Keywords

Nanodialogues; Zimbabwe; public engagement; nanotechnologies; Practical Action

39.1 Nanotechnologies and developing countries

We live in a rapidly changing world. Technological advances are increasing productivity and income, quality of life, and life expectancy, in the developed world, that is. The truth is that technological development is focused on meeting the wants of rich consumers. Scant attention is paid to the vital needs of people in the developing world. Each new technology that comes along tends to result in a wider gap between the rich and the poor in the world. Yet some innovations fail to be applied in developing countries where there is the need. The founder of the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now known as Practical Action) observed that: “new technologies are developed only when people of power and wealth back the development” [1]. The challenge is to ensure that nanotechnologies are applied to areas of need in developing countries.

Porritt [2] has argued that to enable sustainable development we need to work with the market system and not against it. This means understanding the market mechanisms, understanding the innovation processes, and then working with the key stakeholders to enable business models that will deliver on human need rather than on consumer wants. With existing technologies this becomes a challenge because the business models, including the supply chain logistics, are already well established. In the case of new technologies there is a window of opportunity before products are released into the market to negotiate new business models.

In a global economy, many topical issues—for example, sustainable development, climate change, and democracy—are all influenced by the role of science and technology in society. A major challenge is to release public value from science and technology and to channel that public value into developing countries to help reduce poverty [3]. The concept of public value used here refers to value generated by science and technology that is not solely reaped by the market. The central topic of releasing public value from science in a global context is one of the most significant and challenging issues facing societies throughout the world today.

Low-income countries are not only poor in terms of measures of human well-being but are also poor in terms of indicators of technology. They spend a small proportion of GDP on research and development: less than 1 percent compared to high-income countries that spend around 2.5 percent. The number of scientists in low-income countries is less than 50 per 100,000 people compared to over 3,000 in high-income countries. Technology has failed to meet the needs of the poor, with 1.2 billion people living on less than 1 US$ per day. At the centre of these deliberations is the essence pointed out by Sachs [4] that “the single most important reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them.”

The challenge faced might be reframed as being one of “how do we enable nanotechnologies to deliver products which fulfil human needs rather than consumer wants?”

39.2 How can nanotechnologies deliver public value?

The role of technology in development is perhaps even more important in the new century than it was in the last. In the era of globalisation, new technologies are rapidly reshaping the livelihoods and lifestyles of people throughout the world. The pace of technological change is increasing, and is beyond the capacity of society to understand and regulate its impacts—even when the implications are profound and far reaching, as is the case with nanotechnologies.

Most scientific and technological research is now in the private sector, producing research for Northern wants rather than Southern needs. Small-scale farmers and the informal sector give little attention to small-scale technological innovation.

Knowledge and communication-based industries are rapidly reshaping the global economy. Many believe that these trends are contributing to a new “knowledge divide” between the information-rich and the information-poor. There is an increasing sense of urgency—in the North and in the South—over the need to regain control over the ways nanotechnologies are developed and used. It is not recognised widely enough that the poor are able to innovate themselves, and innovations arising from developing countries need to be increasingly recognised and supported.

Traditional views of technology that rely on a linear model of innovation and diffusion are not appropriate to programmes that aim to respond to new technologies [5]. The predominant traditional view has been based on technological determinism. As Winner [6] suggested, “the adoption of a particular technical system requires the creation of a particular set of social conditions as the operating environment of that system.” Such thinking leads to a technological push philosophy as embodied in the motto of the 1933 Chicago World Fair, “Science explores, technology executes, man conforms” [7]. The worldview on which this philosophy is based is predominantly “Northern,” where the power is vested in global enterprises with large research and development budgets and where markets have developed to approximate to monopoly conditions. An example of this is the domination of Microsoft in the market for software. Practical Action views technology as not only meaning the hardware or technical infrastructure, but also the information, knowledge, and skills that surround it, and the capacity to organise and use these.

