Monday, October 10, 2011

Focus Group Discussions in Laos

Last winter and spring a series of qualitative focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted in Laos as a part of the INES -project. The aim was to provide data on rural and urban resources and livelihood strategies in Laos that would support climate sensitive and sustainable natural resource policies, food security and poverty reduction. Together 14 FGDs were conducted in 6 provinces and in Vientiane capital (the picture below from Hadkhor village in Luang Prabang province). The criteria for selecting FGD participants required that they are in charge of making daily decisions on energy and food consumption in their households. The FGDs were conducted in Laotian and were translated into English by Bouasavanh Khanthaphat, who also moderated the FGDs.

The questions were divided into 4 categories: livelihood and food security; change in livelihood condition; coping strategies; and household energy management. I’ve had the interesting task to examine the data from FGDs more closely and here are some findings.

Together 10 FGDs were conducted in rural villages (both on- and off-grid) and groups comprised both men and women. The main topics were coping strategies, livelihoods, energy consumption and changes in these. In on-grid villages people have more resilience to changes in the environment, livelihoods and weather patterns. On-grid villages usually have irrigation systems for rice paddies and more electrical appliances to ease the work. On the other hand good connections to other areas provide more earning and consumption possibilities. In recent years rural villages have faced many man-made environmental changes. Dam projects have had a negative effect on fisheries and plantation projects have accelerated deforestation. Non-timber products are more difficult to find these days.

4 FGDs were conducted in Vientiane capital and there were separate groups for both sexes. All the interviewees had migrated from rural areas less than 5 years ago. The most important reasons for migration were better job opportunities, but many interviewees also wanted to see and experience new things and city life. Livelihoods in Vientiane are not as dependent on environment as life in villages. Earned income is spent to food, to gather savings and to help relatives. The life in the city was not found to be as comfortable as expected, but most of the migrants were planning to stay in Vientiane.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Signs of integration.

I arrived in Vientiane a couple of weeks ago. The city greeted me with heavy rain and a thunderstorm. Obviously it was a very heavy thunderstorm as they said in the local newspaper the next day that two elephants had been killed in the outskirts of the city by the lightning (!?). Now the weather has improved though and we haven’t had any rain this week (so far). One can hope the rainy season is over. Wishful thinking?

It was great to come back to Vientiane- this time long term as I’m planning to stay here for the next year and a half. In comparison to other Asian capitals with millions of inhabitants and endless traffic chaos I must say Vientiane is a quite atypical Asian capital with a slow beat and almost a sleepy feeling (although the number of vehicles has increased a lot just during the past few years here as well).

A few signs of slight integration into the Lao way of life are probably 1) wearing a sin which is a traditional skirt Lao women wear and can be found in various colours and embroideries. Yesterday I got my first sin done and it’s a beautiful sin! 2) Walking under an umbrella, not because it’s raining, but because it’s sunny. The 3rd step for me will be learning the language. On Monday I’ll start a 4 week crash course studying 3 hrs a day, 5 days a week. That will just be the beginning of it but I’m hoping I’ll get some basics. Luckily I have Dorn, Boua and Bouasy, plus night guards to practice with!

Work-wise I’ve so far mostly been fixing all kind of pratical issues related to the office and bureaucracy. Met some people from other organizations working in the same field, and on Wednesday I attended ERIA’s (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia) ”1st East Asian Summit Energy Efficiency Conference” which was hosted by the Ministry of Energy and Mines of Lao PDR. The conference was held at Lao Plaza and there were probably around 200 participants from various countries around East Asia. It was interesting to learn how the East Asian countries with varying levels of economic development have coped with energy efficiency issues. The presentations of the conference elaborated the different energy efficiency policies some East Asian countries had implemented, which I hope other countries can learn from. The conference also draw scenarios on future energy demand in the region, which obviously is increasing due to economic development, as well as pointed out challenges and opportunities for energy efficiency. In most countries energy efficiency was important firstly because of energy security issues and economic development. On 3rd place was climate change. One of the presentations (by UN ESCAP) underlined also the social aspects of energy and energy efficiency and its importance for development issues. Energy efficiency was also seen as an important source of energy as improving energy efficiency will give more energy out of the same amountof primary energy. Lao PDR’s hydro power potential was highlighted during the conference and the country was recognized as “the battery of the region” having substantial reserves and potential to feed the region with renewable energy..

