[Lapg] Beyond Relief Leapfrog Nations - Emerging Technology in the New Developing World

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Beyond Relief  http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001835.html
Leapfrog Nations - Emerging Technology in the New Developing World

What if relief and reconstruction efforts aimed not just to save, but to 
improve the lives of the victims of this week's disaster?

This might not seem like the time to look ahead. The situation all around 
the Indian Ocean is grim: the bulldozers are digging mass-graves for as 
many as 100,000 bodies; at least a million people are homeless, hungry and 
utterly destitute; clean water and sanitation facilities don't exist; 
disease is beginning to break out; and relief is still far off for too, too 
many people. This is a full-blown global crisis.

But this is exactly the right time for foresight.

For one thing, history shows that the world tends to lose interest in 
disasters in developing world once people stop dying in large numbers. If 
we don't think now about our commitment to helping these communities 
recover and rebuild after the immediate crisis has passed, we never will.

And the ruined cities and villages lining the shores of the Indian Ocean 
are now home to some of the poorest of the world's poor. In many places, 
traumatized people, who had very little with which to earn their 
livelihoods to begin with, now have nothing left at all. Add to this the 
long-term challenges they face -- like decimated local economies, massive 
pollution (and some new industrial accidents), declining fisheries and 
forests, lack of capital and, perhaps most ominously, the rising seas and 
catastrophic storms they can expect from global warming -- and their fate 
may not be an enviable one.

But that fate is not written in stone. We can still change it. What if 
didn't just do something to help, but did the right things, and did them 
fully? What if we looked at this relief and reconstruction effort as a 
chance to not only save lives (and of course that must come first) but to 
truly rebuild coastal Southeast Asia along more sustainably prosperous 
lines? What if we made the commitment to take what are now some of the most 
ravaged, destitute areas on Earth, and worked with the people there to 
reimagine and rebuild their communities to be the cutting edge of 
sustainable development?

What if we made not just relief but rebirth the new measure of our success?

There are reasons to believe we could do it.

Delivering relief aid is a job of staggering proportions in a disaster of 
this size, and it will continue for months. As I've written before, the 
demands we put on aid workers are insane. "They have to fly in to remote 
corners of the Earth, where nothing, not even clean water, can usually be 
expected, and create an entire city from scratch, restoring order, throwing 
up tents, digging latrines, finding and filtering water, treating the 
wounded and diseased, counseling the grieving, and finding ways to bring 
shell-shocked people back to emotional engagement with their own lives. 
This is perhaps the hardest work on Earth, and the people who do it -- the 
bluehats and doctors without borders, the aid workers and missionaries -- 
are the closest thing we have to unquestionable heroes."

Let's give them tools to do their jobs better. Innovate and improve the 
relief effort, right now, from the start. Take ahold of the best 
innovations around and spread them as quickly as possible: employ better 
logistics methods, get aid workers better information about conditions on 
the ground and provide better and smarter disaster medical care to the victims.

Refugee camps can themselves become engines of transformation. At least a 
million have been made refugees by this tragedy: we can reinvent the 
refugee camp, and turn it into a launching pad for reconstruction.

We can't yet expect camps like this--
One possibility is the compostable tent city. In this model, the tents 
themselves would be treated cardboard shelters -- like Icopods (which 
resemble paper geodesic domes) -- which provide basic shelter and last for 
a couple years. The shipping containers and packaging for medical goods and 
food would also be treated cardboard. When the tents wear out and the 
packaging is discarded, though, it shows its true nature -- for each panel 
of cardboard would be impregnated with appropriate local seeds, spores of 
topsoil fungi and harmless fertilizing agents, so that by tearing them up 
and watering them, refugees could start gardens, complete with mulch, 
fertilizer and the microorganisms good soil needs. Even clothing and 
blankets can be designed to be composted as they wear out. The entire 
transitional tent city can end up plowed into gardens as the refugees 
settle in to stability -- and food is not all that can be grown. 
Fast-growing, salt-absorbing hybrid shade trees can go in as wind-breaks, 
helping to check erosion and desalinize the soil. If nearby areas have been 
mined, refugees can also broadcast the seeds for land-mine detecting 
flowers, local wildflowers which have been smart-bred to change color when 
they detect nitrogen dioxide in the soil (a chemical leaked by the 
explosives in the mines as they decay), like those being developed by the 
Danish Institute of Molecular Biology. More, some have proposed land-mine 
eating flowers, plants that'd send their roots towards explosives and grow 
around them, aiding their decomposition and perhaps triggering their 
explosion. Finally, if the land has been heavily polluted (a frequent 
consequence of war and civil unrest) specially-bred versions of hearty 
weed-like native plants which can slurp heavy metals out of the soil, 
concentrating them for safe disposal, even later reuse, and keeping them 
out of drinking water.

