Prof. Muhammad Yunus: A World of Three Zeros - The New Economics of Zero Poverty

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I'm your host Rimmel London and welcome to the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona now our next keynote speaker is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate awarded in 2016 mister and professor Muhammad Yunus please give a round of first his most recent book is entitled is titled a world of free zeros the new economics of zero poverty zero in unemployment and zero net carbon professor Muhammad Yunus is the father of both social business and microcredit the founder of Grameen Bank and also many other more businesses up to 50 other companies in Bangladesh capitalism as it is now practice recognizes only one goal the selfish pursuit of individual profit only businesses designed around the goal and recognized are recognized and supported elimination of poverty unemployment and environmental degradation can be dramatically reduced by running social businesses so please welcome professor Muhammad Yunus thank you [Applause] thank you very much good have to learn well I'm delighted to get a chance to brief you and what I've been doing and the word microcredit probably is familiar with many people it was something done accidentally it's not pre-planned or anything like that I was trying to protect some low victims of loan sharks in the village next door to the University where I was teaching and in order to do that to protect the victims the idea that I had why don't I lend the money myself if I lend the money they don't have to go to the loan shark the problem is solved I don't have to write a big thesis about it just go ahead and do it and it's very simple thing took the money from my pocket we started giving money anybody who needs money come to me don't go to the loan shark and that's how it began back in 1976 I had no idea that it will spill over to the next village of the next village but it became very popular it kept on expanding and expanding that at one point I thought man I cannot handle it anymore by myself with my students with me why don't I create an institution a banking institution to create a bank for the poor people everybody laughed lending money to the poor people is a strange now you're talking about bank for a poor for poor people but I didn't give up and finally in 1983 we got all the clearances and so on create a bank called Grameen banks and continued doing that it became very popular within the country outside the country the word was coined to explain what we do it's called micro tiny loans that wouldn't exist in English literature so they had to coin a word to describe what we do people keep asking me how did it design the whole bank that it works for the poor people whole world saying it cannot work then you are insisting that it will work I said that you know best thing that happened to me in doing this I never studied banking I never took a course in banking so I could do anything I want so nobody is in the back of my mind telling you you have to do this you have to do that I didn't follow any of those rules i defied all those rules to the extent I keep saying that well you know the reason it works I didn't know the rules so I look at the rules for the bank's conventional banks follow each time I look at their rules to see if what I have to do once I learn how they do it I just do the opposite then it worked they go to the rich I go to the poor they go to men I go to a woman they do it the city center I go to the remote village they ask for collateral I said forget about koulikov no collector if you're dealing with the poor people collateral the help it's a wall so the entire system is based not on collateral at all it's a well trust if if we have to explain anything like that conventional banks are owned by rich people if you own a bank you have to be very rich person we created a bank which is owned by poor people not only poor people who are women we focus on women today in Bangladesh Grameen Bank the bank we created has more than nine million borrowers almost all of them are women ninety seven percent are women destitute women illiterate women the women who never crossed the boundary of our village that's the woman and it worked and it is copied around the world it's discussed too many ways we were invited to do it in the United States because they are saying we this doesn't work in the United States maybe you're not doing it the right way they said why didn't you come and show us so I decided to do that I created a bank or not a bank actually an organization German America started in Jackson Heights near in Queens in 2008 January beginning and came out a beautiful branch of Grameen and then everybody wanted to Grameen branch in their neighborhood we want another one in our borough you want another one in your bar oh so now we have seven branches in New York City and other cities kid coming that we want our in our city our poor are worse than New York work so said okay so we have not 22 branches in 14 cities of the United States in total there are more than hundred thousand borrowers in all this together in the ten years all women hundred percent women the maximum loan amount that you can get in your first loan a start-up loan is under $1,500 so you can imagine how desperate one has to be to work hard to get to that $1,500 and not all of them are $1,500 some of the $700 on the date hundred dollars and so on but in total we have given over a billion dollar loan in the United States with perfect repayment in every single branch in every single city near hundred percent always over 99.5% no collateral nothing as we follow the same rules and procedure we keep claiming always from the beginning I said come in bank is the only bank in the world which is lawyer free no lawyer in our system because we don't need them you need lawyer when you have to tie them up with your properties and things like that we have nothing to tie them up of the hundred percent sorry hundred thousand