Mennonite Central Committee 21S. 12th St. Akron, PA 17501 717-859-1151 Oxfam America 302 Columbus Ave. Boston, MA 02116 617-482-1211 Peace Corps 806 Connecticut Ave. NW Washington, DC 20525 800-424-8580 World Neighbors 5116 N. Portland Ave. Oklahoma City, OK 73112 Foreign The Rural Access Roads Programme: Appropriate Technology in Kenya, by J.J. deVeen, 167 pp., $11.40, from: International Labor Office Branch Office 1750 New York Ave., NW Washington, DC 20006 Gandhi would be proud of this one: here is a description of a development project using employment-generating labor-based technology that relies on the use of local resources. Applied on a fairly large scale in Kenya, East Africa, to build rural access roads since 1974, the Rural Access Roads Programme (RARP) has proven that labor-intensive development projects can be successful. Over 7,000 kilometers of minor access roads will have been completed by the end of 1982 through the efforts of RARP crews in 23 of Kenya's 39 districts. While the text is designed to give useful information to planners in both developing countries and donor agencies who are interested in efficiently and effectively applying indigenous, labor- intensive technologies to major construction projects, don't despair if you don't find yourself in either of those categories. Anyone interested in development issues and technologies should find this an easy to read and valuable case study of a relatively successful foreign-aid-sponsored development project. If for no other reason, the program is unique because it emphasizes the use of local resources and personnel, decentralized planning, a very low foreign exchange element (25% vs. 50% or more in most other projects), integration with the host country's ministerial structure, and "people skills" over technical skills and equipment: imusual values in the world of donor-controUed international development projects. The author describes all aspects of the program in a very clear, practical, and well-organized way: in fact, this could be used as an instruction book by anyone involved in planning a labor- based development project. In spite of some design problems with the actual project. The Rural Access Roads Programme is an interesting, informative, and practical analysis of the application of labor-based technologies to rural road construction. I hope it succeeds in its attempt to contribute to a reorientation in the development world to the use of appropriate technology, which is defined by the author as "a fair judgement in each particular case — taking into account all the relevant parameters — of the optimum mix of labor and equipment, a mix that will be different for each country and possibly even for each region in a particular country." — Bruce Borquist Project Monitoring and Reappraisal in the International Drinking Water Supply Decade, by Charles G. Gunnerson and John M. Kalbermatten, eds. Papers presented at Session 40 of the American Society of Civil Engineers International Convention, May 11-15, 1981, inquire for price from: American Society of Civil Engineers 345 E. 47th St. New York, NY 10017 The goal of the United Nations Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade, inaugurated on Nov. 10, 1980, is for all people to have access to safe drinking water and hygienic waste disposal by 1990. World Health Organization (WHO) studies which showed that 80% of all disease in developing nations is linked to unclean water and unsafe waste disposal, and that a tenth of each productive person's time is taken up by disease, jolted the UN and donor nations into action. The clear message in most of the'papers is that if anything is going to happen to solve these problems world-wide, traditional approaches to "development" that ignore socio-cultural aspects, community participation in design, construction, and maintenance, and alternative technologies will have to change or the projects are doomed to failure. Lessons for the "over-developed" nations are found, too, in an interesting pap>er on Marin County, California. During the recent drought, annual water usage was reduced from 120 gallons per customer per day (gpcpd) to 33 gpcpd, a figure usually associated only with usage in less developed countries. If you are willing to put up with a sometimes dry, jjedantic style and are able to sift through it, gems like those above can be found in-this book. Though not for everyone, it may be valuable for its reappraisal of traditional development beliefs and practices within the engineering community, a theme brought out in an earlier (1979) collection by the same authors entitled Appropriate Technology in Water Supply and Waste Disposal. Many interesting publications are being put out by the Environmental Impact Analysis Research Council of the ASCE. Why can't they be produced in a style more accessible to people outside of the engineering community? — Bruce Borquist July 1982 RAIN Page 17 Rural Energy Development in China, by Robert P. Taylor, 1981, 274 pp., $10.50 from: Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore, MD 21218 Those of us who visited China on the first Farallones/New Alchemy study tour in 1980 were greatly impressed with the small-scale energy projects we witnessed in the coimtryside. Clearly, China was providing some models of great potential value for other developing countries. But where could one go to find detailed background — in English — on the Chinese experience with small-scale hydropower, biogas, and reforestation? Robert Taylor has taken a challenging journey of his own — through hundreds of scattered Chinese and Western information sources — to make rural energy models from the People's Republic more accessible to people involved in development projects elsewhere. Rural Energy Development in China is neither a technical "how-to" manual nor a human interest chronicle of the daily experience of peasants with their backyard biogas digestors. The emphasis is on describing and analyzing the variety of policies adopted by China in recent years to meet its wide range of rural energy needs. The author seeks to answer such questions as what successes or failures have attended the Chinese emphasis on using locally-avail- able materials, what balance or imbalance has been achieved between local energy initiatives and central government mandates, and what are the principal lessons which other countries can learn from China's decentralized approach to rural energy development? For the reader with a general interest in potentials for renewable energy applications in the Third World, Rural Energy Development in China is a good, detailed overview of what is happening in the world's largest laboratory for small-scale energy experimentation. For the scholar or development worker intrigued by some particular facet of the Chinese experience, Taylor has eased the path to further research with detailed footnotes, an extensive bibliography, and an excellent guide to source materials. — John Ferrell
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