Tag: Issue 5

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Bio-ethanol From Sturdy and Once-Unwanted Indian Plant

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 22/11/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

With awareness of global warming at an all-time high – and governments seeking real-world solutions to solve this enormous problem – bioethanol fuel has risen up the agenda as a replacement for conventional fuel sources. At present, most bioethanol fuel is produced from either corn or sugar but a less known plant jatropha could be the real solution. Brazil has been a pioneer in producing bioethanol fuel from sugar, while the United States has focused on its substantial corn crop as a source, and both contribute more than half the world’s supply. Brazil alone made US $5.4 billion from biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel combined) in 2005, while global production is estimated at 48 billion litres (Biofuel Market Worldwide (2007-2010) www.canbiotech.com).

Global prices for crude oil, under pressure from a number of sources, are volatile and far above 1990s levels. This hurts the poorest countries most (Human Development Report 2005). Expensive fuel means the world’s poor are denied affordable access to machinery and appliances that can make life more comfortable. Poorer nations are often more dependent on oil imports than richer countries. As well, most of their industries are energy intensive, and their cars and homes are less energy efficient. This means low-income countries spend twice as much of their national income on imported oil than do developed countries (World Bank). A US $10 per barrel increase in the cost of crude oil shaves half a percentage point from economic growth in the West; in the poorest countries, it is nearly three times higher.

The two common sources of bioethanol fuel – corn and cane sugar – have a major drawback: they are diverting food sources into fuel for vehicles. Already, the massive US diversion of corn into the bioethanol fuel market has sent the price of corn skyrocketing, making this hardy food staple in countries like Mexico more expensive for the poor. Some estimates claim ethanol plants will burn up to half of the United States’ domestic corn supplies within a few years (Foreign Affairs). To fill the fuel tank of a sports utility vehicle (SUV) with pure ethanol requires 450 pounds of corn – enough calories to feed one person for a year.

And this is why many are now advocating a non-edible Indian fruit bush called jatropha as a better solution. It is like a grapefruit, with each fruit containing three plum-sized seeds. Each seed contains 35 percent oil which can be converted into biodiesel. A shrub from the family euphorbiaceae, jatropha’s lifespan is 50 years. It bears fruit several times a year, and each bunch is five to eight fruits. Being unedible, the oil is mostly used for soap and varnishes.

Cultivation of the jatropha was prioritised a year ago by the Indian Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav. Disused railways lands were to be put aside for growing the crop. Brazil’s biodiesel company, Biomasa, plans to plant two million hectares with jatropha this year, and it is believed jatropha will surpass sugar cane as the principal source for bioethanol in Brazil.

The advantages of jatropha include its hardy nature: it does not require pesticide, manure, or irrigation to grow and it is drought resistant. A single jatropha plant will yield one litre of biodiesel per year for 40 years, and it yields 1,300 kg of seeds per hectare per year. Its advocates hope to see jatropha bushes planted alongside existing crops, with an acre producing 100 litres of fuel per year.

The downsides of cultivating jatropha as a fuel source would need to be overcome. At present, jatropha’s high acidity means its seeds degrade quickly in humid environments (much of the global South) when exposed to air. Steel tanks used for storage require a nitrogen blanket to prevent water absorption. During the processing stage (something called transesterification), the large quantities of glycerine are produced as a byproduct. Demand is low for this byproduct and disposal is a problem. A cake is also produced that has no real value or use. To make it economically worthwhile to grow in India for example, farmers would need to receive four rupees per kg of seed. This would produce a biofuel costing 50 rupees per litre – considered too expensive at present. Jatropha advocates are urging government subsidies to kick-start production and make the price competitive.

In Ghana, smallholder farmers have already rebelled against growing jatropha. They say that since the oil is inedible, and growing the crop leaves them at the mercy of price-setting by the refineries, they do not want to run the risk.

“What may encourage farmers to venture into jatropha,” said Wisdom Yao Adjah-Cudjoe, a cereal farmers’ representative, “would be a guaranteed price arrangement, as is the case with cocoa.”

