Global Cooperation and Scaling Up
with Green Technologies
 

The COVID-19 pandemic is no longer just a global health crisis; it is also a major economic crisis with catastrophic consequences for the world economy and people. The restrictions on travel and trade imposed to contain the pandemic has exposed fault lines in the global supply chain and revealed vulnerability of the poorest countries. It is estimated that COVID-19 will push 23 million individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa into extreme poverty (living on less than USD1.90 per day) in 2020. Considering this situation and to help vulnerable people cope with the twin crises, various countries have strategised approaches to deal with the issues. While the major focus is on providing short-term aids and reliefs, one of the long-term approaches to deal with the issues is to build resilience amongst the people to cope with natural disasters. One of the strategies is to “help people help themselves” and, therefore, the approach of a South-South Cooperation.

Various approaches are possible in South-South Cooperation, for example, building skills, transferring knowledge and building conducive policies. However, to build long-term resilience, one of the approaches is to build enterprises and entrepreneurship, especially in the MSME sector. MSMEs are the backbone of any country and provide jobs and goods at affordable prices. Development Alternatives Group has been a strong believer of the transferring knowledge and building skills approach. We have been spearheading the same in the global South through transfer of clean technology solutions, know-how, policy influencing and capacity building support. The key idea has always been to seed new technologies and support its scaling-up in a business-like manner. In parallel, to accelerate the process, technology-transfer initiatives have stretched out to significant policy interventions at the ministerial level. The policy changes to introduce green technologies were not based on secondary literature survey or mere theory; rather all stakeholders were brought together on the same platform and an inclusive demonstrated experience became the solid proof of the many possibilities that governments, industries and communities can safeguard the environment and at different scales contribute towards the some of the significant UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, has an economy that is not resilient and heavily depends on imports to meet internal demand. It must brace for a sharp fall in foreign direct investment and trade inflows, and an exponential rise in unemployment. There is an urgent need to go beyond mere emergency response measures and prioritise long-term measures which build local capacities for economic resilience, while ensuring social and environmental protection of all. One such promising measure for reconstructing a resilient Malawi lies in addressing the major development challenge of rapid urban population growth and its housing needs. Malawi is one of the most rapidly urbanising countries, and requires nearly 21,000 housing units every year to meet the current demand and future growth. While 16% of its population lived in urban areas in 2018, many resided in overcrowded urban settlements lacking basic services such as safe and durable housing, improved water and sanitation and sufficient living area.

The high urbanisation rate has put a tremendous pressure on the entire building materials sector. Currently, most of this demand is met by rampant mining and unsustainable processing of natural resources such as soil and sand. Further, burnt bricks, the major building material, were fired using wood. However, TARA’s intervention through GIZ-MIERA highlighted the serious environmental concerns involved in the accelerating deforestation in Malawi. Thus, the introduction of technologies like EcoKiln, wherein brick-making no longer requires wood-fired technologies, provides immediate relief to the crisis-affected population, serves the housing needs and has emerged as an opportunity to provide reliable, safe and cleaner building materials to the construction industry. The success of the entire intervention lies in the Government of Malawi’s policy change wherein a ban on wood-fired kilns is henceforth imposed.

Our strength lies in improving our positions and partnerships through the implementation of ongoing projects as well as making due preparations to introduce green technologies, and, in parallel, working with the governments. For example, the Government of Egypt is promoting low carbon cement standards and is keen to transform the cement industry, which is a major contributor of greenhouse emissions. It seeks active participation of industry and community alike to implement the same.

In West Africa, a task force visited Senegal only to learn that the country’s traditional dwellings were made of mud, but that has been abandoned. Dakar’s sidewalks today are littered with piles of sand and stones that are mixed with cement to make cheap building blocks. To make modern earth bricks, workers mix soil with smaller amounts of cement and water to create a mixture that they cut into blocks, compress with a hand-operated machine and leave them to dry for 21 days. Senegal may boast a relatively small populace of just 15 million, but it’s no stranger to the problems that ultra-rapid urbanisation can bring. In 1960, 23% of Senegalese people lived in towns and cities. By 2013, that figure had almost doubled to 43%, and is projected to reach 60% by 2030. The increasingly extreme climate conditions, from high temperatures to insufficient rainfall, in the Sahel region and the steady expansion of the nearby Sahara Desert make this influx of people into concentrated areas a difficult burden to shoulder.

The policy intervention in parallel with the introduction of green technologies will not only restrict in its impact for Senegal but will also be effective for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which comprise the entire Western Africa.■

Debojyoti Basuroy
dbasuroy@devalt.org