borrowers that we have in the United States 60% of them are undocumented women imagine that not only women undocumented nobody wants to go anywhere near them they can be thrown out any time particularly with Trump in the White House you don't know when they're going to throw out and these are the people that we gave in total a billion dollar and they pay me back every single penny people ask me why there's poverty what is the reason you have been working with poor people is very simple poverty is not created by the poor people poverty is created by the system that we build around us it is not created by the persons who are poor it is imposed phenomenon on those persons something came from externally I try to explain it by saying it's like a bonsai you know the bonsai tree you take the seed of a very tall tree and put it in a flowerpot it goes only this big it doesn't grow back and you wonder what happened very simple explanation you didn't give enough soil to grow so it grew only to the extent of you provided the soil poor people to me are bonsai people there's nothing wrong with the seed simply society never gave them the space to grow as tall as anybody could be and I put it this way I said financial services like loans insurances and many other things these are like financial oxygen to people like if you don't have oxygen in this room we cannot breathe soon we'll all collapse if you don't have the financial oxygen to be able economically if people cannot breathe cannot function they become dysfunctional and we call them poor people it's not their fault simply you didn't give them the oxygen the moment you connect them with oxygen they become alive active creative like anybody else that's what happens of the millions of millions of women who took loans from Grameen and other such program to change their life I confront this issue again and again how come we cannot get rid of poverty if that's so I said because you're not changing institution after 42 years of microcredit with all those good things you talked about microcredit coming Bank even gave a Nobel Peace Prize for that but the financial system doesn't change banks don't change I said the existing banks are actually Bank for the rich but we don't say that we just call them banks whenever somebody introduces me they said he's a banker to the poor I said that's great but would you say that the other guy who runs out the kind of man is the banker to the rich you don't say that so that remains hidden the fact that it remains hidden we are not aware of it if we call them banker to the rich or Bank for the rich everybody will say where is the bank for the poor bank for the poor doesn't exist and that's the trouble we have and that's not only that the whole system that we built works only for the people privileged it doesn't work for the people at the bottom and that continues today all the wealth of the world is getting concentrated and concentrated and fewer and fewer hands everybody knows that but we don't talk about we are told again and again this year that eight people in the world own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population of the world eight sorry four billion people's worth put together equals to the wealth of eight persons and we know those eight persons they're our friends the good people Warren Buffet like Bill Gates Mark Zuckerberg you name them and we'd love to take selfie with them no problem but cast away wealth goes if you look globally ninety-nine percent of the world belongs to 1% of the population of the entire world in other words ninety-nine percent of the population the world gets only 1% of the world of the world and where do this 1% of the population live probably half a dozen countries maybe seven countries eight countries yes were all these 1% people live so all the wealth of the world is concentrated in their hands what happens to the rest of the world rest of the countries they have to be satisfied with one percent of the total wealth of the entire world what I keep reminding people if this is true if you're convinced this is true this has been repeated many times then this is a ticking time bomb the whole world will explode in anger in dissatisfaction politically economically you damn it you see expressions of such anger in in the politics of many country already and that's what I have been trying to talk about in the book that I just but this is the reason I'm here it's called a world of three zeros just came out the Spanish version the English version was published before world of three zeroes zero poverty zero unemployment zero net carbon emission and we can create that is well why can't we do it now because we cannot do it our system is wrong I keep repeating if we follow the old roads we always end up with the old destination all destination is poverty all destination is environmental degradation all destination is unemployment so if you want to get out of it a new destination we have to build new roads old roads will never take you to new destination if you want if you have something in your mind as a new destination this is where we want to go and if you have to be built roads have to build new what I was trying to do like I did microcredit unknowingly accidentally but it needed by the people when I was working with them I saw many other problems with the poor people not just financial services health care water sanitation housing you name it so every time I look at those problems very closely because I'm very close with them every day I wanted to be somehow involved in it helping them to solve it I could solve it in a charity way I give some bring some money raise some funds build few houses bring some money have a health clinic we all do that in our foundation in the energy activity I didn't take that part what I did every time I see a problem I create a business to solve it sounds very funny but that's what I did I created one after another business after business and these are businesses having strange some features people identified that I'm doing in