Appropriate Technologies Are the Proper Frame for the New Green Economy

Rio+20 is focused, in part, on the theme of “a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.” The fact that sustainable development and poverty eradication are placed clearly as constraints on the word economy implies, at the very least, that conventional ideas of economy will not serve our purpose. So, if the status quo will not serve, as it has not, to deliver a more sustainable form of development, and one that moves us more firmly toward poverty alleviation, where are we to look?

Mahatma Gandhi's call for a village-oriented development model, and E.F. Schumacher's arguments in his "Small is Beautiful," together represent a coherent vision for an alternative form of development that would serve us well in our own day and age. The dialogue toward a new green economy would be well served by taking these ideas into account in a central way.

Some have argued that our impact upon the planet is a function of how many of us there are, how much stuff we use, and how efficient our technologies are at mitigating waste. At the very least, we must recognize that the sorts of technologies we choose to use are a central factor shaping our impact upon our world.

Appropriate Technologies began to rise in the 1970s and '80s, but wilted in the face of the modernization discourse driven by the proto-globalization movement of that era. The World Bank's "structural adjustment" policies, the "Washington Consensus," the drive to scale-up privatization, and the seduction of Western ways of life propagated by Hollywood and Bollywood ensured that the ideas inherent in the Appropriate Technologies movement would remain perceivedly inferior. Who, after all, would want a composting toilet when you could aspire to flushing toilets? Why use a solar cooker when you could call for propane stoves instead?

Back in the 1970s, India, for example, had a very healthy Appropriate Technologies scene—there were any numbers of national and regional research institutions, generating precious information, experimenting vigorously, and compiling voluminous data on the modes, methods and performance of a huge variety of such technologies—ranging from experiments on solar cookers to windmills to alternative building materials and techniques. Always, such technologies were based on the idea that they be context-sensitive, appropriately low-tech, and always low-cost.

But the hedonism of the 1980s and the ‘90s ensured that such technologies shrank back into the undergrowth of the grass-roots. They were kept alive, however, by the dedication and vision of a inspired few, determined individuals and groups who knew, with foresight and certainty, that the call to “proper action” would lead the world, ultimately, to a healthy balancing of the global by the local.

The spiral winds around, however, and we come now to a place where the inexorable forces of capitalistic globalization have begun to give rise once more to a call for a healthy and countervailing localization.

Appropriate Technologies are technologies that are simple, labor intensive, and small-scale. As such, they are the proper vehicle for moving the new green economy forward.

Differently put, if corporate capitalism is the thing to be countered, and if globalization is the mechanism by which corporate capitalism advances itself, then the proper response to these forces is the complex of a grassroots localism, and Appropriate Technologies are its modality.

Let us be clear on two things. First, corporate capitalism is here to stay. There is no way that the Washington Consensus and the Juggernath that is the move to privatization can be undone. Globalization is not going to go away any time soon.

Second, there are real constrains imposed upon us by planetary biogeochemical processes, and that as we move toward a fuller world we will be driven to find an alternative to growth economics. Localization’s day has come.

These two factors represent the essential tension that we must find some way to reconcile. Consider the meme of Yin and Yang. In that light, we need to find some way to interstice globalism and localism. Let corporate capitalism have a field day. But let us make sure that grassroots localism comes out into the sunshine too.

If we must deal with the idea of green economies, let us make sure that the discussion balances out between the interests of corporate capitalism and the needs of a grassroots localism. At the very least, let us be sure that the caveats of sustainable development and of poverty eradication continue to constrain the notion of green economies. And let us be sure that we put concerns for equity and for human rights front and center in the discourses that shape our debates.