Our literature reviews and experiment descriptions are ready now, as part of our objectives to gather information about certain traditional technologies and to conduct experiments in order to test the implementation effort outside their traditional area of application. The reviewed technologies cover food production, water treatment and energy generation:
The history of the use of blue-algae as a high value food source
Fast growing algae as a nutrition source of the future is not only an
idea found in science fiction books, or case studies of NASA. In fact
the WHO describes on especially promising species Arthospira/Spirulina
platensis as a “Health-improving-Agent” (Reder, 2003) and other aid
organisations have already used these algae in various settings. It has
also become a “trendy” health food supplement in the industrialized
countries, and is therefore produced at an industrial scale.
The use of algae goes much further back in history
than one would believe however. In 1940 the French occupation troops of
French Equatorial Africa (now Republic of Chad) made a strange
discovery on on of the markets of Massakory, a village near Lake Chad.
Their pharmacist described a material called Dihe, which was consumed
by the local population. These green mats consisted of dried blue-algae
(the cyanobacteria Arthospira/Spirulina platensis) the local population
collected in small ponds around the lake, and which where used as an
ingredient for various meals (Ciferri, 1983). This use seems to go back
to the 9th century Kanem empire and has continued until today mostly by
the local tribe of the Kanembu (Abdulqader, 2000).
Usually one can find this blue-algae in most of the alkali lakes (pH
8-11) in that area, where they are by far the most abundant species,
and provide the well adjusted lesser flamingoes with their main source
of food; In fact they have evolved to be able to filter them very
efficiently out of the water (Ciferri, 1983).
25 years later this same discovery was reconfirmed
by a better equipped research team, which analysed these bacterial mats
more carefully and found them to be a extremely valuable source of
proteins for human consumption (up to 60-70 % of the dry
weight)(Ciferri, 1983).
About the same time scientists also discovered that
before the Spanish conquest, it seemed to be quite common around the
lake of Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City) to consume another, but
closely related blue-algae: Arthospira/Spirulina maxima. With fine nets
it was collected from the lake and then baked into special breads
called Tecuitlatle. But historians can only find descriptions of this
practise in Mexico until the end of the 16th century, when this
practise seems to have become forgotten (Ciferri, 1983).
Depiction of harvest of spirulina and the cakes made from the algae.
Illustration from the Florentine Codex, Late 16th century. (Public
Domain/Wikipedia)
Thus today only the common traditional use in east Africa remains, but
due to its extremely efficient protein production, its other nutritious
values and the relatively easy production it is likely that the growth
of this algae is also possible in an poor urban area with relatively
simple means.
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On the history of water coagulation
One example for the rich history of TK is the use of natural coagulants for purification of turbid waters. Already as early as the 1st century A.D. One can find historical records from India describing such a practice. But in fact historians believe that oral traditions might go back even much further. However in this ancient Indian text (the Sushruta samhita) some relatively vague description of water coagulation are presented, one of which even today can be easily identified as the use of the seeds of the Kataka plant (Strychnos potatorum L.) (Jahn, 1981 & 1994).
Other records, only slightly younger and probably influenced by its Indian precursors, can be found from the 2nd century A.D. in China. These ancient traditions where adapted to the Chinese climate however, as Kataka plants do not grow very well in these harsher climate conditions: The people of China found out that apricot kernels where just as potent for this tasks as the Kataka seeds. From further historical texts it becomes clear that this technique was really a wide spread practice, especially of the poorer population which was forced to rely on the turbid waters of the main rivers.
Later Islamic traders picked up the knowledge from China and transferred it to the Arabian world. European travelers first described it in the 16th century in China, but more detailed descriptions where made from the (yet again adapted) practises in Egypt. These texts from the same time period, e.g. the end of the 16th century, describe yet again a wide spread practise of the poor, who had to rely on the turbid waters of the Nile. Some confusion exists (do to translations difficulties of the Arab trade language) whether it was almonds they used, or also the cheaper and more accessible a apricot kernels. Yet the practise was similar enough, and further south where apricot trees do not grow some other plants (mostly broad beans = Vicia faba) were used (Jahn, 1994).
