Development in which people and the planet matter

Small is Still Beautiful

By Maurice Malanes

When the late British economist E.F.Schumacher came out with his bestseller, Small is Beautiful, in the 1970s, many economists dismissed him as a wishful thinker,whose suggested development formula appealed only to hippies. But his proposed development schemes towards "the small and the gentle" are now again gaining adherents.

Schumacher has said that ever-bigger machines and ever-bigger development structures do not only leave bigger wounds and bigger scars on our planet; they also tend to concentrate wealth in a few hands. Amid the current backlash and conflicts created by ever-bigger development projects rammed down the throats of many people, Schumacher, if he were alive today, would probably tell the proponents of bigness, "I told you so."

Many Third World countries are now obsessed with bigness. From Malaysia and Indonesia to the Philippines, governments are seeking to build the biggest airport and seaport, the biggest mining operation, the biggest golf course, and the biggest mega-mall. Erecting all these enormous structures requires equally enormous amounts of energy and power; so governments have to build super-big hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants and coal-fired power plants.

Given its growth targets and projections, the Philippines, for example, expects that electricity sales will increase from 33,532 GWh in 1996 to 148,112 GWh in 2010 and to 426,349 GWh in 2025. Demand for electricity will follow the same trend. From 5,855 MW in 1996, electricity demand will shoot up to 25,564 MW in 2010 and 73,587 MW in 2025, translating to an average growth rate of 11.1 percent between 1996 and 2010, and 7.3 percent between 2010 and 2025.

To meet the growing demand for electricity, a total of 92,138 MW must be generated between 1996 and 2025. The Philippine government has thus firmed up projects totaling 12,978 for commissioning from 1996 to 2005. For this period, major capacity additions include 8,660 MW from coal-fired plants; 6,500 MW from gas-fired plants; 5,515 MW, geothermal plants; 4,732 MW, large and semi-large hydro plants; and 3,947 MW from renewable energy sources .

All these figures show that as societies "progress" (which means as societies continue to consume more and more goods), the more we need to squeeze our planet to produce the energy to produce the goods we continue to consume. Unfortunately, as Schumacher has reiterated a now familiar line from Mahatma Gandhi, our planet can provide for all of our needs but not for our greed. But the proponents of globalized free trade continue to exploit human greed to the point of creating more and more artificial "needs" for the market of new goods. The result is disastrous as societies become obsessed with bigness under the illusory hope that bigness can help satisfy human greed.

Bigness, however, continues to cause ever-bigger problems for both people and the environment.

Irony

One irony of "development" is imbalance. Development tends to be concentrated more in the metropolis and other urban centers as rural villages are left out in the cold. Big hydroelectric dams, for example, displace indigenous folk, but these folk remain literally in the dark, as their villages are the least priority in government electrification programs and other social services.

A case in point are the indigenous Ibaloi in Benguet Province in northern Philippines. In the 1950s and 1960s, hundreds of Ibaloi families were dislocated when the 75-MW Ambuklao and 100-MW Binga dams were built along the Agno River. Linked to the Luzon grid, the power generated by the two dams has helped supply the power needs of mining companies and cities as far as Manila, which is more than 300 kilometers south of the Ibaloi community in Bokod town.

On the other hand, the Ibaloi communities around the two dams were energized only in the 1980s. Government up to now has yet to properly compensate the Ibaloi folk the two dams displaced.

The Ibaloi's wounds have not yet healed and government has embarked again on a new bigger dam downstream of the Ambuklao and Binga dams. It is feared that the 345-MW San Roque Multi-purpose Dam Project, which began construction in February 1998 and is more than half-done, will submerge three Ibaloi villages (population: 20,000) once the dam's water level rises from siltation by erosion and mine wastes from upstream.

Once the dam is completed in 2003, the power to be generated will help reinforce the Luzon grid, which supplies electricity to Manila and all of Luzon's urban centers. The displaced Ibaloi folk are, therefore, not the priority in the power-generation project, which was conceived as a government "flagship project" to help respond to a power crisis the country faced in 1995 and 1996.

Indigenous peoples elsewhere share the tragic saga of the Ibaloi. In Africa's Senegal River Valley, the World Bank-funded Manantali and Diama dams did not only displace 100,000 households. The Bank approved a US$38 million loan for the dam turbine's installation and operation without providing for a water-management plan to prevent water-borne diseases .

Malaria and schistosomiasis rose dramatically since the Manantali and Diama dams were built. It was estimated that adequate measures to manage the flows from the dam could reduce deaths by 2,500 from 8,000 lives taken each year. Newly created water bodies, such as irrigation canals and ponds, breed schistosomiasis-bearing snails, which seasonal fluctuations in salt inflows used to control.

The Senegal and Ibaloi folk's horror stories of "damnation" are replicated in other dam constructions in Brazil, Namibia, India's Narmada River Valley, Malaysia's Bakun community, Laos, Nepal, and China.