--but that doesn't mean that we can't do a hell of a lot better than the 
current reality: grim, sprawling, muddy, overcrowded and septic tent cities 
where services are rare and opportunities to actually work to improve one's 
life are few and far between. Tent cities now are often nothing more than 
places to warehouse people we don't care enough about to much notice. We 
can do much better.

Beginning with how we build these first, temporary camps, we can think 
differently about the goal of relief and reconstruction:
"Encouraging communities to be active participants in the rebuilding is key 
to creating sustainable solutions and to reducing the impact of a disaster. 
Representatives from the International Red Cross (IRC) spoke at the (last) 
World Urban Forum on disaster relief and noted the new city of Ciudad 
Espuma in Honduras - built after Hurricane Mitch swept through in 1998 - 
was the best example of a "disaster reduction initiative". The 14,000 
families who has lost homes had rebuilt their own houses with an awareness 
of the potential of future disaster."

New approaches to working with design for the very poorest can involve the 
refugees from this disaster in the reconstruction of their own lives. 
Microlending programs can be quickly established to provide capital for 
transitional small businesses, and combined with recovery aid to reunite 
farmers and fishermen with plows and nets.

One of the first steps should be to get the kids learning again. As Forced 
Migration Review (perhaps the most disturbingly-titled social studies 
publication in the world, if ya' really think about it) says, by creating 
"safe zones" for kids, and providing access to essential knowledge, 
educators not only help the whole community return to a sense of 
psychological stability, but can save a generation which might otherwise be 
lost. Indeed, by involving elders and parents in the process, a whole 
community can be moved out of traumatic shock into action.

Meanwhile, technology and collaboration can also help the refugees process 
the emotional damage and mentally begin rebuilding. Cheap, discardable 
videocameras could offer them the opportunity to record their stories, in 
order to begin healing and take an inventory of the skills the refugees 
bring. Open source textbooks rendered into the local language through 
collaborative translation can help spread literacy and education quickly 
through the population. Telecentros and other community technology 
resources can help bring real opportunity even to impoverished rural 
people, while, in the bigger picture, helping to redistribute the future.

A primary goal of the first couple year's of relief and reconstruction work 
should be to help arm these communities with the expertise, technology and 
capital to "leapfrog" over older, out-moded, costly and centralized 
technologies and start right in on building lives of sustainable prosperity.

This process should start the moment boots hit the ground. Relief is not 
simply about saving lives (though that is of course the top priority) -- 
relief is also the first step in the reconstruction. In the next months, 
vast efforts will go into building roads, air strips, water and power 
systems, emergency clinics and other infrastructure to support relief 
efforts. With that in mind, big international NGOs ought to be thinking, 
whenever possible, about the long-term utility of that infrastructure to 
the local communities. Can these huge investments be structured in ways 
that not only save lives today, but improve the community tomorrow.

An example: many relief efforts should include solar energy, right from the 
beginning:
"A viable use for PV is to meet the emergency demands in large-scale 
disasters, where power will be out for long periods of time and survivor 
support is difficult to provide due to the extensive area destroyed. 
Massive infrastructure damage makes refueling generators a challenge, as 
pumping stations are often inoperable and roads impassable. Power 
distribution lines are difficult to fix because of the impassable roads, 
much less transporting materials for reconstruction. When a disaster 
strikes an island and the port is destroyed, shipping fuel for generators 
becomes a problem. ... There are inappropriate applications for 
photovoltaics in response to disasters. The large-scale power needs of 
sewer and water facilities, hospitals, large shelters, distribution and 
emergency operations centers are better met with gasoline or diesel 
generators in an emergency."

But solar panels don't just fill many emergency roles better than 
generators could. Widespread use of solar energy in the disaster relief 
efforts will also provide kernels of equipment, infrastructure and 
expertise around which communities can build distributed energy systems -- 
the kind of systems more likely to work for many developing world 
communities in the long run. They can become a sort of seed-stock for new 
developing world smart grids, LEDs, access to computation and 
communications, village technologies and renewable energy, even better 
shelter -- the "bright lights, small villages" strategy.

Then, as the rebuilding commences in earnest, people can aspire to really 
move forward. There's no reason why the area which now lies ruined could 
not be something like a technologically empowered Costa Rica in ten years: 
prosperous (at least by developing world standards) and green, reasonably 
stable and well-governed, prepared for future disasters, and choosing its 
own future.

