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Oxfam International has just published a report, "In the Public Interest: Health, Education and Water and Sanitation For All." One can hardly dispute some its assumptions - it's a scandal that people go without basic services, the money is theoretically there to solve problems, aid policies are often misguided, local governments have often proven incapable, incompetent, corrupt and uncommitted to their own citizens' welfare.  But one can argue with their solution set...it's like going back to the future.   

As I read this report, the private sector is seen as the enemy at worst and a wild beast to be caged at best, the profit motive as antithetical to welfare, and more aid as the solution.  The past and current failures of the public sector in the developing world to make headway in solving these problems for billions of people across all regions are acknowledged but then largely ignored.  The Oxfam doctor's prescription is to throw more money at these self-same entities - but more consistently and in larger amounts.  

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It is a familiar story: post-college volunteer (Peace Corps, etc.) returns from the developing world with a desire to help the community in which he or she has been staying. The subsequent projects are also familiar – they often involve selling local handicrafts to first-world markets, or aggregating donations of used computers and cell phones to send back to the community. I don't question the motivation behind such initiatives, and I applaud some of them for attempting to bolster the local economy or jump-start development with first-world technology. More often than not, however, these small projects operate much like typical top-down development projects; that is, they depend on human and physical capital that only the donor/benefactor can provide. In order for such projects to become truly sustainable, they must be able to stand on their own.

Peter Haas knows this story well, having spent years traveling to and volunteering in low-income communities, where well-intentioned development projects often failed without constant donor intervention. With his first-hand knowledge of the problem, Haas set off to find a solution, founding the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) in 2004. The AIDG web site describes exactly what it is they do:

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With more than a few mentions on NextBillion during its development, it was nice to see LifeStraw covered in today's New York Times.

The LifeStraw sells for $3, is approximately the size of a paper towel tube (i.e. 25cm long by 29mm in diameter), and filters out 99.99% of bacteria, the main cause of water-borne diseases such as Typhoid, Cholera, Dysentery and Diarrhoea that kill 6,000 people a day.

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Hard to believe that someone in the concrete industry of all places would have a social conscience in addition to well-honed business acumen, but that is indeed the spirit in which the EcoCreto company’s founders operate. New Ventures’ Sara Standish interviewed Nestor de Buen about his company recently and he had this to say about his motivations:

“When someone invites me to talk about EcoCreto, I spend most of my time talking about the water problem, because it’s what really scares me. I think of my sons and daughters and the kind of country they are going to have if we don’t take action.”

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Blogging to wrap up a lazy Sunday evening on a beautiful Labor Day weekend (post Ernesto that is).  Lotus Quimica- this week's featured company is an interesting case- they also tackle the water issues I touched on earlier in the week, although at first I was a bit aprehensive about their solution.

See, Brazil has a fairly intense dry season in which the available water in lakes and reservoirs can drop dramatically, leaving those that rely on these sources in a perilous situation.  The founder of Lotus, a chemist, actually discovered a product that reduces evaporation from these bodies of water by 50%.  This works via hydrophillic and hydrophobic properties of the chemical Lotus produces.

At first glance, it seems somewhat questionable- interfering with a natural process in such a way.  Lotus' founder, Marcos Gugliotti, understood that many potential clients would share the same concern, so he has gone to lengths to receive government approval- Brazil's International Institute of Ecology has said that the powder is non-toxic and does not significantly affect the natural cycle. 

This seems almost too good to be true- a safe, chemical solution to water shortages due to high temperatures, but Lotus seems to have a promising product.  To learn more about this innovative company, read the profile based on Kelly Desy's interview.  And if you're in the DC area, I hope you stayed drier than I did when Ernesto passed through...

First of all, a big pat on the back for Ecocreto gaining recognition for its work on NPR recently. Secondly, a disclaimer: As I write this posting about water conservation issues in Mexico City, I realize that not too long ago, I also discussed the City's air quality problem. I feel bad picking on Mexico, home to one of the greatest places on Earth, but this warrants some attention - besides, the story of Ecocreto is an optimistic note in all of this.