some strange business strange because I don't want to make money out of it but the core cornerstone of business is to make money the more money you make more successful you are here I'm saying I'm known one to make money I want to solve problem in a business way charity is a wonderful thing charity money goes out does a wonderful thing but money doesn't come back I said this is not a good idea for me why don't take create a business and I had no intention of making money out of it so it becomes more powerful and address the problem and I call it social business non dividend company to solve human problems and it started creating one after another so while charity money goes out doesn't come back social business money goes out solves the problem and money comes back because it's a business then you use it no money again and when he comes back you use the money again so social business money has in this life so it becomes very powerful this is what I did I created many many companies I have narrated this in the book one just quick example energy again I became kind of upset that there is no electricity in the villages of Bangladesh it's all dark after Sun Goes Down I said my god after all these year still we have to live in a cave age why can't we do something about electricity so one idea came why don't we bring solar energy so I created a company for solar energy to bring solar home system in every home in the beginning there's an hour with we don't know that this is going to work why should we pay then I gave them a challenge I said how much money you spend on kerosene because after all you are using kerosene how much money every month you spend they say well I spent so much I spend so much I said give me the kerosene money every month I give you electricity they thought is a good idea so I said ok it's a good idea I give you electricity if you don't like it you return it you don't have to pay me anything and people loved it and it became very popular today we have more than 4 million homes in Bangladesh with solar home system and it keeps growing and we created the company not to make money to solve the problem so that we can bring electricity the moment you bring electricity everything opens up you get exactly you have television yeah phone internet whatever you say because everybody has electricity so this is one example of source of business and we continued and many big companies became interested in us so we are saying why people don't do that I said the economic system is went on a wrong path the one capitalist system that we can talk about because they interpreted human being in a very narrow way they interpreted human being as someone who is driven by self-interest that's the core of a capitalist system human being driven by self-interest in other words entire economic system is done by selfish interests so we became selfish because we believe it I said capitalist system has put on glasses on our eyes with dollar sign or the Euro sign we don't see anything else I said what I'm trying to do is to bring bifocal glasses you have dollar sign you've also people sign that's the social business I say real human being is both selfish and selfless if you only accept that then you have two kinds of business selfish business we all do selfless business we don't do because it doesn't stain it's not included in our textbook this is not taught on our class is not our business school that's the problem we have it but you don't use it so you feel use it if you have all social businesses around the world there will be no wealth concentration will be done and welkins as social business is not to be done by the government it's ask you and me we do the social business and money-making business at the same time every company that you have can create a social business on the side already many companies have done that I have Illustrated that we don't have much time and change something I got involved another thing many at the young people the Grameen families they have education because we get them education law they were good degrees but no jobs in Bangladesh and they complain I said why are you complaining why are you looking for job in the first place as a job is an obsolete idea it is something misinterpreted miss introduced by capitalist system you have to work for somebody from the / capitalist guy you don't have to work for anybody human beings are not born in this planet to work for anybody they got very puzzled what kind of game is that I said look at your mother your mother joined Grameen Bank 20 years back she's an illiterate woman she mustered all her courage to take a $20 $25 loan to start a business if you're illiterate mother can become an interpreter intrapreneur by $25 lord what's wrong with you you know what's wrong with you your mother is a natural human being like the way we were in this planet thousands of years back she tried to address her problem and she knew what to do exactly what to do she didn't worry about it she had the courage to do that and got it done and gradually moved up you became an artificial human being I'm telling the son or the daughter because you went to school your school converted into an artificial human being all you see your life is about taking a job job is not a destiny of a human being I said human beings are born as intrapreneurs so we should be entrepreneurs so we tell them go back to your mother and learn the things you have learned and be a natural human being again come back to us come with the business idea will invest in your business we created a venture capital fund social business venture capital fund we become your investor we become your partner you make it successful return the money we are not interested in your profit because you have social business we're a non dividend company so keep the profit and move on our job is to solve your problem so that you can be end up in your orbit sooner thousands and thousands of young people come with business ideas we keep on investing and right now we have more than thousand