LET’S GO GREEN TOGETHER

By Rasha Albani, featuring Mohammed Jamal Hamid

Today is 2nd July 2021, and as we speak, angry, tired and hopeless posts are swarming the internet. The south of the country is facing a total shutdown of electrical systems, with a number of electrical towers destroyed. Additionally, Baghdad is experiencing a broad-ranging cutout and water shortages are amplifying from north to south. Iraq’s unique vulnerability to climate change is familiar news, where weather conditions are reaching extreme heights and environmental dilapidation is spreading rampantly. We hear a lot about the government’s poor capacity, scarcity in resources, and inconsistent post-conflict reconstruction. However, to list and discuss the factors exasperating Iraq’s poor environmental conditions would make for a tiresome and time-consuming endeavor. Fortunately, our options for solutions aren’t scarce, and there is much to be done that does not necessarily depend on government support.

GREEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN IRAQ

In Iraq, green entrepreneurship has been propitiously on the rise as a result of activities such as the 2019 Iraq Innovation Hackathon, where we witnessed the launch of IPR ECO to the market. IPR ECO provides ecofriendly products made from sustainable materials with the core intention of spreading awareness on environmental sustainability across the country. In an interview with Fatimah Oleiwi, which can be found on www.iraqtech.io the founder, Abdulrahman Kareem, emphasized the need for his products “because we cannot feel the effects of pollution until it seeps into aquatic life”. Half his project focuses on raising awareness, a form of social entrepreneurship. Hence his motivations can be defined along the lines of community support. Are these intentions consistent amongst entrepreneurs working in the field of green entrepreneurship? In Mosul, we spoke to 23-year-old Mohammed Jamal Hamid who recently founded a start-up called Golden Mushroom. Apart from being absolutely delicious, mushrooms have been hailed as a source of treatment for a variety of things, such as countering the sideeffects of chemotherapy in cancer patients, such as anemia and bone-marrow suppression. However, cultivating mushrooms has historically produced lots of waste, and managing this waste has proven to be difficult. The Station conducted a short interview with Mohammed to better understand his project.

WHY DO YOU CALL YOUR FARMING METHOD,

“UNCONVENTIONAL” FOR IRAQ?

“Golden mushroom utilizes an unconventional farming method that depends chiefly on the process of recycling plant and animal waste to produce 100% organic mushrooms. Unlike other farms, we cultivate mushrooms in tightly-closed halls, where appropriate conditions have been created for mushroom cultivation throughout the entire year. In other words, it can be produced in 8 agricultural cycles, disparate from all agricultural crops, where there exists a maximum of only two cycles per year”.

WHAT EXACTLY MAKES GOLDEN MUSHROOMS A GREEN PROJECT?

“We’re an agricultural project that turns harmful environmental pollutants into basic material for growing mushrooms. Usually, agricultural wastes are burned by farmers to get rid of them, which causes air pollution, not to mention the fires caused by these wastes. This has resulted in the loss of hundreds of hectares of grain crops. We do not want this; we are trying to serve a purpose for our community, not harm the place we all call home. So, we turned a risk into an opportunity; waste is taken and recycled into compost, an organic fertilizer. Once the process of cultivation is complete, the compost is then given to farmers free of charge for better and organic-friendly farming”. We were highly fascinated by Mohammed’s passion for his work and wanted to know how he understood the relationship between his entrepreneurial intentions and his project.

WHAT WERE YOUR INTENTIONS WHEN FOUNDING GOLDEN MUSHROOM?

My intentions were and continue to be varied. Iraq imports 80% of its food products, leaving only 20% in local production. This is what initially caught my attention and had me driving to find a project that could contribute to local production. Iraq has a high agricultural potential, although it has degraded post2003 for reasons we do not need to note, I’m sure we are all very aware. I’m personally a huge fan of organic mushrooms, and have read many studies and papers exploring its health benefits. We are all always looking for cheap, easily available options for food consumption due to our very busy lifestyle. I am now offering a locally produced alternative for mushrooms that will not only improve your health, but will help support our struggling economy”.

WHAT WERE YOUR INTENTIONS WHEN FOUNDING GOLDEN MUSHROOM?

My intentions were and continue to be varied. Iraq imports 80% of its food products, leaving only 20% in local production. This is what initially caught my attention and had me driving to find a project that could contribute to local production. Iraq has a high agricultural potential, although it has degraded post2003 for reasons we do not need to note, I’m sure we are all very aware. I’m personally a huge fan of organic mushrooms, and have read many studies and papers exploring its health benefits. We are all always looking for cheap, easily available options for food consumption due to our very busy lifestyle. I am now offering a locally produced alternative for mushrooms that will not only improve your health, but will help support our struggling economy”.

ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTIONS

This begs the question, are entrepreneurial intentions important for Green Entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurial Intentions can be defined as the mental state before one embarks on entrepreneurial activities. In other words, EI is what drives a person to become an entrepreneur. Many people define themselves as entrepreneurs, but what characteristics and traits have been found to act as predictors for entrepreneurial behaviour?

Researchers have increasingly emphasized the importance of exploring entrepreneurial intentions to better understand and further motivate development in this field. There have been studies by the likes of Jamali (2009), Giacomin et al. (2009), on entrepreneurial intentions by studying necessity/opportunity driven projects, as well as other theories that focus on personality traits and environmental triggers. Although results have largely been inconclusive, there exists an interesting study by Esfandiar et al. 2016 on the entrepreneurial intentions of tourism students in Iran. The data found has been consistent with other studies in that it illustrated the lack of influence social norms has had on entrepreneurial intentions, highlighting the importance of individual efficacy amongst aspiring entrepreneurs. What is interesting about Iran, is that it has historically been defined as a collective society, yet this study found that (tourism) students exhibited individualistic behavioral activity, complimentary to entrepreneurial endeavours. Such studies convey the importance of research if development is to increase, especially in the case of Iraq. Not only do we need to understand how aspiring Iraqi entrepreneurs think about factors such as financial independence, taking risks, social norms and responsibilities, but we also need to understand their connection with social entrepreneurial intentions. Social entrepreneurship is highly dependent on collective efficacy.

It is what keeps our neighborhoods safe, clean and thriving. What happens when there exists a lack of collective efficacy?

A lack of motivation to improve anything at all, especially during difficult times.

Iraq is sorely desperate for social entrepreneurship. It is a popular opinion amongst many that it is the government’s sole responsibility to improve our environment, but that is far from the truth.

Our individual actions can collectively have an impact, and a huge one at that, either positively or negatively. This is even more true when we talk of the environment. If we simply adopt changes to daily behaviour by recycling plastic, limiting paper use and switching to eco-friendly products, we can collectively drive positive change. Finding the balance between individual-collective efficacy should find itself at the heart of our ecosystem’s priorities, and to re-quote Mohammed lets “serve our community, not harm the place we all call home”.