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...

Photo courtesy Kevin Dumler with collaborator NGO representative of Engineers In Action, Ruben Mamani Before arriving in Bolivia, I was unsure of how I would react to poverty.  I had seen poverty before, the homeless of Los Angeles’s skid row or immigrant families where I grew up in San Bernardino, but I knew none of this would compare with the poverty of Bolivia.  First driving from the airport, I knew I was in a place that was putting me far out of my comfort zone and was different from anywhere I had ever been.  I thought my reaction to this poverty was somewhat interesting.  I guess I somewhat expected to be overcome with sorrow at the living conditions of the people in Bolivia.  While I was shocked at the poverty, the only way my body could really take it was turn somewhat cold to it; to just zone it all while I am here.     What, perhaps, was even more surprising than the poverty was the income disparity between Bo...

           Within the first couple of hours of arriving to Quincucirca, we were given a tour of the path of the pipeline.  Just to get to the source was a trek in itself.  Most of the path had been cleared by community members with machetes, but the land was so steep and slippery that walking around was quite a challenge.  To get to the source took a few hours.  To walk the entire path of the pipeline (only 3.3 kilometers) took an entire day.  After spending hours looking at maps and designs, finally walking this terrain was a huge awakening!  Everything I had been studying came to life, and this was really satisfying. Photo courtesy Kevin Dumler Walking the pipeline             As of February, 2012, EWB-UC Davis had the vague goal of establishing drinking water for the community of Quincucirca.  However, none of us knew how unrealistic ...

 Me (Kevin Dumler) with community member Stefan Ander  Breakfast! To the local town mechanic Discussing which way to dig for water pipeline Me (Kevin) with our NGO partner representative Engineers in Action, Ruben Mamani The cleared location for the water tank Walking the path of the water line Quincucirca where we were working Photos courtesy Kevin Dumler, UC Davis undergraduate student in civil engineering

 Photo courtesy Lauren Pincus My field crew of recent high-school graduates after our ritual morning fuel stop. After salaries, fuel was my next highest expense. It took a month of starts and spurts, but eventually the rains came and more and more farmers began to clear land and plant their wet season crops. My field crew and I were ready for them when they did. I had had the good fortune of meeting a particularly motivated recent high-school graduate named Paul. Unfortunately, Paul had a rather typical Ugandan upbringing. He was orphaned at the age of four, and his sister and he were taken in by family members. His family was able to convince the school to waive his school fees in exchange for a portion of their maize and beans harvest, but, as the adopted child, his schooling would be the first to go if the family could no longer afford this arrangement. Fortunately for Paul, it was at school that he met an American man who had decided to spend his two week vacat...

The reality of climate change was yet again foremost in my mind. Normally its effects are relatively hidden away from the average American, but when traveling in a tropical region, you occasionally are hit in the face with some insidious reminder. This time I, along with thousands of Ugandan farmers, was desperately waiting for the rain to start. I was told that the rainy season began promptly at the start of March, but here we were, creeping into June and the dry season bore on. I had come to Uganda to begin my dissertation research for my Horticulture and Agronomy degree. Because of my work as a Graduate Student researcher on a HortCRSP-funded project in Uganda focusing on indigenous leafy greens (link here: http://hortcrsp.ucdavis.edu/main/12Nutrition.html ), my dissertation research would also be centered on this little-studied dynamic of African cropping systems. The questions were infinite: How often are these vegetables eaten? Do women mostly grow them or do men? How are they ...