Elsewhere, conflicts have become so intense that they have led to violence and killings. The International Rivers Network (IRN), an independent global body monitoring mega-dams worldwide, has reported the killing in October 1997 of Fulgencio Manoel da Silva, an articulate Brazilian activist who helped lead protests against the Itaparica Dam, which uprooted 7,000, including Da Silva's family, from their homes and farms.

What happened to Da Silva is familiar to Filipinos who had also mourned the killing in April 1980 of Kalinga tribal chief Macliing Dulag, one of the staunch leaders in the opposition against a World Bank-funded series of dams along the Chico River in northern Philippines.

Also in Brazil, over 6,200 people, including the last of the Ofaie Xavante Indian tribe, were forced out of their homes when the 2,250-square kilometer Porto Primavera Dam reservoir was filled with water in May 1998. The Sao Paulo Electric Company has settled only 340 out of the 1,700 affected families.

A proposed hydroelectric dam also continues to be a dagger pointed at the heart of a community of 15,000 Himba people in Namibia. The dam is expected to flood the Himba lands, thus, threatening to erase the Himbas' culture and way of life.

The world's most ambitious dam thus far, China's Three Gorges Dam, according to IRN, will displace 1.9 million people, who include both indigenous and non-indigenous folk. The 400-mile long, 600-foot high and two-kilometer wide dam will inundate 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,352 villages, and 650 factories. IRN has warned that those who are going to be displaced are poised to resist.

We have been talking about big dams alone and one thing is clear: human lives and health, ecology and biodiversity, and cultures have to be sacrificed just to produce power. We need enormous power to support not only basic needs, but also consumerist lifestyles in the metropolis.

People in metropolitan societies debate whether a microwave oven is a luxury or a basic need. But chances are village folk in remote hinterlands have not seen the light of Thomas Alva Edison's invention - the incandescent electric bulb.

Thinking small

Amid the global madness for bigness, the small-is-beautiful alternative offers promise and hope for upland folk who simply dream to replace their kerosene lamps and pine pith with incandescent or flourescent bulbs.

The upland village of Lon-oy in San Gabriel town, La Union Province in northern Philippines is a good example. For the 1,000 or so Lon-oy villagers, March 31, 2001 was the first day of the rest of their lives. This was the day when they first saw the light from an electric bulb after Bishop Joel Pachao of the Episcopal Church of the Philippines blessed and inaugurated a 15-kilowatt micro-hydro power plant the community helped build.

Almost three years in the making, the micro-hydro power project will now finally light up the nights of the remote upland village after Bishop Pachao ceremoniously switched on the power from a power house at the foot of a ravine along the Lon-oy River. With a maximum average of 80 watts allotted per household, electricity from the project will be used mainly for lighting. Television sets and other appliances such as refrigerators and ovens are not allowed. Otherwise, the community will have to worry about breakdowns due to power overload.

Lighting up the 130 households of the village alone has begun to change the lives of the villagers. Instead of burning their midnight kerosene lamps, public school teachers can now work more comfortably under flourescent electric lights, doing their lesson plans or checking papers. Broom-makers, who used to be at the mercy of the daylight, can now make brooms for sale until late evening. Sitting around a winnower filled with legumes and beans to peel off, members of a family also exchange stories and riddles, sing songs, or simply converse before they go to bed.

Early in the morning, members of an association of village women can start baking bread in their liquefied petroleum gas-fueled oven in their newly built bakery, which the Department of Labor and Employment funded. Some women are now thinking of other livelihood projects, which they can do under their bright light at dawn or late evening. These other livelihoods will augment their income from farming.

On the lighter side, at least one villager has said he can now see the sweet smile and other "body language" of his wife under the flourescent light.

Lon-oy is one of 10,000 villages not covered by the state-run National Power Corporation's grid areas. In its Philippine Energy Plan, the Department of Energy had targeted to energize all of the 1,409 municipalities (at least the town proper) by 1996, all of the 35,213 barangays or villages by 2010 and another 10.2 million households by 2018. The program also aims to bring electricity to an additional 889,912 households by 2025, bringing the total number of households to be energized to 11.1 million (Department of Energy, 1996). Under this plan Lon-oy would be one of the villages to be energized by 2010. One problem is this is only on paper.

There are other hitches in the government's rural electrification program. And this is not only because government has to displace people as a result of building mega-dams or sacrificing public health in exchange for coal-fired power plants. Rural electrification through the National Power Corporation's conventional grid areas is too costly for rural folk to afford. Rural villagers will hardly be able to pay the cost of electricity once the National Power Corporation seeks to impose bills based on rates that seek to regain investments and earn profit. The best alternative for off-grid areas, where the poorest of the poor live, are community-based and community-run micro-hydro power projects, so says Victoria Lopez of the nongovernment Sibat (Sibol ng Agham at Teknolohiya - Wellspring of Science and Technology).

