Exploring How Microfinance Can Impact Positive Environmental Behavior

Microfinance has been used for more than thirty years as a way to provide financial services to the poorest of the poor. Microfinance offers informal banking options and encourages entrepreneurship to help bring its clients out of poverty. This report is intended to meet the needs of Fonkoze USA, which is such an organization based in Haiti. The report outlines linkages between microfinance and the environment to assist Fonkoze in expanding their banking services to address negative environmental trends, such as the severe deforestation that has continued to progress throughout Haiti for generations. The team sought to determine how lending tools associated with microfinance could best be used to successfully alter behavior that damages the environment. The team’s research and findings are primarily based on noteworthy trends identified in the environmentally focused microfinance projects of PROGEDE and SEWA-SELCO, found in Senegal and India, respectively.