Thinking from science and technology and the international development traditions were brought together in a recent book edited by Leach, Scoones, and Wynne [8]. The traditional deficit model of public engagement was criticised and a number of themes were articulated, including the issue of how risk is framed and communicated. Wilsdon et al. [3] call for the direction of science to be built on notions of public value. The notion of public value raises issues about equity, efficiency, and the very purpose of science. Those concerned with the ethics of development [9] and the philosophy of science are also making valuable contributions to this debate.

An alternative view of technology is required. Grove-White et al. [10] have suggested that technologies need to be seen as social processes. This alternative view must recognise the role of the user (Southern poor) and the context provided by the cultural and political environment in which the user is based. The distinction being made here has been labelled “technology in use” by Edgerton [11] who argues that the historical emphasis on technology innovation is misleading. Much technology that is in use in the world is adapted or imitated rather than innovated.

The quest to ensure that all people have access to clean drinking water is now enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals. Often approaches to providing water for poor communities have been driven either by economics or by technology. The economics route might typically centre on the importance of regulations, institutions, and open markets whereas the technology approach might focus on designing a water pump, filter system, or novel application of nanotechnology. Yet we know that the technology for providing clean water has been known about and in use for thousands of years (e.g., the Romans around 300 BC). Failure to solve the issue might also be seen as a cultural or indeed political or managerial problem.

39.3 Nanodialogues in Zimbabwe

In 2006, researchers from Demos, Practical Action, and the University of Lancaster collaborated on a process designed to engage Zimbabwean community groups and scientists from both the North and South in debates about new (nano)technologies [12].

The dialogue was one of four experiments, collectively referred to as the nano-dialogues, in public engagement with nanotechnologies, funded by the Office of Science and Technology’s “Sciencewise” programme. Sciencewise was created to foster interaction between scientists, government, and the public on impacts of science and technology.

Governments, companies, and NGOs are all talking about nanotechnology as “The Next Big Thing.” Alongside the promise of new worthwhile opportunities comes uncertainty about risks, ethics, and the benefits to those people who are too often left out of conversations about the ends of technology—the poor. The potential benefits of the applications of nanotechnologies in developing countries are exciting. But the conversation linking the needs of people in developing countries to the resources and scientific knowledge of researchers around the world needs to be nurtured.

Epworth is a suburb of Harare, but it feels rural. It is just outside the Harare city limits, which means it is cut loose from the support of the city. In 2005 it was the scene of some of the harshest of the slum clearances that formed Robert Mugabe’s “Operation Murambatsvina” (“Drive Out Trash”), which left thousands homeless. It is framed by outcrops of rock that have been worn away to resemble meticulously stacked balls. The balancing rocks are famous—they appear on the 10,000 dollar banknote. In the distance, you can see the electricity pylons of Harare’s suburbs. But the telegraph poles around Epworth carry no cables. Plans for electricity and telephone lines were abandoned before completion.

Epworth gets its water from a combination of shallow wells and springs (Figure 39.1). The water brought up from the well looks clean enough, but with the pollution from the city, it’s impossible to tell what it contains. “We’re supposed to check,” shrugs our guide, who acts as one of the community leaders. Nearby, a new well is being created. At the bottom of a six-metre pit, a man is filling a bucket with wet sand. His colleagues pull up the bucket and pile the sand around the pit’s edge. It has taken two days so far, and will take another three. Then they need to seal it and put a lid on it. The well is next door to a pit latrine. It is far from ideal, which is why new sanitation methods are so important. Though Epworth is cut off, it is near enough to the city to be cramped. There is little space, and the well needs to be dug where there is water.

Any conversation about technology in Epworth has to start from here. In Zimbabwe, there is a headline context—a failing state and an economy that is both shrinking and sliding out of control—and there is an everyday context. In this everyday context, the idea of nanotechnology on its own is not likely to generate excitement. Ask what technologies people would like to see to help them get clean water and they mention rope-and-washer pumps, which replace disease-ridden open wells, and can be made and fixed using old tyres.