Citing success stories other than Lon-oy's, Lopez says community-based and community-managed small renewable energy projects are the least costly, thus, more affordable and sustainable. For villages such as northern Philippines' Cordillera hinterlands, the most appropriate and cheapest source of energy are mountain springs and tributaries of the upland region's seven major river systems.

Empowering

Lon-oy's success was no picnic. The project's triumph was not as simple as procuring the funds, buying the equipment, and installing the facility. It also involved educating and organizing the community folk, a job which the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Philippines undertook to prepare the community. That most of the community folk are Episcopalians helped the Diocese a lot in its organizing and education work.

For its part, Sibat, through its engineers, did the technical part of the project and helped train community folk on repair and maintenance. It was also through Sibat's prodding that the Department of Energy approved and channeled some P1.5 million (US$750,000) directly to the community.

But the most empowering of all was the community folk's participation in the whole project -- from planning to implementation. The community folk have also invested a counterpart in the project - their labor. Almost every one can claim ownership of the project, which came about only after the men, women and children picked up their picks and shovels to dig the diversion canal; hauled gravel, sand and cement, and did other back-breaking labor.

In working for the project, the community folk resorted to their age-old tradition of cooperative self-help or reciprocal labor, which is still very much alive when someone builds or moves a house or when one villager plants and harvests rice. Through their initiative, members of the community decided that each household would render 50 days of labor for the project.

Luz Marzan, a mother of seven, for example, worked 26 days, mostly hauling gravel and sand. Her husband and two children rendered a total of 24 days. Some opted to work for more than 50 days, the excess of which they sold to other families who, for one reason or another, could not render manual labor. Teachers and other public servants, for instance, could not help out except on weekends. Thus, as the community decided by consensus, other members of the community could pay P100 (US$2) per household in place of a day's labor.

Having invested their time and sweat, the Lon-oy villagers have a big stake in the project. They therefore cannot afford to let their efforts go to waste. This is where sustainability begins.

Community-run, simple micro-hydro power projects can really change lives and lighten the burden of rural folk. An earlier micro-hydro power project built in the equally far-flung sub-village of Ngibat, Tinglayan town in Kalinga Province, also in northern Philippines, was the first success story, which has now been told and retold. Jointly initiated by the nongovernment Montanosa Research and Development Center and Sibat, the project has helped debunk the perception that electrification is possible only through government's framework of bigness.

The Ngibat micro-hydro power project, which can generate five kilowatts of electricity, does not only light up the community of 32 households. With a maximum 40 watts allotted per household, the project, which was inaugurated in January 1994, can also run a community rice mill (Sibat Case Study, 2000). This facility has helped unburden women and children who, by tradition, pound rice every morning and afternoon. Freed from such tedious labor, the women can now engage in other livelihoods while the children have more time to review their school lessons.

The project has also helped speed up the work of local blacksmiths who work at an average of eight hours a day ten times a month, or three to four months a year. The micro-hydro power project provides for the 492 kwh/month total power needs of an electric grinder, drill press, and hand drill.

Another livelihood the micro-hydro power project enhanced is the manufacture of basi or sugarcane wine. Since 1997, it has powered a sugarcane presser, which is twice faster than a carabao-(water buffalo) drawn wooden presser. The sugarcane extract is fermented into wine, which is now the main income-generating livelihood of 26 households.

A simple micro-hydro power project, as the Lon-oy and Ngibat projects show, can really change lives. If it can help create rural livelihoods and raise incomes, rural folk need not migrate and help congest already crowded cities. It will also be unnecessary for rural folk to sell their working carabao (water buffalo) and mortgage their house and land to pay their way for jobs overseas, which, as experience shows, do not always turn out to bring the much-sought "better life".

Management

The micro-hydro power project's empowering impact can be seen not only in economic terms. This is also exhibited in the increased capacity of the community to manage and sustain the project.

One management scheme both the Ngibat and Lon-oy community folk internalized is watershed protection. Both communities have learned early on that unless they protect their watersheds, their rivers will run dry and no water will run the turbines and the generators in their powerhouses. Community folk, therefore, don't clear crucial watersheds for their swidden farms.

Another is how the community sets policies and guidelines on how to use and maintain the project. In Lon-oy, the community folk have computed and decided by consensus that each household must pay to the community cooperative P35 (US$0.71) a month for the maintenance and upkeep of the facility. For the same purpose, Ngibat community folk have set a monthly flat rate of P22 (US$0.45) per household. The monthly dues of both Ngibat and Lon-oy communities are 15 to 20 times lower than the minimum dues collected by commercial electric cooperatives in the urban and other grid areas. For humanitarian reasons, Ngibat's old widows and others who, for one reason or another, are unable to pay in cash or in kind, are exempted or subsidized by the other more productive members of the community.