In Africa, research by the South African Biodiversity Institute has estimated that 50 percent of the landmass of the continent is suitable for jatropha cultivation (a total of 1,080 million hectares). It could be a huge opportunity for African farmers and a big cost saving for poor countries, but if farmers are to be encouraged to grow jatropha, they will need the right price incentives and guarantees.

Published: June 2007

Resources

Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd: An Indian company specialising in helping farmers to begin growing jatropha plants.
Centre for Jatropha Promotion: Based in Charu, Rajasthan, India, it researches all aspects of jatropha cultivation and acts as a seed bank.
Kick Start Oil Press: Developed in 1993, the Kick Start Oil Press was designed for use in Africa by farmers. It is manufactured in Kenya and sold as a complete kit for entrepreneurs to get started pressing seed for oil. The Kick Start NGO designs technologies for private entrepreneurs of small-scale enterprises, and has offices in Kenya, Tanzania and Mali.
Haiti Innovation: Established by former Peace Corps volunteers, and links Haitian NGOs with aid donors. It encourages projects to post on the web and contributors to donate directly to them. It is currently promoting the growing of jatropha in Haiti.
Agricultural Biotechnology Network in Africa (ABNETA): This is an excellent source for real-time news and information sources on the biofuel market in Africa.

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

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From Warriors to Tour Guides

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 21/11/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

In the wake of conflict, demobilizing combatants is as critical as ending the fighting if there is hope for the peace to last. When conflict ends, former fighters usually find themselves unemployed. But tourism is proving a viable way to deal with the social and political dangers of neglecting former fighters post-conflict.

Global tourism accounts for more than 10 per cent of global GDP and eight per cent of total employment worldwide. It grew by six per cent in 2007, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation. The Asia-Pacific region grew by 10 per cent, and Africa by eight per cent.

Ironically, much conflict has taken place in areas of natural beauty that offer a strong pull to tourists. While perception judging from the media is that conflict is getting worse, in fact trends show the opposite: according to Global Conflict Trends, “The levels of both interstate and societal warfare declined dramatically through the 1990s and this trend continues in the early 2000s, falling over 60% from their peak levels.”

A lot is at stake and it proves it is worthwhile to make peace pay – and that it is possible.

Battle-hardened rebels like 28-year-old Marjuni Ibrahim lived in the jungle and fought as guerrillas in Aceh, Indonesia. On the northwestern tip of Indonesia, Aceh was devastated by both a 30-year war that killed 15,000 people and the 2004 tsunami. Marjuni lost his sister and parents in the tsunami, in which more than 170,000 died or are missing.

Much of the coastline was destroyed, but the shock of the catastrophe pushed both sides into peace talks. The separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) battled the Indonesian army (TNI) up to 2005, when they signed a peace agreement.

Marjuni is now cashing in on a guerilla’s best survival technique: being tough. He now takes adventure and extreme-hiking enthusiasts deep into the jungle, where they once fought and lived. It is a habitat of steep, rocky trails, enormous teak trees – all with the reward of pristine waterfalls and refreshing rock pools for the hardy travelers.

The tours target mainly the community of aid workers in the area helping to re-build Aceh, but the hope is to expand: “I want to make the Acehnese aware of the potential for community-based tourism, and put Aceh on the map as a friendly tourism destination”, said Mendal Pols, a Dutch tour operator and founder of Aceh Explorer on the island, to Reuters.

The jungle is home to endangered Sumatran tigers, deer and hornbills.

“The area is very beautiful. I like trekking and I was interested to see what life was like during the conflict,” said Hugo Lamer, a Dutch trekker. “It’s difficult to imagine but three or more years ago they were running around here with guns and fighting the TNI. When I went, they took us to a place where they had lost some of their friends. And then you realize that we are there for fun, but for them this was really serious.”

In Vietnam, the famous Cu Chi Tunnels, formerly used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam War, have become major tourist attractions. The vast network of underground tunnels in Ho Chi Minh City link up with a tunnel network stretching across the country, and were used as hiding spots and as supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon dumps and living quarters.