young people per month that we invest many more thousands apply but gradually we keep getting it nobody is rejected nobody is ejected nobody's abandoned so if everybody can become entrepreneurs why do we have so much unemployment in the world even in Italy they have 40% unemployment south of Italy they tell me that 60% unemployment I was introduced to Nepali by Mario and he says this is my problem I said you are looking for the wrong solution trying to look for job job is not the solution job is an artificial solution human beings an entrepreneur so now we are setting up social business fun there as we do to create that crossover we have introduced something similar thing in Kosova so the young people in Kosovo can become entrepreneurs by doing that so this is another one capitalist system has directed in a wrong direction so if you adopt this new rules or the new way this is nothing as I said it is nothing imposed on you these are options to follow every children every child that you can be an entrepreneur or job seeker but you can tell I'm not a job seeker than a my job creator then that's up to you but the school has to tell them today schools tell us that our school produces job very young people what a shame human beings are not robots did you produce those robot to fit into the slots of the best jobs I keep telling young people look each human being has unlimited creative capacity they can do anything they want the job takes away all your creativity job is something which only thing you have to do is to satisfy your boss no creativity is needed that's a routine work that you do so you surrender your creativity why option take options to choose your tank now last point if all people really became entrepreneurs in the world will there be wealth concentration no because we each of us will be picking up the wealth ourselves we had the entrepreneur's the rich people the richest people super-rich can get all the wealth because we work for them we are the mercenaries for them we work for them and they make the money they don't work so why should we continue that process why can't we do it something that we share with everybody else so that's the point that I want to I want to I raised in the book that we need to build this new roads so that we can build this new world that we want where there'll be no poverty no unemployment I keep repeating unemployment is created through the concept of employment if we didn't have the concept of employment there will be no employment because we will be doing our own thing and zero net carbon emission which everybody is familiar with but urgency is not realized we have only 30 years to go to save the planet 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature by 2040 that is the time limit or if it's worst case scenario it is 12.2 degree celsius by 2050 which is 30 years from now after that we are in a point of no return so whichever direction you see you are up for trouble after extinction so we unless we get out and make sure this society doesn't explode because of wealth concentration it doesn't dysfunctional burnt-out planet by the 200 to 2050 we have to get the action going right now thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much for the homogenous right we now have opportunity for you to ask some questions you can see that there are microphones on the sides of the aisles so if you would like to ask a question please do come forward if not I've got a few questions that were sent in to us as well so I'll give you a few moments do you have a question I think she has a question just take the mic refrain thank you tricky question I love the idea that everyone should go out there and pursue their own passion but I have to ask you how are you able to finance yourself to provide finance to others seems yeah we have companies which make money but since we don't take any dividend this money used to create more companies so that's how we got the money for me personally oh you are my person I started lending money out of my own pocket whatever income I had I used to teach in the USA long back so I came back from the US we had lots of money with me so that's the money I used to start initially it didn't make a lot of money small loans $10 $20 $50 that's about it so that's the initial part then we turned into a bank after we became a bank we don't need any money from outside you just take deposits from the depositors it used the depositors money to lend money Grameen Bank which lends out billions of dollars each year even its tiny loans all comes of the depositors money all are the finance the money we had the problem of excess money rather than shortage of money there's so much deposits coming to bang Grameen Bank we had to expand ourselves to absorb this so that we can send out more and more money to people because there's so much a neutralized money so we never had any problem of shortage of money so this is one and many other program started similarly we have companies who earn money which we use for lending money to the young people or investing money in there are young people is he created the venture capital fund in a different way venture capital always indicates that you want to make more money from your partner but here is the reverse we don't want to make money from our partner all the money all the profit belongs to him or her so we do that so this is how we keep our lenders and then we create over now that is I started expanding we have created social business funds in many countries we have to source of business funds in India social business funds in Uganda Kenya Brazil and many other countries people who invested in this for social business knowing fully well that will not get in dividend thank you very much next question please my name is Gustavo Ribeiro from Copenhagen thank you for a wonderful presentation and very inspiring work and my question is some of the people who who have the the business loan and some of them they are successful but others are not successful how again this is a part of our business