Let's not just "restore to them an equal portion." Instead, let's give them 
the opportunity to imagine an entirely new future. Let's not stop at saving 
lives and easing suffering today so they can return tomorrow to poverty in 
the shadow of an increasingly angry climate. Let's go farther. Let's change 
the dynamic. Let's help them make themselves into the stories we tell when 
we want to explain how things can be made better, the examples of how lives 
can be improved -- a better future made real where today there is only misery.
Posted by Alex Steffen at December 29, 2004 11:59 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Hi.
My kids and I are stunned by the events in Asia.
They wanted to donate to the Red Cross. This made me very proud, and led to 
the building of the following web page where I have listed some charities 
for donations.
Hope this helps.
- Drew Harris
http://www.adwords-hints.com/tsunami
Posted by: Drew Harris at December 29, 2004 07:24 PM

Does Worldchanging know about the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, 
which was already scheduled for Kobe in mid-January? Or its parent 
organization, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction? Perhaps 
someone from WSIS would know how to build an information pipeline 
connecting WCDR and the blogosphere.
Posted by: mitch p. at December 30, 2004 01:00 AM

Excellent idea. As a co-editor covering innovation in knowledge management 
at EU web, we've noticed that its immense "team" projects driven by unique 
urgencies that are most likely to progress collaborative working in a world 
too well known for hyper-competition methods of management. I hope that we 
will find in years to come that your vision has been lived up to. I am 
wondering what's the nearest ever case in history with any clues on the 
open collaboration structure required. I always get a bit worried with NGOs 
that the ultimate partnership work is managed by those who got the most 
funds not necessarily those who most closely understood the diverse 
communal needs. Its almost as if a local coastline correspondent network 
needs to be set up to openly observe what's working where and to say snap 
we desperately some of that here. I am grappling with what an open but 
active-led collaboration map might look like. Links to better emergent 
ideas than my first voicing most welcome.
Posted by: chris macrae at December 30, 2004 03:35 AM

http://solaroof.org gives away open-source technology to grow food and 
other benefits

oneVillage foundation

simputer a simple computer for contact and local business.

http://www.solarcooking.org is simple and can aid in water treatment (when 
you can't boil water) and of course in cooking without burning wood or 
anything. 2 USD per unit or less!

And where was this information about using saris (women's clothes) to 
prevent cholera?

(convert the NUMBER into the real thing to email me)
Posted by: lugon at December 30, 2004 03:37 AM

Let's broadcast more widely this appeal to change the dynamic.
Posted by: JoyPople at December 30, 2004 08:17 AM

Yes! Yes! Yes! I was talking about this in my blog just a few days ago: 
"...The rebuilding of the infrastructure decimated by the quake actually 
offers a tremendous opportunity, if the powers that be could find a way to 
use it: namely, rebuilding that infrastructure in "green" tech. Housing, 
power supplies, transportation, towns and cities... even if we just 
introduced green tech to rebuilding the houses alone, so much good could be 
done...."

Plus, changing response from the handout model - agencies come in, set up 
"temporary" infrastructure, and provide rations - to a more 
community-based, engaged model in which the affected individuals take an 
active role in rebuilding their own places and lives, is one of the most 
important shifts of thought in decades of disaster "management." 
Empowerment goes hand in hand with healing; community with sustainability.

As someone drastically out of the loop - are there enough people promoting 
this in the relief organizations to truly make it happen?
Posted by: katuah at December 30, 2004 12:16 PM

We are given many opportunities to change and we rarely do - let this last 
event and the loss of life not be in vain. If everyone just made one 
positive change what a wonderful world we would create.

I have just been made awaore of this site - I plan to share with my friends 
around the world. Thank you..God bless.
Posted by: Nemue at December 30, 2004 09:43 PM

We've set up a website that makes it even easier for people to generate 
funds for the tsunami relief effort. Please check out 
http://www.ReliefSearch.org.

Very simply, when users click on search results generated from 
ReliefSearch.org, the site earns revenues on a pay-per-click basis. All 
click revenues generated from these searches will help fund the victims of 
the Earthquake/Tsunami disaster. People can continue performing searches on 
the web as they normally would, only proceeds from their activities on 
ReliefSearch.org will help the cause. So, we're encouraging users to use 
the ReliefSearch.org search engine instead of Google or Yahoo!

Our goal is 1 million searches in the next 30 days. Anything you can do to 
help spread the word about ReliefSearch.org will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much for your help!
Posted by: Ben Padnos at December 31, 2004 12:48 AM
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