(EID-018) “BECAUSE IT’S THERE”

Mountaineers would often say that they climb a mountain “because it’s there”, which to me is a good enough explanation, having been a mountaineer myself. How I wish however that community development practitioners and advocates would also adopt this attitude when it comes to using appropriate technologies, “because it’s there”.

In a mountain community around the Antipolo area, villagers are now organizing themselves into a cooperative, so that they could get the resources needed to adopt integrated area development (IAD) strategies and approaches for their own good, which would include shelter, livelihood and biodiversity projects, among others.

In what is now emerging as a “core technology” for them, the villagers are going to build a centralized biogas chamber using human waste, so that they could produce methane gas for their own use. The idea to use human waste came after the villagers realized that they should no longer use piggery and poultry waste for this purpose, due to the potential of using another appropriate technology which I would explain later.

The biogas chamber will produce the cooking gas for them, which at the same time would also power a multi-purpose drier, a water filtration system and a cold storage facility. Hopefully, the gas would also power their refrigerators, as soon as we could revive this very practical and appropriate technology.

Given this very simple configuration, the villagers will already be able to save on their expenses for electricity, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), and bottled water, three basic needs that are bleeding their pockets dry. On the upside, they will instead fill their pockets with money coming from their poultry, piggery and forestry projects, including a number of agriculture related activities.

Using an organic farming method introduced by the Agro Amigo Movement, the villagers will be able to grow hogs and chickens in record time, while at the same time they are able to produce organic fertilizers on site from the animal wastes. This is the reason why they will no longer channel these wastes to the methane chamber.

Among other uses, they will apply the organic fertilizer to their cacao plantation, which is part of their bio-diverse reforestation project. Of course, the multi-purpose drier would also be used for their cacao crops.