In Rwanda, the government turned to tourism to help heal the wounds of the massacre that led to the deaths of almost 1 million people in 1994. It markets its population of mountain gorillas, diverse landscape with volcanic ranges, hills, lakes and savannah. But it is also not covering up the past: genocide sites are also on the tourist itinerary. And it is meant to shock: in the town of Murambi, classrooms still contain the bodies of the people who were killed there, covered in lime to preserve them. In Kigali, a museum documents the genocide. Survivors lead the tours to help them heal from the horror.

The goal is to restore the country’s tourism industry and generate US $100 million a year by 2010. It is currently bringing in US $45 million. The approach is to target the ethical end of the tourism market. The idea is to use tourism as a means to avert the tensions that helped to cause the genocide in the first place: poverty, illiteracy and government hording all the wealth. The idea is to employ as many people as possible and spread the wealth as wide as possible.

Published: March 2008

Resources

The UN Environment Programme has a special division to advise on post-conflict and disaster management.
Website: http://postconflict.unep.ch/

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters

Saving Water to Make Money

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 19/11/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The world’s water supplies are running low, and according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), four out of every 10 people are already affected. But despite the gloomy reality of this problem, entrepreneurs in the South are rising to the challenge to save water.

“The situation is getting worse due to population growth, urbanisation and increased domestic and industrial water use,” said WHO’s Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan. While the WHO has adopted the theme ‘Coping with Water Scarcity’ for this year, every year more than 1.6 million people die from lack of access to safe water and sanitation. Ninety percent of these deaths are children under the age of five.

The health consequences of water scarcity include diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, salmonellosis, other gastrointestinal viruses, and dysentery.

One unnecessary waste of water is car washing. The number of cars in developing countries is growing fast, with a 27 per cent increase in sales in China this year, and South America overtaking Asia as the world’s fastest-growing regional vehicle market (Global Auto Report). And all these cars will be washed, wasting this precious resource.

The large informal car washing market in Brazil has long been known for paying low wages and avoiding taxes. On top of this they also waste water. Lots and lots of water. In Brazil, 28.5 per cent of the population (41.8 million people) do not have access to public water or wastewater services. And 60 per cent do not have adequate sanitation (Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research).

Started in 1994, Drywash uses a locally available Brazilian organic carnauba wax to clean cars without using water. Drywash has also developed a line of cleaning products that cleans every part of a car without the need for water. They estimate they have saved 450 million litres of water in their first 10 years of operation. From the start, they set out to change the status quo and run a business that “thinks like a big corporation,” said its international partner, Tiago Aguiar.

To do this, Drywash’s management team focused on operating an efficient and professional business. When Brazil’s government passed strict laws against informal selling of products, Drywash was well positioned to benefit, with companies preferring to work with a legal business. Customers have also been attracted to Drywash because they know the service is consistent and to a high standard. Drywash made US $2.7 million in 2005.

Drywash prides itself on operating “on the books”, and paying taxes. They are also ambitious, and have expanded outside Brazil and into other services.

And they don’t just do private cars: they also clean private jets, with Drywash Air. They have also expanded into Mexico, Portugal and Australia, on top of 50 Brazilian franchises. They also want to enter the US market.

In China, Landwasher toilets is tackling the growing problem of providing flush toilets to the country’s 1.32 billion people. As its founder Wu Hao told the World Resources Institute (www.nextbillion.net), “Assuming all of our country uses water-flushing toilets, not even the Changjiang and the Yellow Rive will be enough.”

Formed six years ago, it has patented a process using a special agent and sterilisation to dispose of human waste without using water, and very little electricity.

Hao graduated from Beijing University’s Physics Department and developed management experience working in manufacturing, securities investment and corporate management.

“On a personal level, I love the natural environment… I can’t endure the large scale waste and damage to the environment caused by the process of construction in China.”

Landwasher has seen its sales grow to 40 million Yuan (US $5.2 million), and has six sales offices covering 27 provinces.

