Localized Economics the Key for Green Development – Report from the Congo 

Alexander Petroff President, Working Villages International

Working Villages International /Villages de l’Avenir launched its pilot project in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Ruzizi Valley in April 2006.

Our mission is to help relieve the immense suffering of the people of eastern DR Congo by providing a chance for some of them to start their lives anew.  WVI’s goal is to build a self-sustaining village, stressing low cost appropriate technology and the use of local materials and skills, with the purpose of raising the standard of living and improving the quality of life of the people. WVI seeks to promote practices which emphasize agricultural independence and community self-sufficiency in conjunction with sound environmental practices.

And of course, an important dimension of our work is to help bring peace to the area. The past decade of war and instability has killed over 4 million Congolese, and most non-profit groups in Congo must focus on the basics of trying to provide food and medical care to as many people as possible.  That’s important, but it’s also important to provide an example of how peaceful productive life can be developed, to give the people of the region hope for the future.  Thus, WVI decided to try to make a “small unit of ideal community” where we can focus on creating the building blocks of peace.

One of the most important needs for building peace and stability is to give people a chance to earn their livelihood by meaningful engagement. Turning to Gandi for inspiration, we find that a key requirement for building peace is to provide full employment by emphasizing localized production for localized markets.  Gandhi stressed that everything which can be produced locally should be, even if the local economy is less efficient at its production:

My definition of Swadeshi is well known.  I must not serve my distant neighbour at the expense of the nearest…I should use only things that are produced by my immediate neighbours and serve those industries by making them efficient and complete where they might be found wanting…A votary of Swadeshi will carefully study his environment, and try to help his neighbours wherever possible by giving preference to local manufactures, even if they are of an inferior grade or dearer in price than things manufactured elsewhere…” (Gandhi 1957)

While Gandhi’s purpose in stressing localized economics was to promote peace by creating full employment, we believe that—properly developed --localized economics will also be the key to achieving “green development.” Examples from four areas will give an idea of how that is true for 1) Materials, 2) Energy and transport, 3) Waste management, 4) Food production.

LOCALIZED MATERIALS

At this point, we are still at the very beginning of our project, yet already we are seeing the value of using local materials.  Only in April did we start working at our Ruzizi project (located in the town of Luvungi at the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika).  We had an incredible amount of enthusiastic support from the local villagers as well as their leaders.  Chief Ombeni, the traditional leader of the area, donated to us an old Belgian plantation house he owned.  It had no roof, so everyone expected that a western NGO (non-government organization) would put up a metal roof.

Instead, we paid the villagers to bring us 1000 bundle of grass, and 500 bundles of matteti bamboo, and made a handsome thatched roof.  On one hand, this gave the villagers employment.  On the other hand, the freshly cut grass improved the grazing for their cows.

From the environmental perspective, it’s important to keep in mind that the production of metal for roofing requires a large industrial complex, which is a great burden to the environment in terms of mining, fuel consumption, pollution, etc.  By using grass and bamboo, we avoided these problems.

In “The Book of Bamboo,” David Farrelly presents examples of how bamboo, with its strength, limited flexibility, hollowness, and uniform size provides a renewable resource which can have hundreds of applications for functions which in the modern era are being taken over by energy-intensive and pollution generating materials such as metals and plastics.

In our Ruzizi project, we plan to research and develop many applications for bamboo to meet local needs for building, piping and even transportation vehicles.  Again, there must be stress on “proper development.” Cultivation and harvesting must be developed along lines which are ecologically sustainable, but if those standards are put in place, bamboo will provide a much greener building material than energy-intensive materials such as metals and plastics.

LOCALIZED ENERGY AND TRANSPORT

The twentieth century has produced three basic models of economic development: 1. Export (raw materials or manufactured goods); 2. Tourism; 3. Import substitution, using imported equipment. All three models depend to a greater or lesser degree on access to cheap petroleum. In the twenty-first century the price of gasoline in Congo is now $6 a gallon, and the average yearly income in Congo is $99 - about enough to buy 16 gallons of gasoline per year.

In such a context, the economy of DR Congo has almost completely collapsed.  At this point, for Congo, it is no longer realistic to advocate any model of development that depends on long-distance shipping and petroleum.  Similarly, it is no longer realistic to expect that Congo will develop wide-spread tractor agriculture.  If it ever existed, the opportunity for those methods of development has now passed.

At present, most agriculture in Congo is based on hand cultivation. However, in an area such as the Ruzizi Valley, with its long tradition of keeping cows, an excellent opportunity exists to train bull calves for work in both localized transport and agricultural traction.  Ox power represents a sustainable and renewable resource that can do much to relieve the burden and increase the productivity of farmers (mostly women) and also provide transport for materials and food crops.  Over short distances, ox carts are in fact more economical than trucks.

In terms of agriculture, ox power creates a lighter footprint on the earth than a tractor, which tends to compact the soil.  Also in terms of the environment, it takes far less resources to produce a team of oxen than a tractor.  How many mining operations and how many factories does it require to produce even one tractor?  How many drilling and refining operations does it take to fuel it? The “factory” that produces an ox is a cow.  For “fuel” the oxen can eat grass and grain which they themselves produce.

And, we should not underestimate the level of benefit that oxen can provide.  With the exception of the cultures of the Americas, practically every materially advanced civilization before the crusades – including China, India, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe – relied on oxen to be the engine for agriculture, local transport, grinding grains and even building.  Certainly, many of the great projects of ancient times were poorly managed in terms of ecological impact; still, they were all accomplished without the incredible level of pollution it would take to recreate such structures today.

