STRAIGHT FROM THE BIG CITY

Ike ‘Ka Iking’ Seneres
Mission impossible

Is it really possible to build self-sustaining villages according to the standards of Global Action for National Development Assistance (GANDA)? My answer is yes, because all the technologies that will be used and implemented in these villages are doable and attainable, having been tested and implemented in other parts of the world in various forms.

In an interview during my TV show, economist Butch Valdes told me that not unless the Bataan nuclear plant is revived along with more nuclear plants for the country, we will never be able to produce the cheap energy that our country needs to produce goods and services that our country needs to survive. He said that new advances in nuclear technology have made this option not only cheaper, but also safer.

Knowing that the nuclear option is still far off because it would require charter change to make it happen, I believe that the doable and practicable solution at least in the meantime is to resort to renewable energies, meaning to say that we should produce renewable energy where we can, depending on the resources or materials that are available locally.

In my previous column, I already mentioned the use of bio-fuels as an option, without being specific about it. As of now, the world prices of coconut oil may not make it practical to use it as bio-fuel, but there are many crops that could produce oil in large volumes, including jathropa among others.

The emergence of bio-fuel production technologies is actually just one side of the renewable energy equation. The other side is the emergence of cheap and affordable power generating sets that could be used in smaller plants, producing power for smaller communities such as the GANDA villages.

As Butch explained his views about energy production, he made it very clear that even with nuclear power, there is still a need to develop and sustain other power sources, all possible sources as a matter of fact for as long as these are renewable. The bottom line is that we should reduce if not remove our dependence on imported fossil fuels that are too expensive to use.

I listened intently to Butch as he said that with cheap nuclear power, we will also be able to operate desalinization plants that would enable us to produce clean potable water that could also be used for irrigation purposes. He also said that with cheaper power and with more water, we could also produce large volumes of ice that are needed by our agriculture and fisheries industries.

I think that on a smaller scale, it would also be possible to desalinate sea water and produce ice by using locally produced power that is fuelled by renewable bio-fuels. One advantage of local village based production is the avoidance of transport costs that bring up the distribution expenses.

Multi-purpose driers and cold storage facilities require only simple technologies but sad to say, we have not been able to make these items available in all of our villages, in support of their agriculture and fisheries. Generally speaking, all crops and fish produce could either be dried or frozen, and the end result is the same, that the farmers or fishermen will be able to wait for the right time to sell, aside from avoiding or preventing the spoilage of their goods.

Having the means to dry and freeze their goods, and having access to cheap power, our farmers and fishermen in the villages will be able to produce their own feeds and fertilizers, the two critical inputs that are preventing them from making money in their small businesses.

In the final analysis, what is important is that the per capita incomes of the village people, along with their life expectancy and literacy rates would increase according to the international standards set by the Human Development Index (HDI) as developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

In a manner of speaking, GANDA is going to use the strategy of concentrated convergence. It will not only try to cause the convergence the technologies that are needed by the villages, it will also concentrate the deployment of these technologies to one village at a time.

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