Appendix- 3

World Renewable Energy Assembly 2005 (WREA 2005)

World

Renewable Energy Acceleration: No more time to waste

November 26th to 30th, 2005 Hotel Kanzler, Bonn, Germany

SOLAR ECO-VILLAGE
(Promotion & implementation of sustainable energy based ecovillage development programme in the desert state of Rajasthan, India)
By

Raymond Myles
Secretary General-cum-Chief Executive, INSEDA and Regional Coordinator, INFORSE, South Asia Third Floor, St. Soldier Tower, Vikas Puri, New Delhi-110018, India

Why Solar Eco-village?

Plight of the poor for centuries and now due to destruction of micro-eco-systems
Poor people have been living in some of the worst conditions for centuries In spite of this, these people have learnt to survive, as there were no other options available to them However, massive destruction of ecology and environment and desertification is threatening the survival of humankind, and the worst affected would be the poor people living in rural areas of the developing countries

Current plight of poor due to destruction of their support system- i.e. the local micro-eco-systems

2 billion people live below the poverty line, globally Number of poor, both in terms of total figure as well as in percentage has been going up over the years Majority of poor, marginalized and deprived people live in the rural areas of the developing countries This gap has been steadily increasing, with population growth, and the lack of activities to address livelihood of such groups in a sustainable manner

Energy and Poor

Almost 2 billion people in the world, mainly poor and coming from the developing countries of the world have no access to sustainable energy And this situation is steadily worsening with the demand of energy going up and the current energy production and electric power generation is not going up with the in the same proportion As energy being inputs to all the other services, including those meant for poverty reduction are not reaching the poor either due to inadequate supply or high cost of transmission due to remoteness from the main grid, thus the status of poor remain the same.

Situation in India
Major percentage of India population (75% of about 1.2 billion people) approximately 900 million lives in 600,000 villages, spread through out the country, some of the villages are located in very remote and far-flung areas, therefore inaccessible- refer Map-1. Over 35% of people in rural areas of India are living below the poverty line, at subsistence and below subsistence level Majority of the people living in these villages have either no access or only limited access to sustainable energy.

Rural people and present energy use for domestic purpose in India
Rural people in India have been meeting their domestic cooking needs from fuel wood, seasonal biomass from crop and animal residues, burnt as inefficient fuel, which are mainly collected by women This is one of the main causes, which contributes to their drudgery and leads to both indoor and outdoor pollution and environmental problems Efforts have been made in the last two decades to solve the rural energy problems, using renewable energy technologies, however, taking energy in isolation will not solve the problem in a sustainable manner. India has been involved in the systematic promotion/ implementation of low cost house hold biogas plants in rural areas of the country, in the last over two decades, under the National Project of Biogas Development (NPBD) of the Ministry of Non-Conventional Sources of Energy (MNES), Govt. of India However, Biogas and other RET programmes are merely energy promotion programmes, being implemented in isolation and thus not addressing the other more important needs of the rural people, especially the poor.
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Learning & experience

Some of the key lessons learnt from RET promotion by NGOs in rural India: Government sponsored RET promotion programme is mainly an energy technology oriented implementation programmes, and people/end users are expected to adjust to the new RET. Therefore, it is generally left to the implementing agency as to how they implement and integrate RETs with in their other developmental programmes, at the local level. This is one of the main barriers in addressing poverty reduction through RETs The male of the house is not so critically aware about the drudgery of the female in the household:
in collecting fuel wood and making dung cakes as fuel etc. The cooking of food; and much less concerned about the indoor pollution due to cooking, affecting health of woman, girl child & children staying with their mother while cooking in rural areas.

