Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
..systems to other technologies. For example, in the case of the cook stoves, with the ones
we have on the sides, they are a lot cleaner than traditional stoves but they still rely
on biomass. So, would you consider those temporary solutions until we have the infrastructure
in place for people to use electric cook stoves? Yes, so the question is--it's a great question:
are some of these appropriate solutions temporary or long term? Are they stepping stones to
some things in the future? Um, and I think the answer is it's a wild card--the answer
is, it depends. It depends on how long it would take for that infrastructure to reach
that state. In the meantime, is it one generation? Is it half a year? So, if it's one generation,
how many kids are going to die because of this? And so, that kind of--I mean, it's sad
to have to make that kind of calculations. But I think those are the kinds of things
that you have to think about. And so, let me give you the phone example. Was a landline
a temporary solution? Would you have waited 20 years for an iPhone in the meantime having
no landline? So, actually you may not know about landlines do you? Yes, at the back there.
How do you plan on educating the locals about the new system and motivating them to move
on to the new system? You mean the toilet? Um, well I'm just an engineer. We have--that
part is actually, in the field sites that we were at, because we've been there. They're
actually impatiently waiting for us to come up with something so they can test it. But,
that's not a scalable way of measuring behaviour change. You can't have people show up from
Canada and say "oh we're working on this one focus group--you know, what do you want and
what can we design for you?" and so there has to be something that involves local organizations
or local companies and local governments. And we are one part of it. Definitely nobody
is the solution for the entire value chain. In the context of the toilets, when you were
interacting with the local community, what was their perspective towards sanitation and
their use of toilets? Like, did they frame it as being problematic? Or did it just become
identified to them as such? Well, I think what happened was that they never thought
of it too much. And it might have been an annoyance but it was something that was accepted.
A very interesting thing happened, which was, we have a field coordinator in Bangladesh
and he would go back to the villages and just to maintain the relationship. Now, so he'd
go back on a regular basis. It took him a while to penetrate some of these communities.
Imagine if somebody comes into your house--a total stranger comes into your house and says
"may I clean your toilet please?" And, no, it takes a while to build up a trust so that
people would even talk to you about. But over time, because there was so much talk--and
we've visited quite a few times--and there was all the conversation about toilets and
about what people did. He noticed that, on repeat visits, that the toilets got cleaner
and cleaner. To the point where, you know, one of our sites may not be the best site
to test anymore because they actually do a pretty good job of maintaining sanitation
themselves. Well, I've read that in some countries in Africa specifically, open defecation is
kind of a cultural tradition because they did it in the past to prevent, you know, germs
from entering the house from faeces. So, how do you plan on adapting your current design
of the toilet to, kind of, eradicate this stigma? Again, the question is about behavioural
change. So, in some parts of Africa, open defecation being outdoors was practices so
that the germs wouldn't be inside the house. So, the toilets can actually be in a separate
building, outside of where people sleep and eat. But, probably a better answer to your
question is--I think Philip is speaking right? So when Professor Solomon speaks, ask him.
So, he's the expert on behaviour change. Okay, we'll take 2 more questions. One here, and
one there. Okay so somebody. So, I know that the model has to be redesigned and redesigned
again and again and has been adjusted many times. So, like, let's say in terms of, you
know, fuel efficiency and energy efficiency and stuff like that. How would we be able
to accommodate that and adjust that without actually building the models? So, great question,
how can you design something and iterate without actually building something. I'm going to
differ that question to Carmen because that's a GII question. Here. You've touched base
on this a bit earlier. Um, with regards to toilets, the reason why there has been such
hype about improving sanitation and redesigning the toilet is the initiative by the Bill Gates
Foundation. However, nothing of this sort has been done with cook stoves and if most
of us in this room hadn't been to this lecture today, I doubt we would have considered cook
stoves to be a pressing issue in the developing world. Do you believe it is possible to raise
efficient awareness in both developed and the developing world about cook stoves? Great
question. Is it possible to raise enough awareness about clean cook stoves? It's not quite right
that there hasn't been a high profile person paying attention to clean cook stoves. Hillary
Clinton actually launched a global awareness on the cook stoves--was it 2, 3 years ago?
There's some very very high power research organisations working on cook stoves. Actually,
let me just add one more thing. So, there is--everything we talked about, so the health
impact and the fuel efficiency for the poor people, the base of the pyramid, in India,
which is your study site. Now, probably aside from that, one of the things that we all should
care--even if we don't care about poor people in India--is that the use of inefficient cook
stoves, the use of charcoal for the cooking and industrial power in coal in India and
in China. A very big reason why air pollution is really really bad in some of these places.
If you've ever been to China. If you've been to China recently, is it possible to go to
any open places? There's smog everywhere, all day long. I was in China in January this
year, in ChengDu and NanJing--it's ridiculously air polluted. There's a hotel in NanJing--the
hotel uses these filters to keep the indoor air clean inside the hotel. It was filters
that were supposed to last about 6 months and you can replace them, wash them, and reuse
them. They had 3 sets of filters that they ran through every single day. And a lot of
that has to do with emissions from burning fuels. So, it's not just the poor people's
problem--as they become more and more industrialized. The cook stoves are part of it; industrial
plants are also a big part of it. Thank you very much. And I can answer more questions
if you have them, just approach me afterwards.