By Nicholas Chambers - November, 2006
The impending challenges facing humanity over the next 10 to 20 years will be paramount in importance and unprecedented in scale. Our exponential population growth (8 billion by 2010) will place huge demands on the Earth’s ecosystems for meeting our most assumed necessities such as food, water, energy, and materials. With guidance, however, humanity can be a formidable force of progressive change. The International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (iCAST) is working towards just that.
iCAST is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit business and technology group located at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Their focus on the rapid development and dissemination of appropriate technologies promotes an immediate blossoming of ways fit for the 21st century. Their support and stimulation of green enterprises creates jobs that contribute to society’s perpetual functioning. Their goal of dispersing educational materials and hands-on training will ensure a legacy of balance is left with up and coming generations.
“Sustainable development,” iCAST’s specialty, is that breed of doing, progressing, and establishing that aims to set up that which will need, or accrue, little or no further capitol costs, natural or social. iCAST builds upon past efforts at sustainable development in two primary areas. First, they have a big focus in education, such as K-12 and secondary curriculum development. Secondly, they understand that long-term economic viability is a huge part of sustainability, A new technology, for instance, is not that “appropriate” if local people cannot repair, manage, or make a decent living off it. Hence, iCAST frames their work with a Triple Bottom-Lined Approach: Environmentally Friendly, Socially Acceptable, and Economically Viable.
iCAST also employs a unique method of business-world integration that utilizes the problem-crunching capacities of hungry graduate students from universities such as CU-Boulder, the University of New Mexico, and Adams State. While providing these students with real-world exposure to humanity’s issues, they also get to work alongside industry professionals, governmental personnel, and folks in non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
iCAST is presently only working in rural areas where development is typically underserved and has a fresh opportunity for “appropriate” success. Most of their recent projects have been conducted in the San Luis Valley, although when they started in 2002 as “CAST” they were primarily working internationally. Recently, they have been summoned to look at the farmers’ perspective of growing canola for their own fuel in a sort of post-Blue Sun conundrum, as well as working with Saguache County in assessing opportunities for their recycling program. Very soon, though, they are looking to expand their sphere of influence out of the SLV while leaving behind a sort of center where people can come for learning, researching, and sharing aspects of sustainability.
While many people might want to apply for their own sustainable project management, iCAST does not help or serve individuals and they are not consultants--they serve communities as facilitators. A local stakeholder of any project assumes full financial liability and possesses the sweat equity as the prime moving force. Once a project has been subjected to an initial decision-making matrix, a detailed assessment then follows. If a green light still remains, iCAST can then help in the their beats of technology and business, and for the right project, funding. All preliminary upfront costs, however, are the responsibility of the community.
“Appropriate technology,” says iCAST founder and Executive Director Ravi Malhotra, “is whatever promotes sustainability.” Ravi is a quick witted, Indian-born pragmatist with an incredible mental inventory and a scrupulous capacity for project management. He holds Engineering and Business degrees from ITT-Delhi, India and the University of Texas at Austin. His passion for sustainable development led him all over the world where he has created financially viable enterprises that employ hundreds.
Ravi is backed by highly qualified people in the business and energy sectors, as well as staffed graduate students, but at the forefront is Community Programs Director Paul Aldretti. Paul has designed, implemented, and managed energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable development projects for local communities, small businesses, and multi-national corporations. He previously served as Executive Director for the Colorado Environmental Partnership. With regards to appropriate technology: “People tend to want to rush to technology,” says Paul, as a sort of fix for their problem or dilemma, when “energy efficiency and conservation” are almost a prerequisite for a change in technology. “Small is better--a way to bring the power to the people!”
As the old adage goes, “…give a person a fish and feed them for one day, teach a person how to fish and feed them for a lifetime...” Colorado’s own, and the San Luis Valley’s mentor of iCAST, is leading the global community into a future of providing for the next generation.
Projects ICAST has done around the San Luis Valley
Enterprise Development
iCAST has been looking at the abundant forest resources and by-products of the six sawmills and five thinning crews of the San Luis Valley. Based on the amount of biomass currently not receiving its potential value, they are planning to form a Biomass Utilization Consortium for a wood pellet making operation.
