UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Water treatment systems in developing countries often fail. Many times systems are designed with inappropriate technologies. They use expensive components that are difficult to obtain and contain complex systems that require maintenance beyond the financial and educational capacity of the local community. Furthermore, communities often lack the incentive to use or maintain systems, regardless of simplicity. This tends to occur when the educational and cultural component of water systems are overlooked. At Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, many international organizations have built large centralized wastewater treatment systems that ultimately failed. The continued lack of water treatment has manifested in the spread of diarrhea and cysticercos infections from pork tapeworm. as well as cyanobacterial blooms within the lake that are indicative of degrading water quality.  The blooms threaten to derail the economic health of the basin, which is built on tourism. If Lake Atitlan continu...

by Daniel Zussman Bryan Pon and Edward Silva: Inspiring new distribution models for low-cost solar/LED lighting. Photo Courtesy Siva Gunda In late summer of 2012, a two-person team from UC Davis consisting of Geography graduate student Bryan Pon and International Agricultural Development undergraduate Edward Silva set out on a one-month venture to Lusaka, Zambia to develop and test a distribution model for the sale of solar/LED portable lights they hope can replace the widespread use of kerosene lamps in the African nation and elsewhere. The solar portable innovation, known as the “SMART Light” was developed by the UC Davis Program for International Energy Technologies with the help of a $200,000 award from the World Bank. Photo Courtesy Bryan Pon The technology was designed to bring safe, affordable light to the developing world, where an estimated 1.5 billion people lack access to electricity and must rely on fuel-based lighting such as kerose...