People in the developing world don’t have much of a voice in science and technology. They are less likely to enjoy the benefits of new technologies and more likely to suffer from their downsides. The Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering [13] took issue with the sweeteners often offered to the developing world by nano-marketeers:

Other contributions, such as the Meridian Institute’s “Global dialogue on nanotechnology and the poor,” have stimulated wider discussion about possible benefits. One academic study, collecting the insights of people thinking about nano and development, concluded that the top three applications are energy, agriculture, and water. For our second experiment, we chose to explore the relevance of nanotechnology in the provision of clean water. Demos worked with Practical Action, the development NGO, which for the past 40 years (under its former name of the Intermediate Technology Development Group) has been making technology work for people in poor countries. Its vision is of appropriate, usable, sustainable technologies, driven by human needs rather than markets.

In Harare, we put together a three-day workshop with local mushroom farmers, brick makers, and water scientists. The nonscientists were representatives of communities that work with Practical Action. Three were from Epworth and three from Chakohwa, a rural community near Chimanimani, in the mountains of eastern Zimbabwe. The scientists were from government agencies, universities, and charities. The participants named our workshop Nanokutaurirana, a Shona neologism meaning “Nanodialogue.” But for the first day and a half, the word nanotechnology was not mentioned. We wanted people first to define what the problem was.

Their description of the problem had multiple roots. Water is a market commodity, it is unaffordable, it is scarce, it is a long way away, and the responsibility for collecting it normally falls to women and girls. Where wells exist, they are crammed next to latrines and difficult to seal off from contamination. Near Harare, in addition to a recent cholera outbreak, there is chemical pollution from factories.

Away from the city, the rural community reported that water was contaminated by natural salt deposits. By the end of day one, we had a rough map of the issues and the connections between their social, technical, and political dimensions. The more the problem came into view, the further removed nanotechnology seemed as a solution. The community representatives had been let down in the past by well-intentioned technologies. Water pumps had arrived with instructions in English or German. When handles had broken or filters had clogged, they had been unable to find the parts or the expertise to fix them. As one of the community representatives asked, “When the NGO goes away, who has the knowledge to run and maintain their technology?”

In recognition of these characteristics of the problem domain we took a systemic approach. Many complex problems in science, engineering, or indeed other fields have some characteristics in common. Hard systems approaches have sometimes failed, for example, in the case of the Challenger disaster in 1986 when the space shuttle exploded moments after take-off killing all seven crew. Was this an engineering failure or one of managerial or political failure? McConnell [14] says the emphasis at NASA had shifted from technological considerations to managerial, commercial, and political ones. This is a good illustration of how the way we frame problems affects the outcome in terms of the activities that take place to solve the problem situation. Two lessons are taken from this story: first that in complex problem situations a systemic approach has proved worthwhile; and second that “what in fact made the situations ill-defined was that objectives were unclear and that both what to do and how to do it were problematical” [15]. The dialogue took a soft systems approach, which can be depicted at its simplest level as shown in Fig. 39.2. The essence of the soft systems approach is that it allows a natural dialogue to take place with the facilitators using the methodology to capture and keep in a systematic way the outputs of each session.

The problem situation was captured during the workshop held in Zimbabwe. Before the workshops a root definition and CATWOE were conceptualised, ready to be tested with the real dialogue during the first two days of the workshops. Figure 39.3 gives an example of this kind of output, for reference.

Our approach was to build on Practical Action’s experience of engaging people in developing countries in debates about new technologies.

Figure 39.4 depicts the problem situation in the form of a rich picture. During the first day of the workshop this rich picture was drawn by the organisers as a reflection of the problem presentation. The idea of the rich picture very simply is that it can convey relationships and connections much more clearly than prose.

