Insights and Perspectives
It has now been a few weeks since my return to the United States. My study abroad program in Spain and Morocco was a surreal experience that I will never forget. I met so many different people while abroad. I was immersed in such vastly different cultures that gave me so many different perspectives and insights on sustainable development.
Over the course of my trip I was able to visit the NOOR solar power plant, the Abengoa solar power plant, Masen headquarters and many universities to name a few. Although all these places were full of information and knowledge I believe I took away the most from a poor village we visited in Morocco called Tasslamante. This was a town with an elementary school that had no power or clean water and ironically it is located only a few miles away from the gigantic NOOR power plant in Ouarzazate. This fact made me realize that the nation’s sustainability goals did not coincide with some the goals of the poorer local communities such as an emphasis on education and appropriate technology.
Speaking of appropriate technology, our study group was able to meet with a couple of engineering professors at the University Carlos III of Madrid in Spain. I found this day trip to their campus particularly fascinating because they showed us their laboratory of human powered sustainable technology. The lab was focused on creating appropriate technology, which means that each of the technologies they build are made for specific people who will get the most out of the technology.
The two professors who guided us through their research and developments went through a numerous amount of sustainable technologies suited for communities much like Tasslamante, the Moroccan town I mentioned before. They were developing solar cookers, solar panels, solar driers for wood, stationary bikes that power batteries and water pumps. They had different models for each one of these technologies, constantly trying to improve the next model. They said their most difficult challenge was making these technologies more practical for the community they were intended for. An example of this challenge they gave us was regarding cooking food. The solar cookers and ovens cost money, which is hard to market when poor communities can simply gather wood for free to create fires. Another challenge is culture. Food just does not taste the same when cooked using solar compared to biomass fires. Cultures have been cooking their food the same way for centuries so why would they stop now? Poor communities also do not understand the health effects of burning biomass and that inhaling biomass smoke is harmful to them. Furthermore, creating a technology with an easy learning curve is essential to making the technology probable in the whole community. Without participation the community abandons the technology and reverts back to their traditional ways.
So as you can see there is a lot more to creating human-powered technology than one might think. Each part of the technology has to be scrutinized in order to fulfill and solve all of the challenges listed above. Creating technology that is practical is critical to the engineering of these technologies. That is why it is called appropriate technology.
This trip has reinforced what I have learned in my classes and has also taken me outside of the classroom and provided me with hands-on experiences. Experiences such as the visit to the village of Tasslamante, the solar power plants, the meeting with the MENA policy hub, etc. These experiences have changed my view of the world and of sustainable development. I will never forget the time I spent in Morocco and Spain or the memories I had there.