But once again, the stress must be on “proper development.” Rotational grazing for cows and oxen can maintain and even improve soil fertility and stability, and with proper waste management, cow manure can become a valuable resource, not a pollutant.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

For WVI, the topics of Energy and Waste Management are deeply entwined. On one hand, the oxen will directly provide energy by such ox power applications such as agriculture, grinding grain, and transport.  On the other hand, the manure of both cows and oxen can be used to provide additional energy in the form of biogas.

Localized, low-tech treatment of waste is one more opportunity for green development.  Two important means of energy production will be biogas digester and biomass digester, both of which can provide gas for cooking and lighting.  Biogas digesters can be used to process manure, human waste, kitchen waste, etc.  They are widely used in India and China, and also used in some parts of Africa.  In June, the Kigali Institute for Technology in nearby Rwanda was awarded the Ashden Award for for Sustainable Energy for developing and installing a large-scale biogas plants in prisons in Rwanda to treat toilet wastes and generate biogas for cooking. ( ) Not only does the biogas digester produce a clean-burning gas (similar to methane), it also produces a sanitary bio-effluent residue which can be used as a fertilizer for crops.

Biomass digesters are found mostly in India, and can be used mostly for agricultural and plant wastes.  They also produce a clean-burning gas. In addition to biogas and biomass digesters planned for the future, we are already using humanure composting toilets at our WVI headquarters. ()

In addition, our resident Congolese agronomist, Fiston Malago, has already set up several compost piles for garden and kitchen refuse.  I have never seen a compost pile in Congo, so this is a new example of green development for local villagers.

LOCALIZED FOOD PRODUCTION

Food production in Ruzizi is already localized.  The main crops are rice, corn and beans, mostly grown by hand in small plots.  The introduction of ox power will increase the amount of food production, as will the fact that the oxen can transport compost and bio-effluent to fertilize crops and maintain the moisture of the soil.  But, even as economic productivity increases, we will encourage people to continue to eat food which is produced by local farmers.

The main change will be the increase of variety.  Already this year, Fiston supervised the planting of many vegetable crops, as well as 35 mango trees (no need for steel fencing, as each sapling is carefully guarded by a wicker basket structure, to protect against local goats). Our emphasis will be on using and learning to preserve good quality open pollinated seeds, rather than turning to outside suppliers of hybrid seeds which need to be re-purchased each year, and which may run the risk of including GMO varieties.

Naturally, all this stands in contrast to our experience in the West, where food production involves a huge input of fossil fuel, from planting, pesticides, fertilizers, harvesting, drying, shipping, processing, packaging, and marketing.  Maintaining localized food production is a vital strategy for green development.

LOCALIZATION AS KEY TO GREEN DEVELOPMENT

Localization in the matter of materials used, energy and transport, waste management, and food production are the major factors which will help develop local employment possibilities. These are also the major factors which will promote green development in Working Villages projects, but there are dozens of additional areas in which localized development also means green development.

For example, we hope to regenerate the local cultural life, which has been devastated by the war.  By subsidizing the development of local theater performances, dance and music, we can provide an alternative to equipment and energy-intensive forms of entertainment such as TV, video games, and cinema, and provide fulfilling jobs for local performers as well. In another area, plastic bags are a great source of pollution throughout Africa, not only in their manufacture, but also as litter. Rwanda recently passed legislation to ban the use of plastic bags.  Our alternative in Ruzizi will be to promote the use of Luvungi bags, which are woven of local reeds, a renewable resource.

In case after case, we see that carefully directed local alternatives which provide employment opportunities for the local population, also provide the basis for green and sustainable development in our “small unit of ideal community.” By using modern appropriate technology, localized economics does not mean reverting to the dark ages.  There is already a lot of valuable local knowledge of how to use local materials that we want to preserve.  In some cases, we want to show how to improve local techniques. For example, in general, local villagers prefer tin roofs to leaky thatched roofs made of local materials.  But, using techniques that we learned at the Fox Maple School in Maine, we demonstrated how to make a thicker roof, more attractive and environmentally conscious than metal, but with none of the leaks of traditional techniques.  And in other cases, we see a great potential for bringing in appropriate technology for skills that have unfortunately been lost, such as that mainstay of Gandhi’s program, localized cloth production.  All these things will increase local employment, increase the living standard, and at the same time create a simple village which is environmentally friendly.

What makes this project exciting to me is that it is actually happening right now.  Due to the generous support from many in the Green community in Maine, this part of Congo, that has so long been without hope, not only has the possibility for change but is already seeing change today. Working Villages is building a working model for village economic life. When our first village is finished, there will be a place on the African continent that is no longer dependent on foreign aid for its livelihood.  I am firmly convinced, after spending time with Africans throughout Central Africa, that if such a village economy was up and running, that model would be swiftly adopted throughout the Continent. This is a chance for real change in the world, and a chance for green-minded people and all of those who care about our planet’s future to make a difference and leave a legacy their children will thank them for.

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(BIO) Alexander Petroff founded Working Villages International in 2005. He is working with Congolese friends to develop a self-sufficient village in the Ruzizi Valley. Prior to that, in 2004, his studies in economic development took him to Uganda, where he completed an internship for the Namalu Ox Hire and Ox Training Center, maintained by the Italian NGO, Service Voluntario International.  Returning to the US, he completed an internship at Tillers International in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a premier training center for animal traction and appropriate technology.  He graduated from Hampshire College in 2006, and, when not working abroad, resides in Topsham, Maine.

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