Cambodian Bloggers Champion New, Open Ways
Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 12:05PM The Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia has had a very difficult history over the past few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was seen as a glamorous and vibrant place. Dynamic, ambitious and newly independent from French colonial rule, Cambodia embarked on an extensive programme of building that is now called “New Khmer Architecture.” It is the most visible legacy of this modernizing time.
The book Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950s and 1960s says architects of the period showed “a willingness to expand and incorporate new elements, looking both outside and inside the newly independent nation …. Whether consciously or not, most of their work took up questions of how to create forms that would be recognised as both Cambodian and modern.”
But with the war in nearby Vietnam worsening in the 1970s, the destabilising effect of the conflict gave rise to the Khmer Rouge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge), a radical and genocidal movement under the dictator Pol Pot which killed an estimated 2 million Cambodians. It came to an end when newly independent Vietnam invaded the country to overturn the Khmer Rouge regime and end the genocide that had raged between 1975 and 1979.
By the early 1990s, the United Nations was helping Cambodia make the transition to democracy and redevelop its economy after the trauma of the Khmer Rouge years.
Today’s Cambodia is a country with a fast-growing economy – at 5.5 percent in 2010 according to Prime Minister Hun Sen – but still trying to come to grips with the pain and damage of the Khmer Rouge period.
On the internet, pioneering bloggers are trying to bridge the gap between reluctance to speak out about those years and the need for the country to modernize and open up. In the past, keeping quiet in public was the best survival strategy and outspoken voices could end up dead.
The internet is still in its infancy in Cambodia, with only 78,000 users in 2010 (Internet World Stats) – up from 6,000 in 2000, but still tiny in a population of 14,805,358 (World Bank). Cambodia still has high levels of illiteracy of 26 percent (ILO) and poverty, leaving access to the internet and computers a minority pursuit.
The first connections to the internet in Cambodia were set up in 1994 and internet cafes have been flourishing since the mid 2000s.
One role model can be found at the Blue Lady Blog (http://blueladyblog.com/). Its author, Kounila Keo, blogs about her daily frustrations, passions, and life as a young woman who has been working as a newspaper journalist. Her blog tackles anything Cambodian, from education and politics to lifestyle, press freedom, culture and problems facing the country. She is a passionate explainer of Cambodia’s blogging culture.
She started the Blue Lady Blog in 2007 and in a talk at Phnom Penh’s TEDx in February (http://tedxphnompenh.com/) described how she found blogging has transformed her life in three ways:
1) Freedom of speech: She could now fully express herself and venture opinions she could not do even as a journalist.
2) Self-education and self esteem: she has had to learn things on her own and in turn this has boosted her confidence.
3) Knowledge and new perspectives: blogging connects her with people around the world she would not normally have contact with. And blogging is becoming the new voice of a new generation of youth, allowing them to redefine the country’s development challenges in their own terms.
Keo found blogging altered the challenges facing youth, posing the question “What can young Cambodians do for Cambodia?” She believes Cambodian youth should do something rather than wait for opportunities to come to them. Young people have told her her blog has spurred them into action.
“Cloggers” – Cambodian bloggers – are a group of young internet users championing the use of information technologies in everyday life.
In 2007, the first Clogger Summit (http://cloggersummit.wikispaces.com/) brought together bloggers, webmasters, media representatives and NGOs for the first time to exchange ideas and share and debate. Since then, there has been a proliferation of blogs in the Cambodian language.
Developing a vibrant – and open – information technology sector has many advantages. Pioneering work by the United Nations in Mongolia as it made its transition to free markets and democracy led to the country becoming one of world’s freest for internet use.
A vibrant and free information technology sector enables businesses to quickly modernize, connect with customers and markets around the world, spread information and ideas quickly, react to crises and build market efficiencies.
Honduras, Mali, and Mongolia (http://www.yuxiyou.net/open/) were highlighted as being some of the freest places in the world for the internet in a recent report by Reporters Without Borders (http://en.rsf.org/).
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: March 2011
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.
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Bamboo Becomes Transport Option for the South
Monday, June 22, 2015 at 10:52AM
The sturdy bamboo plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo) is enjoying a revival around the world as a building material. A strong, fast-growing and highly renewable woody plant, it is becoming increasingly popular as people seek out less environmentally wasteful alternatives to steel and other materials.
