I am a young, Western engineer with a fascination for international development. My previous work, practical training and research experience has almost all been with small NGOs trying to develop simple engineering ideas which help people in developing countries address some of the challenges they face.
I have a distinctly different definition of what is ‘appropriate’ engineering to my older, Soviet-trained Kyrgyz counterparts. While they want huge concrete water tanks or expensive heating systems, I want simple and sensibly-sized water systems or low-cost insulation methods.
But of course it is not really my definition of ‘appropriate’ - or theirs - that matters if projects are to have any chance of success. One famous question in international development is ‘whose reality counts?’, inviting Western interveners to consider whose point of view is the one that actually matters.
This leads on to the complexity surrounding people, communities, their needs, desires and participation that I discussed in my last post. As ever, it is hard to make useful generalizations. But some people have proposed common issues that should be considered by anyone trying to promote ‘Appropriate Technology’ to communities in developing countries - in particular the importance of trying to appreciate how people react to new technological ideas.
Eric Dudley, in his book 'The Critical Villager', suggests that rather than the question ‘is it appropriate?’ to us, we should consider ‘is it appropriate-able?’ by other people, given the existing norms and pathways for adopting new ideas. People are most likely to take up new ideas that are ‘reasonable, recognizable and respectable’. Does the idea make reasonable sense to the intended beneficiary? Can it be recognized as a tangible, named ‘thing’? And is it respectable - something that ‘people like us’ do?
This can provide a helpful framework for thinking critically about many technological initiatives in international development. For example, I have recently worked in El Salvador and India to help train local builders in a new, low-cost method of retrofitting mud brick buildings to improve their seismic resistance. The method uses a series of vertical bamboo poles attached to the walls of the building, joined tightly with horizontal galvanized wire, and secured to the roof structure to provide a restraining mesh which minimizes movement and damage during an earthquake. (Pictures from El Salvador on Facebook, pictures from both El Salvador and India likely to be uploaded to www.quakesafeadobe.net sometime after the director of QuakeSafe Adobe’s wedding).
Is it reasonable? Yes - intuitively and visually it makes sense when people see a strong net around the walls of a building, and can try to flex the strong bamboo and pull on the tightened wire for themselves. (This can be backed up by videos of shake-table demonstrations etc.)
How about recognizable? Yes, pretty much - the concept of steel reinforcement for concrete is known around the world (witness all the half-finished structures with rebar poking out of the top), so seeing bamboo and wire around a mud building is another tangible idea that can be seen and, hopefully, accepted.
And respectable? This is the tricky one. As Dudley recognizes, there is a growing ‘urbanization of consciousness’ and desire for modernity in many rural areas. This means that the widespread awareness of brick and concrete buildings often manifests itself in the strong aspirations of rural populations towards building methods which are perceived to be up-to-date and urban - even if (for reasons of climate, resources etc etc) they may not be ‘appropriate’ to Western observers. Mud brick buildings - even seismically strengthened ones - are often seen as simply poorer alternatives and not something respectable or desirable.
The modern look for mud: cement/lime plaster (windows on other side!)
So in El Salvador and India we spent less than half our time actually making structural improvements to the homes and schools we were reinforcing. The rest of the time we worked with the local masons to develop a suitable mud plaster mix (to cover and protect the bamboo), which was crucially then covered with a final layer which contained enough cement and lime to give the appearance of a modern, cement-plastered, brick or concrete block house.
Does this work? The importance of aesthetics and its link to pride in a home is clear from the number of mud houses which already have thick, carefully painted cement plaster - but only on the front, the part of the house which is visible to others. Hopefully, longer-term monitoring and evaluations, the kind that so many NGOs don’t do (because so many donors don’t fund) will shed light on the ongoing reaction and interest in these communities.
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Appropriate technology, inappropriate vodka consumption: that measuring pole should be vertical…
There are many other examples of the differing views of ‘appropriateness’. My Kyrgyz colleagues refused to let me order a $20 piece of surveying equipment because “We don’t want any of your cheap toys, we know that proper machines cost $2000” (negotiation secured a compromise at the $200 option…). Other technologies (‘low-cost affordable innovative replicable community-based simple drainage techniques’) can be ‘appropriate’ for the proposal submitted to donors while being completely irrelevant to the actual project on the ground. Some (an upcoming energy project for “solar water heaters, high efficiency ovens, salted straw insulation, passive solar houses, bio gas digesters and gas storage cells and micro hydro power generators”… and maybe more) may well be ‘appropriate’. But it might be better to investigate this by small-scale trials to gauge public reaction of how reasonable, recognizable and respectable they are, rather a $3 million, 240 village project being the starting point.
And of course, even something reasonable, recognizable and ultra-modern and respectable could still turn out to be unpopular. I visited one Government-funded new school, built to demonstrate the commitment of the President to modern education facilities (and photo opportunities) using brightly painted prefabricated insulated double steel ‘sandwich’ walls. Even leaving aside the surprising decision to spend $600,000 on a 6-classroom school in a community without a clean drinking water supply, the opinion of the teachers I spoke to was that the “unnatural materials give the children headaches and make them sleep all afternoon”. Whether or not this is the real cause (vodka does start from a pretty early age here), it reminds us that the perceptions of the funders, designers and builders of new technology are not necessarily the same as the views of the users themselves.