It was there in Sudan where the yet most potent natural coagulant was found by a village woman in the early 20th century. A tree introduced by the English from India (yet strangely enough no record of its use as a water coagulant from there exist), Moringa oleifera (also known as the horseradish tree) has seeds with a remarkable strength in clearing turbid waters (Jahn, 1981, 1986 & 1994).
Subsequently the use of this tree (which has also a wide range of other uses, as described later) spread to many other places in Africa though local spread of knowledge (Jahn, 1986 & 1994).
On the other side of the world, in South America similar yet independently developed, techniques can be also found. Chilean historians of the 19th century describe a practise of the native Peruvians and Chileans to use tuna cactus (Opuntia ficus indica) as a natural coagulant. Even older text from the 16th and 17th century also mention Peruvian sailors using a powder called pitu as a mean to clear water. This powder was prepared from roasted grains of Maize (Zea mays) (Jahn, 1981).
However not very many communities around the world can be found still using this TK, and thus it would make sense to investigate if this lost knowledge is worth being reintroduced.
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Introduction
Sack gardening is a form container
gardening that can be practised in densely populated areas where a
garden plot is usually not available for most parts of the local
population. Like other forms of urban gardens that can be found
worldwide since the existence of cities, i.e. roof, backyard or
community gardens, they all complement the nutrition of their owners by
providing vegetables, herbs and staples (Marsh, 1998). From that
perspective sack gardens doesn’t represent a traditional gardening
system as its application is more beneficial to slum population or to
people that life in other forms of densely populated environments such
as camps, where arable land is scarce (Forbes, 2009) and access to the
inputs for agricultural production is limited or non-existent, for
example due to the lack of cash (Pascal, Mwende, 2009). Additional
factors such as rising world market prices and violence intensify the
vulnerability of the urban poor population further by limiting their
access to food which results in malnutrition and increasing
vulnerability to diseases. Therefore, the objective of sack gardening
is to increase the access to food, thus increasing the food security
and to provide means of gaining an income by selling possible surplus
food (Pascal, Mwende, 2009).
Sack gardening as a form of
container gardening has no long tradition, at least no literature was
found which mentioned the usage of sack gardens in ancient times, and
is recently applied only in development projects for the improvement of
food access for the food insecure in cities and displacement camps
(Solidarités, 2009 and Forbes, 2009). Therefore, gardens in sacks
address those people that normally won’t benefit from development
projects that try to improve the nutrition of the community and which
are often criticised because they exclude by the default all people
with limited or no access to land at all (Marsh, 1998). Further
criticism states in general that garden projects often fail because
local or traditional knowledge, local climatic and environmental
conditions as well as social and resource supply conditions are not
taken into account (Brownrigg, 1985 cited in Marsh, 1998). It is
therefore important not to consider sack gardening, only because it is
relatively easy to set up, as a convenient way to improve food access
of the people. Every community possess is own local and traditional
knowledge about crops, climate, etc. That holds also true for
communities in cities or camps as they often come from a rural
background possessing their own knowledge about agriculture. That
specific local knowledge must be taken into account when setting up a
sack garden in a specific community transforming sack gardening into a
local technology. In general it seems to be consensus that local and
traditional knowledge of the community or an individual family must
always be taken into account when implementing development projects
that address nutrition issues (Marsh, 1998).