I briefly mentioned probably you can catch it when we invite young people to come with business ideas our rules we explain to them nobody will be rejected no matter how large your business plan is you will not be rejected simply you will be invited to work with us to improve your business plan and one time first round second round third round then you made it then we invest in your business and the second rule is nobody will be abundant meaning that you failed to be successful I said business means 50/50 chance you may be successful it may be failure so don't be afraid of that it's part of life in business so if your failure will not blame you for that this is part of life so we said okay we'll start all over again would you like to continue it the same one would you like to start a new one so we'll be with you until you're successful and that way we'll will not forgiving any money we're not forfeiting any money but gradually we will make you so successful you'll be returning all the money that you took in the first place so it will be done finished and since we are not making any profit out of it it's just a core money that I gave you and you're sending it giving it back it's not a heavy burden on them so this is how we work it out thank you we only have room for two more questions and these ladies are here first sorry gentlemen so in next place thank you for this my name is Olga she Polanski and I work on climate resilience in Asian cities thank you very much for a very inspirational speech and my question is related to my field of expertise and to the region which are very familiar with coming from there you know that the region is heavily affected by climate change and the governments are not up to the challenge just because the challenge is too big and in particularly in cities the poor population is affected the most what I would like to know is whether you do have Micro Micro Micro etre preneur from urban slums coming to you with climate resilient solutions what kind of solutions they are and how do you think we could have scale this movement because I feel this is really needed yeah one of the core thing about social business is to create a circular economy so it's part of our life to create a circular economy one of the first priority is right now on building plastic how to get rid of plastic and we achieve zero plastic this is our team we just had a big conference in allspark Germany we invited plastic companies also negotiate with them how they are going to transform themselves into zero plastic direction or a circular direction either way so we had several plastic companies participating with us we have all remonstrate it to them 10 rivers in the world 8 of them are in Asia two of them outside of Asia contribute 80% of the plastic waste ending up in the ocean so if we clean up those 10 rivers we could come to a level that we can control plastic and unless we can control the plastic producers because plastic producer keep on producing then it goes again one of our first job right now we are working in a project for last two years designing and finishing it up in Vietnam to clean up Mekong River which is not one of the ten but Mekong River we thought this as a manageable one that we can start and make sure making River becomes free of all garbage and all plastic and we are working with the many companies many laboratories to make sure that this can be done so it's not simply a do-gooders job with lots of science involved lots of ideas involved one is to recycle them into long lasting plastic which is the easiest solution and with the laboratories we are talking about how to make biodegradable plastic if it is possible it's a challenge you can make it so many direction just to give an example another one is we are working with the tire companies tyre is a big polluter to millions and millions of tires only 7% of the tires in the whole world is ever used for India for any other purpose after it's retired from its own job others are just run away imagine what happens to the world by that so we are insisting on the tire company that only they must find out with us or with themselves whichever they find fit to make sure 100% of the tyres a recycled tire is a very interesting object it's so basically three elements in it is it's a wrapper which is a natural product it's not plastic it's a rubber and lots of metals metals is always precious and some chemicals which burns you can have few else you can have oils so if you can create divide it up take it out its original shape two rubbers and metals and liquids suddenly it becomes very attractive product - the only thing about the 7% we say they chop them up into little pieces use it for road construction which is not very good idea so we are working with the scientists with everybody else to make sure rubbers can come back so we are working with Mechelen were working with yet in India we are working with Continental in Germany so that we all work together to make sure this doesn't belushin create pollution and create social business this is something they have to do not to make money but to solve the problem they have created and we all together created so make sure so these are the ways I say is something if you put it in your mind it can be done it's not something somebody else do as I do and you do you have an idea share it with us share with somebody else so that we can address those problems leaving it to the government living to some international agency doesn't do the job is us at the people who will be living on this planet we have to keep it safe thank you thank you very much unfortunately I'm very sorry we're going to have to close there but can we give another massive round of applause to Professor my house you know thank you so much thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: Smart City Expo World Congress

Views: 8,214

Rating: 4.9306359 out of 5

Keywords: smart cities, smart city

Id: L0pTlWiUn3A

Length: 37min 12sec (2232 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 03 2018