Technology Needs

Release date	14/03/2006
Contributor	Horst Freiberg

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.