The community's direct hand in running and setting policies for the project is empowering enough for the local folk. This is practically local autonomy and democratic governance at work.

Micro-hydro bias

Sibat's Victoria Lopez does not mind hiding her bias for micro-hydro power. For her, micro-hydro power, compared to other renewable energy sources, remains the cheapest and the most appropriate for off-grid remote upland villages. It can also electrify an entire village at least cost, compared to solar power, for example, which has less capacity. Of course, the latter has its use, too, particularly in areas where there are no rivers. But in upland villages with rivers and tributaries, micro-hydro power is the most superior.

Micro-hydro power has another edge. Equipment needed such as the turbine can be locally fabricated, thus helping promote and develop local technology. An engineer from the government-run Pangasinan State University in northern Philippines, for example, fabricated the turbine used in the Lon-oy project. In case of a breakdown, local technicians can easily repair or replace a locally- made equipment. Not so with solar panels, which are imported.

Companies in Western countries are now cashing in on the trend towards developing earth-friendly renewable energy. To Sibat, it is best if the Philippines, or any Third World country for that matter, does not fall prey to becoming a mere market of equipment and gadgets from the North. Even if crude, a country's technology, according to Sibat, must grow. And this cannot happen if a country contents itself with being just a market of technology and equipment from the North.

Ninety-five percent of equipment and gadgets used for all of Sibat-aided micro-hydro power projects are manufactured locally. This only proves that given the opportunity, national technologies can flourish.

Unfortunately, local technologies fail to thrive because Third World governments, such as the Philippines, prefer to contract overseas companies to build big dams, if not coal-fired or geothermal power plants. These companies do not only bring in their experts and consultants. They also bring in their technologies and gadgets. Under this arrangement, these companies are helping create markets for their home countries' technology and gadgets and facilities. This stifles the growth of national technologies.

Brain Drain

Their technical support no doubt has helped in the success of the micro-hydro power projects. But the engineers of Sibat prefer to remain low-key and humble. Why? Because they say the whole success of a project lies in how well organized and educated the members of a community are.

But the technical know-how of Sibat's engineers is equally crucial. And they don't just have the know-how; they also have the commitment to serve poor rural folk. This makes them a rare breed amid the brain-drain of technical experts who prefer to work for multinational corporations within and outside the Philippines. Lured by higher pay, many of the country's engineers are helping develop new technologies and products and produce wealth for multinational corporations.

The three technical engineers of Sibat - mechanical engineer Frank Taguba, civil engineer Paul Tabiolo and electrical engineer Manuel Maputi - may not have thick wallets. But the three, whom Sibat describes as "RE (renewable energy) engineers," all say they are rich in psychic rewards. During an inauguration of another micro-hydro power project in a village in Kalinga Province, Frank Taguba, for example, hugged a colleague and cried. But his tears were tears of joy - joy in seeing the concrete result of a project he helped work out.

These engineers prefer to remain incognito. But in the hearts of simple hinterland folk, whose hard lives a five or 15-kilowatt micro-hydro power facility helped ease, Sibat's engineers stand taller than politicians who promise heaven when they are courting votes.

The other engineers who opt to work for multinationals cannot be blamed. In a country, which has yet to appreciate how to maximize the skills of its own experts, the option left for other engineers is to search for job opportunities elsewhere. Result: the country is drained of its own talents and experts.

But with a few committed engineers like Sibat's Taguba, Tabiolo and Maputi, hope is not lost on the Philippines. People like them can help transform the lives of needy village folk with the click of an electric switch from a micro-hydro-powered generator.

The Alternative Game

Filipino activists protesting the construction of mega-dams that displace thousands of indigenous peoples often encounter a common remark and question in public forums: "You are good at exposing the threats of big dams and opposing these. But what do you propose as alternatives?"

Chances are these "expose-oppose" activists are tongue-tied on what to say and how to answer such remarks and questions. But the simple answer lies in one secret of good journalism: show rather than tell, that is.

Documenting and showing how "success stories" such as Lon-oy's and Ngibat's were made and disseminating these to as many people as possible can help convince others that there are indeed alternatives to "development projects" governments often ram down people's throats. In so doing, "expose-oppose". activists can be transformed into "expose-oppose-and-propose" activists.

For want of any information about alternatives, ordinary folk often accept without any informed judgment "development projects" governments impose. But informed about other options, particularly the "small and gentle" alternatives, people in the grassroots can be wiser.

Many policy makers, who are also in the dark about people- and earth-friendly alternatives, may yet have to see the wisdom of the small, the gentle and the beautiful. It is people and our planet after all, so says E.F. Schumacher, who matter in development. Not profit at all costs. Otherwise, that would be global harakiri.