I was reading Joel Makower's recent post on how water issues could become the next big enviro-development crisis. Though the blog was devoted to how "rich" countries are plagued by unclean water, it reminded me of how someone from Mexico City had commented on my DryWash piece, asking if this waterless carwash service would be available in his area, where people are worried about an impending water shortage and sanitation crisis. Apparently he is not the only one to notice this; one person interviewed in this BBC story laments that "the city was built above a lake, and yet we have no water!"

Clearly, the government needs to begin looking at a number of solutions, but one promising fix that has popped up is the use of permeable concrete, invented by the founders of Ecocreto (I told you there was a happy ending). I was delighted to find that this New Ventures Mexico partner was featured recently on NPR's "Living on Earth" program. The report details how in the midst of worries about Mexico City's aquifers draining by 1 meter per year, chemist Jaime Grau inadvertently devised a type of concrete that was strong enough to hold heavy traffic loads, yet could allow four inches of water per minute to pass through.

As Mexico City grows and develops, creating new roads and repaving others, Ecocreto offers a revolutionary new way to allow rain water to reenter the ground, allowing the reservoirs to be refilled and stopping the urban infrastructure from slowly sinking. A massive overhaul would be costly for the city, but so would having more roads crack and buildings lean as the water is sucked out from under them. I especially enjoyed learning about the Ecocreto segment not just to get our outstanding NV enterpreneurs some well-deserved exposure, but because it shows that small businesses have a great capacity to solve major problems through the innovative tendencies and flexibility inherent in them. Be sure to check out the full NPR piece here, or visit the company's website. It makes me wonder- with Ecocreto tackling water problems and Vehizero fighting Mexico City's infamous air pollution, when do we get services like that operating in DC?

Feet are important to discussions of the BOP hypothesis. I’m not talking about feet as in the unit of length, but rather as those awkward appendages connected to your legs. From a base of the pyramid vantage point, which is the best foot forward?

I did some thinking about this, and decided that there are two ways to view feet through the BOP lens. The first is negative, and has to do with the penalty poor people are subject to by virtue of their poverty. We all know, for instance, that those lacking access to basic services (water, energy, healthcare) must walk long distances – a scene from the HBO movie "Yesterday," where the title character must make a day-long walk (twice) to visit a once-monthly health clinic, comes to mind for healthcare in particular.

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 If you have ever gotten service at a car wash in Brazil, you know that many of them make up the phenomenon Hernando DeSoto calls dead capital. They operate outside of the formal economy, paying low wages off the books, skipping out on taxes and side-stepping regulations. This is the environment the owners of DryWash stepped into when their business first opened in 1994.

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This past Saturday, The Washington Post ran an article, Fighting Our Flux Fixation, on the increased use of eco-friendly toilets in the DC region. What piqued my interest was The Post’s discussion of composting latrines, which have the potential to improve sanitation in many urban and rural areas that are not part of a centralized sewer system. As described by The Post, composting toilets are a “high-tech version of an outhouse,” where waste is concentrated and gradually decomposed into fertilizer, which can be used to enrich soil and strengthen agriculture, the backbone of rural life.

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The BBC reported last week about a new device being marketed to purify water in developing countries. The LifeStraw looks like a large plastic flute, and contains internal filters that remove bacteria from the water as it is drunk. The device is priced at around $3.50, and is designed to purify 700 liters over the course of six months to a year.

In spite of its initial cost ($3.50 is still expensive to someone making $1 a day), the device is still a welcome addition to other water purifying devices now coming to market. Apparently, not everyone agrees. The BBC article included a critique of the device by Paul Hetherington, a spokesman for UK charity WaterAid.

“The problem is that many people live very far away from their water, often walking a total of 20km or more carrying a weight of 25 kilos. The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent that long journey, even if it does improve the water they drink. ” He continued, ”It only costs a charity like WaterAid £15 per person to provide them with water, sanitation and hygiene education, which, provided there is decent water resource management in the country, will last them a lifetime. At that rate, $3.50 is expensive.”

Comments like this increasingly frustrate me, and I’ve seen them made repeatedly by sector-specific non-profits who believe that it’s pointless to try and solve one problem if efforts are not simultaneously made to solve another. It’s unfortunate that some organizations think that their solutions are the best and others should be disregarded, but that is precisely where development through enterprise adds value: it’s not an either/or proposition.

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