Need for addressing issues effectively

Technological approach to the implementation, treats the RET as an end in it self, where the people (End Users) are expected to change and adjust to the needs of the new technology, developed outside their local socio-cultural environment. In other words local people are expected to invest their savings in technologies sold by manufacturer who used rural areas as market place, without addressing to the important needs of the local people. In the light of the practical experience gained and lessons learnt, NGOs led by INSEDA decided to re-look at RET implementation strategy in rural areas of India. Threadbare discussions & critical review gave a new promotional and implementation strategy for RET, keeping people in the centre, can be called Socio-technical. In the Socio-technical approach the local community/people (the end users) are considered and recognized as the primary stake holders and are kept in the center of any developmental, promotional and implementation programmes, the RET is only be a means to empower people, and would be adjusted and modified to suit and adequately address the important needs of the targeted people/community. This new shift in approach would require change in the existing mind set of promotional and implementing agencies as well as the other external stakeholders.
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Solar Eco-village to address the socio-technical issues effectively

Based on interaction and feedback with INSEDA members, it was felt that a comprehensive approach was required in which the promotion of RET will be used as an important tool to address the problems of the local community, based on the lessons learnt. The best approach was to take village as the smallest unit of development and integrate RET based on the consideration for the restoration/conservation of existing micro-eco-system, following a people-centered approach. Thus the idea of community oriented Sustainable Energy based Eco-village development or the the community oriented solar ecovillage development programme was conceived by the Secretary General, INSEDA.

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A simple conceptual solar eco-village model

n A simple, people-centered solar eco-village development (SVED) model was first conceptualized by INSEDA in the year 2000- refer- Chart- I. n Subsequently, based on interaction and feed-back with INSEDAs members, Master Plan and programme as well as a broad strategy was worked out for implementation of pilot demonstration-cum-training model, as a starting point See map of Bharatpur with the location of 12 village- Map- 3. n As against other models, the local people (community) were kept in the center-this was the starting point of discussions, which lead to the present Solar Eco-village development programme, presented in this paper. It was also recognized that once placed on the ground its should get evolved based on the learning curves, therefore required lots of flexibility. INSEDA in partnership with WAFD (Womens Action For Development), a grassroots womens development organisation, mobilized very small funding from an overseas funding agency, to start a joint programme in a small scale in 12 villages (where WAFD was already operating for a decade), in the Bharatpur district of Rajasthan (India), to convert these existing villages in to people-centered solar eco-villages.
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Some basic information about Solar Eco-villages programme area (Refer- Map- 2,3 & 4)

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Approximately 800-900 million people live rural areas of India, in 600,000 villages, spread through out the country, some of them very inaccessible. Majority of the people living in these villages have either no access or partial access to sustainable energy and have chronic shortage of power supply. Rajasthan is a state suffering from poverty and drought, and in which the status of women is very low, even as compared to the Indian standards. Rural areas of Bharatpur district have no exception to this. The average population of the target villages is 600 to 800, the inhabitants belonging to different castes. Bharatpur is located about 200 km from Delhi and 50 km from Agra (home of Taj Mahal). Bharatpur is the home of the famous national bird sanctuary. But in the past one decades or so the agro-eco-system of the Bharatpur district has become very fragile, due to its close proximity to the Mathura refinery (located 30 km from Bharatpur city), destruction of forest, as well as unprecedented use of chemical inputs (fertiliser, pesticides and insecticides) and over-exploitation of ground water for irrigating agricultural crops.

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Rural areas of the Bharatpur district and other districts in Rajasthan state have been suffering from drought and poverty for centuries. One of the biggest problems in the area is soil erosion; land degradation and depletion of fertility of sub-soil each year, caused by population growth and widespread use chemical fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides. The main livelihood of the villages in the area is animal husbandry and agriculture. The principal cultivated agricultural crops are wheat, mustard, fodder for buffalo and cattle, and lentils and chilli in some areas. Due to very low annual rainfall during in the last few years, groundwater level in Bharatpur district has been steadily going down at an alarming rate.
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Low rainfalls during the season has also resulted in the lowering of water table in a number of wells, thus putting them out of regular work, and creating almost drought like conditions in the last 3 years, affecting the agricultural and animal husbandry operations, which has contributed to further impoverishment of the local rural people. Often water has to be carried from further and further away, which has increased the workload of women living in the area. One of the biggest problems is soil erosion, land degradation and depletion of fertility of sub-soil each year, caused by the widespread use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides & insecticides. Farming is mainly dependent on external inputs and requires high cash resources. If for some reason crops fail which normally happens in the target area once in four year cycle due to failure of monsoon and other natural disasters, the farming communities go in to heavy debts. Often the rural people are unable to repay to the money lenders and other lending agencies, which further impoverish them, as they are already living at subsistence/ near subsistence level.
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Womens drudgery and present form of energy utilization in rural India and possible solutions

