Technology Needs
| Release date |
14/03/2006 |
| Contributor |
freibergh
|
At its seventh meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the Conference of the
Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted a programme
of work on technology transfer and technological and scientific cooperation.
The purpose of this programme is to develop meaningful and effective action
to enhance the implementation of the pertinent provisions of the
Convention.
The main Conventuions´ mechanism to facilitate the access to information
on soft and hard technologies relevant to the Convention is the
Clearing-House Mechanism. The CHM also could be used to publish concrete
technology needs assessed by local communities and aimed to atrack
technology holders.
Two examples of concrete needs of
community-based and community-assessed technologies are briefly
presented
Technology Needs by rural communities
- practical needs and cases from the field -
First case: Need of better splitting bamboo for
local handcrafters
Today bamboo tubes of around one meter length and 10 cm diameter are
hand-spliced (splitted) in 2-3 cm wide raw blocks (stripes). The one meter
bamboo includes 1-2 nodes; it doesn´t break. Bamboo stripes are then
splitted again by hand in 2-3 mm fine stripes. This requires much time. Most
than 50% of the time is used to split these fine Bamboo stripes when
crafting e.g. a traditional Bamboo bird cage. For local handcrafters it
would be an enormous improvement if they would spend less time on this
fine-splitting. Local handcrafters were also interested in crafting smaller
Bamboo bird cages and other Bamboo crafts like boxes, hats with better
quality.
The aim would be to avail on a technology (like a simple
machine which can be fixed under local conditions and with local materials)
which produces in less time tin, little Bamboo stripes allowing the local
handcrafters to spend more time on their handcrafts.
Second case: production of pots from Eichornia
compost
Tropical Water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) and other floating plants
have been invading big lakes. Local populations around the lakes loose their
fishing grounds and one major alimental source due to complete coverage of
the water surface by Eichornia; kinds of islands start to become shaped and
the source of potable water for the local communities living around the
lakes becomes less. In the surrounding areas exist Oil palm plantations. Oil
palm seedlings are planted in plastic pots. When planted the plastic is
moved away and burnt. The aim would be that the plastic pots could be
substituted by organic pots by using compost from harvested Eichornia. This
should be achieved with a very simple technology under the local conditions.
This means also not to use (much) energy. The organic pots could then be
produced by the local communities and then sold to the Oil palm
plantations.