Phob kan mei! (see you soon)

Hanna

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Workshop: Climate change from a Southern perspective

Last week a group of us from the FFRC team took part in a workshop organized by Kepa, an NGO that functions as a service base for Finnish development NGOs. Titled “Climate change from a Southern perspective”, the workshop presented the view from the grassroots level of how climate change and the increased amount of climate change projects and funding have affected local NGOs and civil society in the South. These perspectives were delivered to us by people from four of Kepa’s regional offices in Nicaragua, Tanzania, Mozambique and the Mekong region. Besides hearing of the climate policies and actions of these countries, the workshop also presented the concerns of local NGOs and civil society. The diversity of all the countries presented and their differing circumstances make it quite a challenge to generalize results, however, a few themes did stand out.

A cross-cutting concern voiced by all regional offices was the simultaneous challenge and opportunity presented by the increased amount of climate change funds available. On the one hand, there are large amounts of money available from both development banks and bilateral initiatives. Then again, it appears that national climate change policy planning debates are still very top-down, and civil society participation occurs late, if at all. The processes tend to be donor or money-driven, which raises the question of diverting attention away from more pressing issues, for example land grabbing in the Cambodian case. Finally, a large part of the money available is intended for mitigation projects, and especially local advocacy work receives little funding.

Another concern filtered from the various countries was the lack of knowledge at all levels of administration and public awareness. For example, the representatives from Tanzania and Mozambique told us several answers to the question “What is climate change?”, ranging from ideas about drought and floods to confusion with ozone depletion. The confusion over the causes and consequences of climate change is heightened by the lack of reliable data. In many cases, climate change seems to have become an umbrella term under which to pinpoint all local environmental problems.

Despite all the concerns voiced, there arose possibilities for local NGOs and civil society. Since a large part of climate finance projects are still at an initial level, the opportunities for influencing their direction still exist. However, many voiced concerns that local civil society would merely be used to legitimize government policies or implement projects as advised by international donors.

Specifically from the Mekong region, we heard the insights of Timo Kuronen from Kepa’s regional office in Bangkok. Timo commented on the difficulty to find information on climate change funding in the region. Certainly the rapidly increasing amount of funds, especially to Clean Development Mechanism projects in Thailand and Vietnam, affect this. Otherwise the civil society concerns voiced by Timo differed greatly based on national circumstances. For example, Cambodian NGOs were mainly concerned about climate change projects diverting attention and funds away from more pressing issues. In Thailand, the active discussions on climate justice by the Thai Working Group on Climate Justice (TCJ) succeeded in pushing local mitigation effects into the agenda of the Thailand’s National Master Plan on Climate Change (2010-2019).

On the whole the workshop gave us at FFRC an overview of what is currently happening and how local civil societies are reacting. Based on the active questions and discussions, I’m sure we all left with new information and a will to attend more events like this.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

A Busy Maytiane Week

Two seminars were arranged in Vientiane with the cooperation of Finland Futures Research Centre and Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) of Lao PDR, within the last week of May 2011. First one was the final FREPLA (Future Economy and Policies of Laos 2020) seminar, and it was followed by the kick-off workshop of INES, Interlinkages Between Energy and Livelihoods. I and the rest of the FFRC team present had the pleasure to take part in both, even though my personal contribution has been a great deal bigger for the INES project.

The FREPLA seminar was the fifth and the final to be held. Besides the FFRC staff, the participants attended were mainly government officials. Topics covered were diverse: from indicators of sustainable development to energy power plants and demand predictions. The future-orientated issues, forecasts and plans, seemed to interest the most and raise a fair amount of discussion.

INES workshop was the first one of the project. The participants represented various departments on provincial level. An interesting twist in the workshop was the fact that every presentation, question and comment was simultaneously translated into either Lao or English, depending on the language of the original speaker. Luckily, we were blessed with the exact right person for the job (many thanks to Dorn!), and the conversation flew smoothly.

A number of very important issues were taken up and discussed. Importance of reliable data availability was recognized. Consequently, organizing and funding continuous, systematic data collection was seen as a key priority in terms of future planning and preparing. Some practical means for the reduction of energy consumption were also suggested. The need for training for energy and population modeling was brought up several times which, in fact, happens to be the next step of the project.