"It is essential to
build on the indigenous gardening skills within the family, especially
with regard to cultivation and use of native and wild plants,
experience with mixed cropping and intercropping and traditional
methods of conserving water and combating pests." (Marsh, 1998)
Introduction
A windmill is a man-built structure, used to produce mechanical movement on a helix/shaft system by means of the kinetic energy of the wind. The picture of the modern windmill comes from the 19th century. By that time, windmills started to have great impact on water pumping thanks to a steam pump invented by Thomas Savery, who thought in installing it to watermills (Hills, R. 1996). By last decade of 19th century, the windmill (the Brush postmill in Ohio) was first used to generate electricity, by coupling the windmill shaft to an electrical generator. Nowadays, due to concerns of energy security and sustainability, the windmill has been revived as a medium to produce electricity. By 2008 the installed capacity of wind energy was of 121.188 Megawatts, with a generation of 260TWh, which represents about 1,5% of worldwide electricity production (WWEA, 2008). But it is not in the last two centuries that windmills have been built and used by men. The power of the wind was already noticed in antiquity, when men started to use it to move ships faster and against the water current. Many ancient books, e.g., religious books like the Bible, the Qur’an, etc., describe the use of wind for nautical purposes.
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When looking at the development of this semester-project one can also identify several points where the same processes occurred which might have let to difficulties in the implementation of other TK based projects.
During the initial planning phase a very general idea was put forward and agreed upon to work with the concept of community and/or traditional knowledge. This was inspired by some seemingly successful projects we had heard about, like the Barefoot colleges in India. But at that point the overall level of information was low and it also seemed like these concepts were highly promising but underutilized in development cooperation. In retrospect one has to admit however that to a certain extent we still had an what El Berr (2007) calls an idealizing concept of TK.
During the second phase the idea was to conduct some research in the general literature concerning TK related concepts and their prior use. Relatively quickly it became clear, that those concepts were not quite as underutilized as we had originally thought. Not only had there been many previous projects spanning back several decades, but also a some dedicated research concerning the use of TK and the issues related to it (see introduction).
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Since the objectives and goals of this semester-project are covering a relatively broad field of topics and are for the most part intentionally based on a theoretical and modular concept (see the expired concept-building introduction), it seemed like we should also investigate a few of these concepts in more practical detail.
We hope that this allows us to avoid creating a purely theoretical work, exclusively based on 3rd party data. It should also allow us to work beyond of what one can find in the published literature, as the aim of this semester-project is also to propose possibilities for the transfer of TK to situations not yet covered by the existing texts.
Therefore we decided to select some of the concepts covered in this report for these experiments. Criteria for making this selection were ease of implementation, costs, transferability to the European climate, and space as well as time needed. For the most part the actual experiments should therefore fall into the most low-tech and low-cost category of the TK systems proposed.
Furthermore we think that actually trying to use the concepts suggested by us would make a good litmus test for them, because if we fail to implement them it would also shed some light on the ease of implementation in the actual settings proposed.
Of course not all of the TK we discuss in this report can be easily transferred and investigated in actual experiments in a external, e.g. non in situ setting, but the following examples provide a partial outlook on which experiments we chose to experiment with.
Until now we didn’t put the Problem statement and Hypothesis of our project online. Thus, here they are… Problem statement and Hypothesis helped us to clearly isolate the objectives for the project and gave us a direction for our work. Defining the problem statement and hypothesis was finally possible after conducting a detailed literature research about the complex meaning of TK.
After a number of protocols always writen in new innovative styles,
forms and colors we were a bit tiered inventing the wheel over and over
again and thus created a template for writing protocols. The template is available is [doc] and [odt]format and can be found in the Tools album in Resources
http://tk.noblogs.org/album/tools
The Tools resource album is the place where we put all reusable stuff in it which probably simplify life a bit…
As our project is going to be finished soon we are going to put all the stuff online that we were working on the last couple of weeks. First, all our meeting protocols are online now and provide a nice insight how the objectives of the project changed from a more idealized point of view of Traditional/Local Knowledge to a more realistic view. The protocols can be found under
http://tk.noblogs.org/category/protocol
Each protocol is linked to a corresponding pdf-file. All protocol pdf’s can be found under Resources in the album Protocols