But who would have thought bamboo taxis would turn up on the scene?
A fleet of bamboo taxis is now plying the streets in Tabontabon, a municipality in The Philippines that is home to 10,000 people, most of them rice farmers.
Bamboo can sometimes grow more than 1 metre a day. While in Asia, it has long been a traditional construction material, people are now turning to it to make transportation vehicles. In The Philippines, there are 62 species of bamboo, up to 15 of which are suitable for industrial applications.
So-called habal-habal motorcycles, the most popular form of transportation in the town, are also the source of many accidents and are uncomfortable on sunny days or when it rains. A covered taxi service is both a safer and a more comfortable alternative.
The town’s mayor, Rustico Balderian, took the initiative to build a fleet of bamboo taxis. He set four criteria the new taxis had to meet: they should be low-cost, fuel efficient, safe and environmentally friendly. The bamboo has a higher tensile strength (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength) than steel, which also requires vast quantities of energy to produce.
The taxis are 90 percent made of bamboo and are built by unemployed youth. They are divided into Eco 1 (a model that seats 20 people and runs for eight hours on one gallon of coco-biodiesel from coconuts) (http://cocobiodiesel.blogspot.com/), and Eco 2, which seats eight people, has a stereo and sound system, and also runs for eight hours on a gallon of coco-biodiesel.
Both are made by the Tabontabon Organic Transport Industry [TOTI] (http://totieco.multiply.com/).
Making vehicles out of bamboo is a serious endeavour that also has been under development in Japan. In 2008, Kyoto University’s Venture Business Laboratory (VBL) unveiled a unique single-seat electric vehicle equipped with a body made from bamboo. The vehicle was developed under the Kyoto Electric Car Development Project, which is one of the laboratory’s major initiatives. Nicknamed Bamgoo, this eco-car’s body is made of braided rods of bamboo, one of the local specialty products of the area.
Other bamboo modes of transport in the South include bamboo bicycles in Ghana. A partnership between an American bike designer and a Ghanaian government initiative is taking advantage of this local resource to manufacture bicycles for the local market – and as a source of export income.
Not only are the Ghanaian builders harvesting bamboo to make bikes for the domestic market, they are also offering a sophisticated online shopping service for the overseas market. People from around the world can now buy Ghanaian bikes using a website (http://www.bamboosero.com). Customers can choose frame builders by their specialty – cargo bike, mountain bike or road bike – and then order it online. The completed bikes are quality checked and then distributed by Calfee Design in California, USA. This approach keeps the middlemen out of the transaction, and means more money gets back to the bike builder.
Meanwhile in Cambodia, the legendary bamboo railway is a people’s solution to the poor service offered by the established railway system. In the northwest of the country near the second city of Battambang, an entire railway system has been built using bamboo.
The bamboo trains, called ‘noris’ or ‘lorries’ by the locals, are driven by a electric generator engine. Passengers sit on a bamboo platform placed on two sets of wheels. The bamboo train reaches speeds of over 40 km/h.
“We’re very careful,” 18-year-old Sok Kimhor, a 10-year veteran of the bamboo trains, told the BBC. “We look out for children and animals running across the lines, and we have to slow down when other trains come along.”
There is just one track, so when two trains meet, one has to be taken off the track to pass.
The regular rail service runs only once a week to the capital, Phnom Penh. This makes the bamboo train the only alternative for many people to get around. While the main railway station is deserted, the bamboo service is a hive of activity.
“They’re very safe – a motorbike taxi is too fast, and if I use one of those I sometimes get dizzy and fall off,” said Sao Nao as she sat on the rails with a small group of people. “On a bamboo train I can sit down and go to sleep. You can’t do that on a motorbike.”
Design for Development (http://designfordevelopment.org/) is also turning to bamboo for a transport solution. The Canadian NGO is working in Kenya on making five emergency medical transportation devices (EMTD), or ambulances, to move local people to health clinics or hospitals. Bamboo is locally available and they hope to set up a workshop and make the ambulances using local labour.
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: September 2009
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.