Women and young girls often get respiratory disorders when cooking food indoor on open fire. Cooking related problems, like drudgery and health and disease of women and infant children, in rural areas. This problem could also be solved by introduction of other affordable renewable energy technologies, like smokeless cook stoves, biomass briquettes and solar cookers, while reducing pollution, protecting the local environment and reducing carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere.

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Gap between RET development in India and their acceptance

Many low-cost, small-scale renewable energy technologies (RET) have been developed in India. However, awareness and information applications of these RET are not enough for people especially in the understand their benefits for accepting adoption. about the field spreading fast countryside, to and large-scale

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Status of biogas implementation, gaps between potential and achievements and limitation of subsidies based implementations
Till date over 3.5 million household biogas plants have already been built in the rural areas of India. This figure looks very impressive, but when compared to the potential of building household biogas plants using the manure from bovine (cattle and buffalo) population in India, it would be more than 15 million and could go up to 20 million as the bovine population is also increasing. Thus only 25 percent of the total potential of bovine manure has been covered till date. Since the Indian biogas programme comes within the purview of the MNES, in spite of best efforts, the implementing individuals and organisation, only concentrate on advocating the energy potential of biogas plants. Thus the other important aspect, which is organic manure production from biogas plants, is not promoted vigorously.

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Status of Biogas and other RET Implementation in Bharatpur under the Government sponsored schemes
As far as Bharatpur district is concerned it has not been given any target for building biogas plants, for the past few years (either from the state government or any other intermediate nodal agency for building biogas plant) under the NPBD (National Project on Biogas Development) of the Ministry of Non-Conventional Sources (MNES). Due to non-availability of subsidies the farmers in the Bharatpur districts (and for that matter in the entire Rajasthan state for building biogas plants) only those people who are willing to meet the entire cost of the biogas plants from their own resources at present, can build them. Due to this restriction in allocation of subsidies, so far using these funds for integrating the biogas programme within the Solar EVD programme has not been possible.

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Some of the key problems in the proposed solar eco programme villages
Lack of employment opportunity Lack of sustainable energy Lack of Irrigation facilities Most of the farmers take only one crop per year, if fails due failure of monsoon, they get into heavy debts from money lenders, and migrate to cities in search of jobs Lack of credit and marketing facilities

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Rationale of taking village as the smallest unit of development to establish model solar eco-village
From the practical point of view, based on the discussions among the representatives of the two programme partners it was decided to consider village as the smallest unit or micro eco-system for undertaking solar EVD programme. The rationale and basis for this realisation and understanding was because the villages are recognised by the official agencies in India, as both socio-politically as well as administratively defined as the smallest geographic units for promoting and implementing any developmental programmes. Therefore, a programme like this has greater chances of getting replicated in any geographical area in India by mobilising government funds for development. Thus making such a programme sustainable would be easier, after the NGOs have demonstrated the concept by successfully implementing and operating it for a considerable period of time, to show the practicality of EVD concept in a small scale having value for replicability for different situations. Later on the NGOs could use these units as the training-cum-demonstration centres for other NGOs and MLPIs as well as government agencies for wide dissemination and replication of such models with appropriate modifications.

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Solar Eco-village development (SEVD)

(Overall Goal)

The overall goal of the programme is to gradually convert selected villages, in the operational areas of INSEDAs member NGOs into people-centered, renewable energy based model solar eco-villages.