Another forest-products project was conducted for a Jemez Pueblo forestry business where the whole slew of forest products could be utilized. Trees sufficient for lumber would go to the sawmill, thinner trees would go to viga and latilla home construction, as well as fencing and posts; and the woody by-products would go to landscaping mulch and a co-generative heat and electricity production operation.
The 300 million pounds of wasted culled potatoes from the valley’s potato economy was a normal part of business for the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee (CPAC). ICAST looked at all the options to find the value in this cultivated biomass, including ethanol production, but settled on the production of food-grade starch as the best means to make ends meet. ICAST is helping with the business plan to make this operation happen.
Infrastructure Development
Jemez Pueblo also had an over-capacity sewage holding pond where the excess raw effluent had to pumped into their irrigation ditches to prevent it from spilling into the adjacent Jemez River. iCAST’s recommendation, contrary to the Indian Health Services idea of another pond, was to install solar-powered circulators to treat the water faster so it could be safely pumped out and used for irrigation.
The community of Conejos County has had many of their wells go dry from the continuing drought of Southern Colorado. Instead of getting into debt by drilling a deeper well into the confined aquifer, iCAST’s team deemed it most sensible to join forces with surrounding communities whose wells did not go dry, thus averting a loan and saving on monthly operating costs.
In Guadalupe, CO, the cesspools or open backyard sewage pits, were contaminating groundwater as well as being a hazard for children. After a thorough assessment of various sewage treatment options, iCAST finally recommended the most feasible and affordable thing to do was to cover the pits and/or create closed septic systems, as well as filtering contaminants and killing pathogens in their drinking water.
Education and Training
The problem of arsenic in drinking water is a world-wide problem and here at home Alamosa has its problems with it. Most communities and individuals cannot afford the expensive EPA-approved filters, so iCAST led a team of students from the Colorado School of Mines to look into a low-cost, simple and reliable filter. Once created and tested, iCAST will assist a local entrepreneur in producing, marketing, and selling these units to the local communities.
Education through case studies is where iCAST can pass on their success to the next generation of engineers and designers of the world. They are developing a case study curriculum whereby the students in the engineering field can get hands-on experience with some of the issues faced by the underserved communities in which iCAST works.
‘Sustainability’ -, whatever promotes the ability in “meeting the needs of the current generation without jeopardizing future generations’ ability to meet their needs,” (according to the 1987 UN Bruntland Commission’s definition of sustainability).
Sustainability can be "regarded as tantamount to a new philosophy, in which principles of futurity, equity, global environmentalism and biodiversity must guide decision making." It is a far reaching concept and has particular meanings in different disciplinary settings:
In biology, sustainability has come to be associated with the protection of biodiversity. It concerns itself with the need to save natural capital on behalf of future generations.
In economics it is advanced by those who favor accounting for natural resources. It examines how markets, as conventionally conceived, fail to protect the environment.
In sociology it involves the advance of environmental justice in situations where some groups make decisions over the use of natural resources and other groups are affected in their daily lives.
In planning it is the process of urban revitalization where there is a pursuit of a design science that will integrate urbanization and nature preservation.
In environmental ethics it means alternatively preservation, conservation or ‘sustainable use’ of natural resources. This probes the domain where humans ponder whether they are part of, or apart from, nature, and how this should guide moral choice.
"These ‘sustainability’ criteria act as constraints on untoward forms of development. They are premised on the belief that humanity will only succeed in a cosmic sense if it finds a way to meet human needs, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of biological systems, accounting for the loss of natural resources from the economy, working social equity, regenerating human settlements and conserving natural capital."
"The very breadth of objectives to which ‘sustainability’ is put ... suggests that in ‘sustainability’ humanity has found a method to govern universal functioning about the Earth ‘island’."
Basiago A D (1995) Methods of defining 'Sustainability'' Sustainable Development Vol 3 109-119 (1995)
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