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Cambodia, David South, Design for Development, Ghana, bamboo, biodiesel, environment, plant, taxis, transport, unemployed, youth in David South Consulting, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions, Solutions, Southern Innovator Magazine, UN Innovator Stories, UNDP, UNDP Innovator Stories, UNOSSC Farmers Weather Fertilizer Crisis by Going Organic
Friday, June 19, 2015 at 8:10AM
Around the world, large-scale agriculture relies on the use of chemical fertilizers. But increasing expense and decreasing supply of fertilizer is driving up the cost of food, and in turn contributing to the overall food crisis.
According to a soon-to-be-released UN report, prices have shot up and will stay high for at least three years. Prices have almost doubled and in some cases risen by 500 percent over 15 months.
The fertilizer crisis is caused by several factors. Anhydrous ammonia, which is the source of nearly all nitrogen fertilizer, needs natural gas, and the price of gas has risen sharply. Other fertilizer ingredients like phosphorous, potassium and potash are also increasingly expensive. Fertilizer needs to be transported long distances to get to farmers, so costs have risen with the soaring price of oil. And finally, the rise in demand for food has put the price of fertilizer up, as countries hoard supplies for themselves.
The 1960s ‘Green Revolution’ in agriculture made developing-world farmers dependent on supplies of fertilizers, pesticides and artificial irrigation. Monoculture cash crops became the norm. Yields were doubled, but at the expense of using three times as much water by accessing groundwater using electric pumps. This and fertilizer pollution has caused widespread damage to soil and water. In India, for example, 57 per cent of the land is degraded, according to Tata Energy Research.
In Cambodia, farmers are reaching back to past practices for answers to the fertilizer crisis. One is to go organic. Taking this approach has many health and environmental advantages – and, best of all for farmers, it keeps costs down.
Khim Siphay, a Cambodian farmer, has found he gets bigger crops of rice and vegetables while paying a lot less for fertilizers.
“Using pesticide or fertilizers kills important insects, and causes the soil to become polluted,” he told Reuters. “I use compost and it helps keep the soil good from one year to another. All of my family members help make the compost.”
The push to organic methods for Cambodia’s 13 million people relying on agriculture for a living comes from a non-governmental organization, the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC). It has successfully moved to organic methods, starting from just a handful of 28 farmers in 2000, to the current 60,000 – and received an endorsement from the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture.
CEDAC says farms using the organic methods have been able to increase rice yields per hectare, while the seeds needed have fallen by 70 to 80 percent. By using a “System of Rice Intensification”, the mostly small-scale farmers are able to get more out of the land, with less labour. Add to that the fact that organic rice gets a premium price on world markets, and the result for the farmers has been a rise in income from US $58 to US $172 per hectare.
“The important point of organic farming is that farmers don’t need to spend money on fertilizers and pesticide so they spend less money on farming,” said CEDAC official Yang Saing Koma.
“They can sell the produce for a higher price. Also they can avoid being infected by pesticides and they will be healthier. It is also good for the environment,” he said.
Rice and other produce can be used to feed chickens to produce organic poultry and eggs – another bonus for farmers looking to raise the value of their produce.
“I started doing organic farming outside my rice paddy, but then I noticed production was double, so in the next season, I decided to grow organically on all of my land,” said farmer Ros Meo. “I spend less money now and I can grow more and I am not sick as I was before, my health is now good.”
Going organic in Cambodia is something that is becoming more attractive to the country’s growing middle class, and the government hopes the country will gain a reputation as an organic producer.
Another approach to cheap fertilizer comes from Caracas, Venezuala. Marjetica Potrc, an artist and architect who works closely with impoverished communities, has come up with a “dry toilet” which collects human waste and converts it to fertilizer.
Developed after spending six months in the barrios of Caracas, the dry, ecologically safe toilet was built on the upper part of La Vega barrio, a district in the city without access to the municipal water grid. It is a place where about half the population receives water from municipal authorities no more than two days a week.
By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions
Published: September 2008
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.
Follow @SouthSouth1
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Cambodia, David South, GSSD Expo, Southern Innovator, UN, UNOSSC, crisis, farmers, farms, fertiliser, organic, weather in David South Consulting, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions, GSSD Expo, Global South-South Development Expo, Southern Innovator Magazine, UNDP, UNDP Innovator Stories, UNOSSC