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The broad Objectives the present SEVD programme are:

Establish community oriented, model renewable energy based ecovillages by converting at least 12 of the target villages of one of the partner grassroots NGOs of INSEDA in 2 blocks of Bharatpur district in the desert state of Rajasthan in India, Capacity building of local people and utilizing them for the regeneration, protection and conservation as well as optimum utilization of the natural resources so that they will not get further depleted in the future Up gradation of skills of local artisans in the implementation, repair and maintenance of RE Micro-credit/Financing programme as a means of income generating activities and addressing the livelihood issues

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Solar Eco-Village Programme:

The joint programme of INSEDA with its grassroots partners, WAFD (Womens Action For Development) is planned to be implemented in 15 years, in 3 main phases as given below:
a). b). Pilot Phase: Main Phase (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

First 2 years- April 2002 to March 2004 (finished) 12 years in four sub-phases of 3 year project each, as given below:
First Sub-Phase: Second Sub-Phase: Third Sub-Phase: Fourth Sub-Phase: April 2004 to March 2007 (on going) April 2007 to March 2010 April 2010 to March 2013 April 2013 to March 2016

c).

Handing over & withdrawal phase:

April 2016 to March 2017

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Pilot Phase:

First 2 years- April 2002 to March 2004

Keeping the goal of developing 12 model solar Eco-villages in sharp focus, specific objectives of the two-year duration pilot project were:
Selection of rural volunteers from each of the 12 target solar eco-villages for awareness, motivation, training, demonstration and implementation in their respective villages. Develop capacity building of newly appointed EVD (Eco-village development) staff and upgrade their skills to act as trainers-cumimplementers Train barefoot volunteers to act as motivator and undertake demonstration programmes in their respective villages, Implement a few training-cum-demonstration renewable energy technologies, as well as other environmental benign and eco-friendly technologies and activities in these 12 selected villages.

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Implementation of Solar Eco-Village Programme

Pilot Project- 2 years Period
( April 2002 to March 2004)

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Selection of 12 villages to implement model Solar Eco-village development (SEVD) programme

Short-listing of first group of 30 villages out of the 90 target villages of the grassroots partner NGO
INSEDA joint programme partner of SEVD, namely WAFD (Womens Action For Development) is a grassroots NGO had been operating in 90 villages in the 4 blocks of Bharatpur district for about a decade, through need-based, education and community development programmes for the benefit and empowerment of women, adolescent girls and children. As a result of this WAFD had developed good rapport to undertaken any other developmental programme through peoples participation.

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However, as only 12 villages had to be converted/developed as model Solar eco-village, the EVD staff along with INSEDA developed broad criteria for the final selection through following a process oriented approach in four month period, which is summarized as under: The pre-selection of 60 villages based on the desk-analysis of secondary data of about 90 villages (and feedback from WAFD staff who were working in these villages) from 4 blocks in which WAFD was already implementing community development activities/ projects with focus on women, adolescent girls and children for the past several years. This was followed by conducting reconnaissance survey and interaction with people from these villages 30 villages in the second round as per the criteria fixed jointly by WAFD and INSEDA.

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 Subsequently, RRA (Rapid Rural Appraisal) of these 30 villages was done in the third round to select and finalize a list of 12 villages for the proposed solar EVD programme, with a view to short-list a more comprehensive survey of these 30 villages The objective of selecting 12 villages was to ensure that even if a maximum of 2 selected villages dropped out during the course of implementation, due to any reasons, and we are not able to replace them with other 2 villages, there would still be at least 10 model Solar Ecovillages, as per the original plan of the EVD programme.

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Selection of Local Volunteers from the 12 target villages

Selection of rural volunteers from each of the 12 target solar ecovillages (2 female and 2 male per village), a total of 48 volunteers. They were trained as barefoot volunteers, for awareness, motivation, training, demonstration and implementation in their respective villages. These 48 people (24 female and 24 male) selected in consultation with the local communities, were trained as train barefoot volunteers, develop capacity building of newly appointed EVD (Ecovillage development) staff and Implement a few training-cum-demonstration renewable energy, as well as other environmental benign and eco-friendly technologies and activities in these 12 selected villages.

