Smart Villages/LCEDN webinar series For more information, please go to e4sv.org https://e4sv.org/events/webinar-energy-and-transport Transport is an often overlooked aspect of rural development and linkage to energy access and productive use of energy in the developing world, but it is of critical importance. Not only does transportation rely on a source of energy (and hence transport can itself become a productive use of energy), but an effective transport infrastructure is a critical part of allowing mobility, access to markets, establishment of distribution chains (both to access energy generating equipment as well as marketing services, goods and products). In this webinar, we were joined by experts presenting on diverse aspects of this complex challenge, including Prof Gina Porter and Dr Arash Azizi of the University of Durham, Dipak Gyawali, former Minister of Water Resources in Nepal and Chair of the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, and Dr Ben Campbell from the UK Low Carbon Energy Development Network. As usual, we provided an opportunity for the participants joining the webinar to put questions to the speakers, for them to be answered during the session.

1. Energy and Transport
a case study in ac2on research from
northern Nepal
for Smart Villages
Ben Campbell
Department of Anthropology
University of Durham

2. Energy Tradi2ons and Transi2ons
• Innova2ng and adap2ng to new renewable
energy systems in many places requires
making use of what is already in place as the
transport infrastructure
• Hybrid DIY bricolage juxtaposed with
unprecedented globalisa2on seIng loose
infrastructure imaginaries
• Circular economy of energy conversion

3. Trisuli Valley looking north (before
earthquake landslides of 2015)

4. Northern Connec2vity
• Film: The Way of the Road
(cultureunplugged.com)
• Trade, religion, cultural and livelihood diversity,
learning and innova2on
• Local villagers from the Tamang-speaking
communi2es depended on seasonal portering
work between the entrepot towns of southern
Tibet and the bazaars of Nepali shopkeepers

5. ADB plans of na2onal infrastructure for poverty allevia2on

6. Langtang Na2onal Park checkpost at Dhunche

7. Mul2-species Energy Companions
• Flocks of sheep and goats used to be kept for
the purpose of carrying sacks of rice up the
trail and salt down the trail, weighing up 15kg
• Also mules, donkeys, and dzobru – a male
cross of yak and cow

8. Off grid, autonomous energy systems
• Emerging
community of
Renewable Energy
prac2ce
• Hybrid energy
stacking systems
suppor2ng resilient
agro-pastoral
economy

10. Low carbon energy

12. Anaerobic digester dome
3,250 m asl hybrid
designed assisted by AEPC

13. The muleteer has recently moved into supplying this trail. His 5
mules can together carry 130kg. The rate is rs.20 per kg for the
distance between the road and the cheese factory. He makes
about 7,000rs a day, and it costs 3,000rs in maize and chickpeas to
feed them.

14. Because the milking
chauri were a
couple of hours
away, we gathered
40 kg of mule dung
to do a training in
biogas digester
feedstock input.
The mule dung has
considerably more
roughage in it than
the chauri dung, so
proved more
difficult to work into
a creamy texture

15. Feeding the microbes

16. Biogas
for yak
cheese

17. It works!

18. Veg polytunnels for using the digestate

19. ‘The Universal Animal’ –fuel, milk,
meat, wool, transport, ploughing
A unifying concern
across all ICIMOD
countries and
threatened by climate
change
Voices of the yak
keeping communi2es
are systema2cally
marginalized in the
region
Very significant agent
in the understanding
of rangeland
biodiversity vs forest
science opposi2on to
livestock

20. • Electricity
poles being
installed in
2017 for…

21. Hydro dams and cable cars

22. Where there is no infrastructure –
a terra nullius ?
• Some outsiders’ perspec2ves (e.g. visitors from northern,
grid-centric backgrounds, or plains-people) might look at
the mountains and see a place of no infrastructure, where
hydro power could be installed, and roads built to facilitate
movement of goods and exper2se.
• But how well ahuned will externally inspired designs be to
the situated livelihood issues of the intended beneficiaries
of development projects?
• Or rethinking low carbon energy infrastructure as
rela2onships of mutual advantage in nego2a2ng posi2ons
of development need, deploying dis2nc2ve affordances of
locality, the innova2ve spirit of place (genius loci)