Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

No fewer than three of this year?s overseas finalists in the Ashden Awards are micro-hydro projects. From the Hindu Kush to the slopes of Mount Kenya, the hills are flowing with power ? as evidenced by these Ashden Awards finalists.Pakistan?s North West Frontier is hardly the place most people would go looking for a good news story ? but that just goes to show how the narrow focus of the media shrinks a vast region into a single turbulent war zone. In the high valleys of the Hindu Kush, north of Peshawar, there?s a series of small revolutions underway, and they don?t involve Al Qaeda or warring tribesmen. These are a simpler, sweeter, more literal kind of revolution: the sort that happens when rushing water strikes a turbine and spins it round to create electricity. Micro-hydro power, in other words, which is transforming the lives of nearly 20,000 households in the hills of Chitral, up against the Afghan border.
By bringing light to the long mountain evenings, it?s opened up huge opportunities for impoverished villages. Instead of smoky, sputtering pine resin torches, and the odd pricey and cumbersome kerosene lamp, there?s the simplicity of electric light. That means children have more of a chance to study ? one that is willingly seized by kids for whom education isn?t a tiresome drag, but a ticket out of poverty ? and their schools have computers.
It means adults have time to earn desperately needed cash by making traditional clothes and handicrafts, like fine woollen capes and shawls, or intricate beadwork. Many have seen their income treble as a result ? bringing huge improvements in their standard of living, and, incidentally, far more money than goes out in electricity bills.
?For the first time, I have eyes in the night.?
But there are more mundane benefits, too ? like being able to avoid that deadly scorpion scuttling across your path on your way to the loo. As one old man told me: ?For the first time, I have eyes in the night.?
For women in particular, it lifts a heavy weight of drudgery from some of the most tedious, time-consuming chores. Churning butter by hand may sound folksy and romantic, but if you?re exhausted by a day?s work in the fields, it?s another chunk of hard labour you can do without. Electric butter-churners, along with simple washing machines, have given women a freedom they didn?t dare imagine. TV, too, has fast taken hold, bringing everything from news and soaps to sports reports (even the Hindu Kush is prey to Pakistan?s cricket mania). ?We women love the cooking programmes,? said one, ?and now that our daughters have learnt to read, they can write down the recipes for us!?
But along with its undoubted benefits, won?t TV bring consumerism crashing into pristine valleys? Up to a point, perhaps ? but keeping globalisation at bay through poverty and darkness is hardly a sustainable, let alone ethical, strategy. And while electricity may drag the outside world, warts and all, into the villagers? homes, it also gives them the chance of improving their livelihoods to a point where they don?t have to face a choice between grinding poverty at home, and joining the flood of migrants seeking hazardous, menial work in faraway cities.
Unlike the huge dams which seal up a river and play havoc with the ecosystem downstream, micro-hydro is a technology which treads lightly down the valleys. Rather than dam the whole river, villagers simply dig a narrow channel which diverts a fraction of the water along the hillside, running along the side of the valley, down a much gentler incline than the stream below. Once the height difference is big enough, the water from the channel is sent rushing down a pipe and into the powerhouse beneath, with sufficient force to produce up to 50 kW of power ? enough to light hundreds of homes. Then it?s simply released back into the river.
Over 180 micro-hydro plants have now been installed all across Chitral by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP). This NGO works not only with Ismaili communities (for whom the Aga Khan is spiritual leader), but with Sunni Muslims too, as well as the Kalash people ? non-Muslims living in three valleys just east of the Afghan border, who proudly claim to be descended from the armies of Alexander the Great, passing through en route to India?.
Villagers contribute around 40% of the costs of the plant (mostly in the form of labour), and choose committees who run the scheme on a day-to-day basis, setting and collecting payments, including special concessions for the poorest families. Where necessary, they ration more energy-hungry uses, such as washing machines, to avoid overloading the system. They?re also trained in basic maintenance, so they can ensure the plant?s running smoothly.
Longer term, AKRSP is looking to introduce heftier micro-hydro plants with enough power for cooking and heating ? so easing a chronic firewood shortage which is threatening the future of all Chitral?s mountain communities. Meanwhile, the villagers? enthusiasm shines from their faces. One old Kalash woman summed it up simply: ?It?s brought us from darkness to light.?
From micro to minnow?.
There?s micro, and then there?s seriously micro. On the slopes of Mount Kenya, a stream so small you could jump across has been tapped to bring power to a village far from the country?s ailing electricity grid. Compared to Chitral, this one?s a minnow, generating just 1.3 kW ? still enough, however, to give Kathamba?s 50 homes a light and a power socket each [see also Small is Powerful supplement, GF37]. As in Pakistan, the community provides most of the labour, and a couple of villagers are trained in basic maintenance. Every household contributes to the cost, via an ?installation fee? of around