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Participatory preparation of village social maps and their dream of Eco-village in pictorial forms

During the process of regular monthly training workshops these 48 rural volunteers, who together form the Rural Energy & Ecological Volunteers Corps (REEVOCs) prepared social maps of their existing villages. Second exercise was done by the REEVOCs to prepare a Pictorial sketch of their common dream solar eco-village in which they would all like to live in. This process was facilitated by the INSEDA specialists and SEVD Staff of WAFD.

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Model Solar Eco-Village

As a part of the exercise, the REEVOCs were formed in to 4 groups to prepare (based on their own perception) their dream Eco-villages. These were presented and based on that all of them (48 members) prepared one common dream Solar EcoVillage, which will meet all their requirements (energy, food, water, sanitation and sustainable livelihood). The above Model Solar Eco-Village, and is shown in Chart-II, which they would like to live in. Now the entire group is working towards achieving the goals of achieving this model solar eco-village during the next 15 years under the guidance of INSDEA & WAFD.

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Implementation of the First part of the Main Solar Eco-Village Development Programme
Period from April 2004 to March 2007 The 48 members of REEVOCs were trained on the important aspects of RE and other technology to undertake awareness and motivation programmes in their respective villages Household data collected during the pilot project, was fed in the computer to prepare database in MS Access. It will be used as baseline data to measure change an d impact, for which indicators are being finalised. Number of appropriate technologies have been demonstrated by INSEDA and WAFD.
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Programme implementation with in the solar eco-villages Based on training-cum-demonstration the following RE and the ecological and environmental oriented programmes have been implemented in the 12 solar eco-villages-Some of them are: Household Biogas Plants, Roof-top rain water harvestings structures, Vermiculture NADEP Compost, Biomass experimental biogas plants, Solar Cookers demonstration Household Briquetting demonstration

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Plantation of Jatropha as bio-fuel Organic farming, Sanitation and toilet Micro-credit/Micro-financing groups for small loans for income generation activities, Capacity building and trainings are the on going activities. As the local people are developing confidence, they are demanding other RE gadgets. However, they have been asked to wait till appropriate trainings are organized for them and the local skills are up graded in the installation, maintenance and repairs, so that these facilities could be available with in solar eco-villages

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Map of India showing the state of Rajasthan

Map-1
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A Simple Conceptual People-centered Solar Eco-Village Development (SEVD) Model

Motivation and organization of community and capacity building of NGOs and Micro-level People's Institutions-MLPIs, like CBOs, SHGs, women, youth groups and Panchayats etc.

Water

Demonstrations of appropriate technologies and related activities, with a view to integrate them within the solar Eco village

Agriculture

People

Animals

Self-employment and employment generation in providing services, and processing activities for landless peasants, rural youth and artisans

Energy

Marketing linkages that will also involve womens groups in production and processing of agro-based produce, packaging and using marketing channels

Chart-I
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Map of Rajasthan showing Bharatpur district

Map- 2
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Map of Bharatpur district (Rajasthan state) showing Sever Block where the SVD programme is located in 12 villages

Map- 3
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Map of Sever Block (Bharatpur district) showing locations of the 12 Solar Eco-Villages

Map- 4
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Chart- II
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Photos shows different stages of weaving of bamboo structures for the construction of bamboo reinforced cement mortar (BRCM) Grameen Bandhu biogas plant, by poor landless rural women from one of the solar eco-villages

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Photos shows laying of foundation, digging of pit and placing and fixing of woven bamboo structure for construction of BRCM Grameen Bandhu biogas plant at a farmers house
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Photos show two different stages of construction of BRCM Grameen Bandhu BGP at farmer house, using the bamboo structures weaved earlier by poor landless rural women from one of the solar eco-village

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Photos shows different stages of construction of BRCM Grameen Bandhu biogas plant, by the trained master masons a farmer from one of the solar eco-village 45

Photos shows final stages of the construction of BRCM Grameen Bandhu biogas plant for a farmer from one of the solar eco-village

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 Thank You

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