L5 - Peru Fog Nets (Bottom-Up) Flashcards
What are fog nets?
Devices that catch micro droplets of water
What does NGO stand for?
Non-governmental organisation
E.g. a charity
Top down, and bottom-up are examples of…
Projects or strategies
What are the type types of technology
Digital, and intermediate
What scale do bottom-up projects work on?
Small, cheap to run
Who often funds, or runs bottom-up projects
NGOs, or charities (because governments don’t always understand the local situation)
Who often makes decisions in bottom-up projects
Local community members (e.g. Abel Cruz, in Peru, leading the Fognets project)
What is immediate technology
Low-tech solutions, that are appropriate to the needs of the community
How does intermediate technology work?
Local people, using local materials, and local expertise to deliver local successful outcomes (e.g. water)
Why is bottom-up funding an advantage
Depends less on outside agencies
projects are easy to run and cheap to maintain.
Why did Abel Cruz want a bottom-up ‘fog nets’ project in Lima?
Improve the water quality
Give local people ownership over their water supply
Cost of the water delivered by tankers was high, and too high for the poor people to easily afford.
Reduce infection of water-borne diseases
Reliable water supply
How much water is generated by the fog-nets scheme in Peru?
60 nets
200-400l of water per day
Free water to 250 families
Can sow/harvest/eat local crops
Why can bottom-up projects be difficult?
Without direct government support, they can run into financial difficulties. They also take time, and people can suffer in the meantime.
They are hard to scale up - and replicate over a city, or a country.
What are the flaws in the fog-nets project?
Fog is unreliable - it’s seasonal, and depends on there being no wind. - there aren’t many places where fog can be guaranteed.
Still requires overseas investment in some of the kit
Because investors can’t make much profit from the scheme it’s hard to raise the funds to expand it to other areas.
It only provides water for 250 families
You can’t drink the water - still need chemicals