In addition to the organisers and participants, the two seminars attracted the local press. Vientiane Times wrote two articles, one of each assembly, on top of which a picture of Jyrki Luukkanen handing out the laptops to the INES participants was published separately. Evidence of the latter, originally published on the 1st of June 2011, is attached below. We also made it to the news of Lao National Television! Unfortunately though, everyone in our team missed the big show on-air.

All in all, our team and all our local partners had a busy but rewarding week in Vientiane this May. In order to get a deeper insight on the topics, all the presentations can be viewed and downloaded at Publications - Powerpoint Presentations on our Mekong-website.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Setting up the office in Vientiane

As Finland Futures Research Centre opened the office in the capital of Laos, Vientiane, I had the honor to be the one setting up all the practical matters in the house. The house is used for office and living purposes and there will always be staff in the house. I arrived to the city 30th of March and was ready to pick up the keys for the office next day. It is my first time in Laos, and the first evening already I really liked the city. Streets were full of street vendors, steam rising from the pots, Lao language echoing in my ears, warm wind from the Mekong – they all infiltrated into my mind. Calm, but at the same time lively atmosphere fascinated me! Quite often the first impression is the one that counts and that happened to me as well – I still feel the same way! During the first two days I also remember thinking that I could not see any rats on the streets, and because of that I considered the city to be very exceptional Asian city in this sense. Very little I knew that time.

First days I was busy to shop the articles we needed for living in the house, such as basic things like sheets, towels and kitchen utilities. Shopping in a new city is always time consuming but fun! Quickly I got to know these helpful and friendly people of Laos. As an example, a very helpful worker in the mall unpacked and set up the whole tent-like mosquito net for us - just to see the size of it - and eventually it appeared to be too small for our office beds. It felt almost a crime not to buy it as he made such a hard work with presenting it for us. I learned quite soon also the most important sentence in here: “baw pen nyang”; “It is ok”, or “Never mind”. I was also amazed about the supply of the goods – I did not expect it to be so easy to get the things we had listed in Finland.

After staying a couple of days in the house, I found out that in addition to me and my colleague, there were others living in the house as well. Rats. I did not see them on the streets – maybe because they were all living in the house with me! One morning a rat was climbing up the stairs when I was coming downstairs. I think we both got equally frightened – and maybe the rat heard Finnish swore words for the first time in its life! Later I and my colleague met a rat also in the kitchen – poor rat was so confused that it ran first towards me and then my colleague – causing of course a lot of jumping and screaming in the kitchen. After these a couple of involuntary meetings, I decided to offer poisonous dinner for those little animals. It was a success –they seemed to enjoy the meal I prepared! I stayed tuned for the results. I knew the disadvantages of the poison, as when using it, I could not be in charge of the recycling process of the remains. So, as I was afraid of, it turned out that the rats were killed inside the walls, and I think it is easy for you to imagine the smell of a rotten rat body in almost +40C degrees heat. Luckily the worms are very active in here, so the smell of the house was gone in a few days. So, for now, I declare the Finland Futures Research Centre office in Vientiane as a rat-free area! And at the same time I am being a bit afraid that they will return…

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

World Bank Newsletter: Powering the People of Cambodia

The World Bank has produced a newsletter on its energy projects in Cambodia: with headlines such as Power to People. The newsletter from December 2010 can be downloaded here. It offers interesting reading on the achievements and targets of World Bank’s rural electrification programs in Cambodia. Interestingly the main stage seems to be set for grid extensions and grid connections whereas the off-grid elements and small-scale renewable energy are not receiving much attention.

World Bank supported Rural Electrification Fund seem to have performed well in its new connection program in terms of reaching the targets. At the same time the off-grid components appear to be lacking behind. But these aspects are not explored in the newsletter. Both the grant assistance for solar companies and for the small hydropower and biomass have been almost complete failures. Last year the solar program was revised and Cambodia started to follow Laos model on solar home systems i.e. a bulk purchase model with a several years payment scheme for the users. The ambitious plan is to have 12 000 installments by January 2012.

The slow progress on sustainable renewable energy solutions is unfortunate as Cambodia is truly at the crossroads. The current situation of low electrification and lack of more traditional centralized gird systems could offer a chance for “leapfrogging”. This would require ambitious and serious thinking of how to enable and empower small and very small power producers. A promising base for this direction has been laid by a report Powering 21st Century Cambodia with Decentralized Generation authored by Grynne Ryder.

Under our DREAM-project we continue to assess the reasons for failures and success of renewable energy projects in Cambodia and Laos.