. Currently, the eligibility criteria vary from scheme to scheme and from mechanism to mechanism (GCF, NCEF, and others). For example, MSMEs cannot directly avail climate finance from GCF and other similar sources since their funding requirements are significantly smaller than what the GCF provides.
There is also a need to have simpler processes of registration for climate finance, as well as for verification of climate benefits.
There is also a need to have simpler processes of registration for climate finance, as well as for verification of climate benefits. Currently, both these serve as deterrents for MSMEs because of their inability to invest upfront in these processes.
The other requirement is to have a dedicated climate finance facility for non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) and microfinance institutions (MFIs) catering to MSMEs. Financial institutions access climate finance from GCF or other such sources and then deliver it onwards. This does not work for MSMEs, as a majority of NBFCs or MFIs who are the main providers of finance to MSMEs are either not eligible (due to stringent eligibility criteria) or find it very difficult to access climate finance.
There is need for processes and mechanisms so that not just MSMEs, but the financial institutions catering to MSMEs are also able to leverage climate finance in order to build a MSME-friendly financing ecosystem.
Overall, there is a need to develop a mechanism that enables climate finance to reach MSMEs proactively. For this, there is a need to revisualise the role of financing institutions that cater to the MSME sector. SIDBI, NABARD, and IREDA (for green finance) have been primarily focusing on direct financing or refinancing of loans to NBFCs and other financial instituions catering to MSMEs, which are quite insufficient considering the total credit requirement of MSMEs.
These institutions (or probably new ones) should focus on unlocking more capital to the MSME sector by first loss default guarantees or other risk mitigation measures that enable more credit to the MSME sector. As we bring more formal credit to them, enabling climate finance will become easier.
Furthermore, there is a need to build the capacity of financial institutions and include them in the process of origination, application, and delivery of climate finance. This requires building their capacity and providing them easier access to climate finance as well. They should also be leveraged to serve as a guide to the MSMEs. Financial institutions can easily identify potential climate finance beneficiaries by having a few additional questions in the loan applications; they can use this to guide their MSMEs through the process.
Financial institutions catering to MSMEs are the most critical stakeholders in enabling climate finance for MSMEs, and it is almost impossible to think of an effective climate finance ecosystem for MSMEs if we do not leverage them optimally.
Learn more about climate finance from the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Read the Global Climate Finance Architecture report.
Understand how climate finance ‘flows’ around the world.
Explore the Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2019.
If you are an organisation working on climate change adaptation projects, apply for funding from the Adaptation Fund before August 10, 2020.
Ankit Gupta is managing the energy and climate change practice at Intellecap. He has worked with various small and medium enterprises on business modeling, strategy design, project feasibility analysis, and financial valuations. He has carried out multiple landscaping studies including the one on climate risk mainstreaming approaches in India. He has also managed on-the-ground technical assistance engagements solving critical business issues of enterprises and designed funds such as an Energy Impact Fund and a Blended Debt Fund.
If we don’t invest in building community resilience, climate change and natural disasters will undo what development work has achieved so far.
After trying to get the model to run in a space, I am currently not sure if it is generally possible to host a downloaded gpt-j-6B model on huggingface spaces (with the free payment plan) and want to ask if this is correct.
I described the process for coming to this conclusion below.
“CPU Memory limit exceeded (16GB)”.
and used a smaller version with float16 precision.
Wich is probably related to this comment here: Memory use of GPT-J-6B - #2 by sgugger about half-precision not being usable on CPU.
When I now entered the input: “Hi”, the model generated for ~52 seconds until I got an error symbol in the Gradio app.
So, I found the enable_queue=True setting via another forum post (that I can’t link since I am a new user ) which prevents this timeout.
The model then generated for I think ~900 seconds until I got another Gradio error with no message, which I assume is another timeout.
model_dir = "EleutherAI/gpt-j-6B"#"gpt2"
The Miami Crypto Experience was not your typical crypto conference! From quirky teenagers speaking of their great success within the crypto space to traditional finance professionals speaking of their plans to tokenize the future, this event truly covered all bases.
The event began with a live performance by Rick Ross, which featured a one-of-one NFT drop. Rick Ross collaborated with Miami artist, Rich B. Caliente, to create a custom painted and signed Porsche 911; the World’s first Porsche 911 available on the blockchain. The Porsche comes as a perk of the NFT (digital representation of the Porsche) that is currently up for auction at fomolab.io.
Levolution Founder and Managing Partner, Patrick Schmitt, sat down with Rick Ross and Rich B. Caliente to discuss the potential of tokenizing assets in the future. This was well received by both Rick Ross and Rich and opened their eyes to the possibilities of tokenization and the full capacity of the Levolution Platform.
There was more to this event than just NFT drops and ‘Every day I’m Hustlin’’ played on repeat. The event brought together some of Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies greatest minds; all serving the purpose of educating the general public about the role that Blockchain technology will play in almost every major industry. Some key topics included crypto trading, Defi, NFTs, the intersection of NFTs and Defi, tokenization, and more.
There were also plenty of companies showcasing exciting projects to an audience of over 3,000 people. Outside of Levolution, some of those companies included Mandala, Gilded, Celsius, Emrit, and Bit Basel.
Patrick was a panelist and workshop facilitator at the Miami Crypto Experience. He was the only event participant to discuss tokenization, which garnered a lot of attention from other organizations and attendees, looking to potentially leverage the Levolution Platform as a means to raise funds.
This eventually caught the attention of Yuting Ren, Chairwoman at Harvester Trust. Not only was she pleased to learn about the technology behind Levolution, but she was also thrilled to meet Levolution’s team members and carry on talks about the capabilities of the platform. There will be more on this later.
During Patrick’s panel discussion