Landwasher has just been awarded a contract to provide portable toilets to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Published: September 2007

Resources

World Water Council: Established in 1996, the World Water Council promotes awareness and builds political commitment to trigger action on critical water issues.
Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council: Works on sustainable sanitation, hygiene and water services to all people, with special attention to the underserved poor.
The Stratus Group is a Brazilian fund looking for sustainable SMEs in Brazil’s high-growth green sectors.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

Archive Development Challenges, South-South Solutions Newsletters Southern Innovator magazine

Agricultural Waste Generating Electricity

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 19/11/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Agriculture around the world produces a great deal of waste as a by-product. It can be animal faeces, or the discarded plant husks thrown away when rice, grains or maize are harvested. When this waste meets the urgent need for electricity, something special can happen.

The number of people still without electricity in the South is vast. The failure of major electricity generating power stations to reach so many people has spurred entrepreneurs to come to the rescue. Power is critical to so many things: small businesses need it, anyone wanting access to computers and the Internet needs it, and modern appliances like refrigerators run on it. During the past 25 years, electricity supplies have been extended to 1.3 billion people living in developing countries. Yet despite these advances, roughly 1.6 billion people, a quarter of the global population, still have no access to electricity and some 2.4 billion people rely on traditional biomass fuels, including wood, agricultural residues and dung, for cooking and heating. More than 99 percent of people without electricity live in developing regions, and four out of five live in rural areas of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (International Energy Agency, IEA).

Power outages in Africa are a serious and frequent problem and a significant force holding back development. With global oil prices on the rise, turning to diesel generators is an expensive option.

According to the IEA, the lack of electricity leaves poor countries “trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment.”

In India, 80,000 of the country’s half a million villages lack electricity. Two students, Charles Ransler and Manoj Sinha, have started a business providing electricity to some of these villages by turning rice husks – a by-product of rice milling – into gas that then powers an electricity generator.

Already, two of their rice-burning generators are providing electricity to 10,000 rural Indians. The hope is to rapidly expand the business to hundreds of small village power plants.

The business, Husk Power Systems, was started while the two were at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

While the generator burns the rice husks to make a gas to produce electricity, it also leaves behind a waste product of ash that is sold as an ingredient in cement.

This technology can provide off-grid power to rural Indian villages of 200 to 500 households. Using the husk-powered mini power plant, the team plans to offset close to 200 tons of carbon emissions per village, per year in India.

The idea for the rice husk generators was originally conceived by Sinha and Gyanesh Pandey, the third partner in Husk Power, who left an engineering career in Los Angeles to return to India and oversee the rice husk project. Sinha and Pandey went to college together in India and both come from rural Indian villages that struggle with a lack of electricity.

“We grew up in those areas,” said Sinha. “Our relatives still do not have electricity. We wanted to give back to those areas.” Originally they envisioned refining the generator concept and raising enough money to donate rice-husk generators for two or three villages near where they grew up, said Sinha.

But instead, after some research, they realised it could be a financially viable business expandable to hundreds of villages. There are 480 million Indians with no power and 350 million of them live in rural villages, concentrated in eastern India’s “Rice Belt,” where the villagers are “rice rich and power poor,” said Ransler.

The project has already won a fistful of prizes, including US$50,000 from the Social Innovation Competition at the University of Texas.

They think that each rice husk generator is to break even in about two and a half years.

And they like to think this is the Starbucks of off-grid electricity generation, potentially as successful as the globe-spanning US coffee shop chain. “You can put one of these in 125,000 locations, hire local people, and turn a raw material into money – just substitute rice husks for coffee beans,” said Ransler.

Another maker of biomass mini power plants in India is Decentralised Energy Systems India (DESI power). It is a New Delhi-based non-profit company specialising in building a decentralised power network for rural India. It was formed by Development Alternatives, India’s largest sustainable development NGO. It is able to provide a megawatt of electricity to a village for the cost of 44 million rupees, rather than 57 million rupees from the central grid.

Published: June 2008

Resources