In the problem situation identified there were several subsystems. The model in Fig. 39.5 illustrates the three subsystems. Figure 39.6 shows some possible interactions between these three subsystems, with each subsystem being shown in a different colour. The conceptual model shows a set of activities that would realise the root definition.

Academics might ponder such questions as: Is the methodology any good? Does it work? But in the “real world” most people recognise the need to find a methodology that works for them and get on with it.

For these communities, local technology was not a matter of pride; it was a matter of what worked. The system that shapes the problem needs to map onto the system that provides the solution. So the rope-and-washer pump makes sense. It is not so much a thing as a system. It is not owned or sold by any one company and it is flexible enough to fit different societies. The participants were well aware that, as one put it, “All these new technologies are old in other countries.”

As the historian David Edgerton [11] describes, whereas the West obsesses about the increasing “pace of innovation … most change is taking place by the transfer of techniques from place to place.” Technological systems—the way things are used, abused, and controlled—are political. There are reasons why they end up the way they do, and there are ways in which we can talk about better or worse technologies. We can judge new technologies according to the extent to which they lock people into certain systems (as, e.g., GM crops and centralised nuclear power do) or provide an open platform for new sorts of use (e.g., Linux or micro-renewable energy).

In our first experiment, with the Environment Agency, our participants exposed the politics of technology by talking about issues of detectability (whether we will be able to find nanoparticles once we release them) and reversibility (whether we will be able to backtrack). They realised that, even after we understand the effects of nanoparticles in a lab, when we release them, we will know much less about their impacts. So innovation becomes experimentation as technological systems become bigger and more complicated.

Technologies carry with them some definition of social need and some promise of a technical fix. They define both a problem and a solution. And the systems of research, innovation, and regulation of which they are a part can harden this definition. So whereas in the United Kingdom we may take the system—transport, maintenance, markets, and a stable economy—for granted, in Epworth, this needs close scrutiny. Rather than starting from the technology, we need to start from the local context and think about alternatives.

Edgerton [11] argues that the politics of new technologies have tended to narrow down consideration of alternatives. “Alternatives are everywhere, though they are often invisible.” Public discussion reveals these alternatives. Technologies do not force people to do things, but as they open new doors, there is a danger that old ones can close. Whereas good intentions are focused on nano and development, they may lose sight of what else can more easily benefit poor people. In the course of our public engagement work, as we have reflected the public context of nanotechnology back to institutions, we are often asked whether public concerns are specific to nanotechnology or more general. Our response has usually been that nanotechnology is currently a good place to start the conversation, but that the sentiments speak way beyond this. In Zimbabwe, the issue of whether we should be talking about nano at all never seemed more pressing.

Halfway through our workshop’s second day, we introduced nanotechnology. Luckily, a few weeks before, Hille et al. [17] had provided some examples of nano-products working in developing countries. Their report was careful to point out that the diffusion of these technologies was some way off, but it provided some examples of nanoscale water filters working in South Africa.

Our participants understandably shared little of the West’s excitement for nanotechnology. Even for the scientists there was little prospect of riding nanotechnology’s funding wave. So the group asked about applicability, alternatives, environmental impact, cost, maintenance, and the capacity to manufacture and maintain the technology locally. They asked whether these technologies were fixed or adaptable for local needs, whether they would mean an increase in employment for Zimbabwean scientists, or greater reliance on the West. And they asked at what scale these could be used. Were they the sorts of filters that would be used centrally, at government treatment plants, or could they be put in schools and controlled by communities? The experiment revealed the huge gulf between research and diffusion. We began to see the steps that need to be taken to connect innovation to human need in a place like Epworth.

The temptation is to see the problem as intractable, to say that science has nothing to offer and that Zimbabwe needs to provide solutions for its problems. But this would deny the huge potential that exists for constructive collaboration. Around the world, there are efforts under way to direct emerging technologies towards pressing human needs. A more positive approach might ask how these efforts might yield greater benefits.

As a step towards this, we asked our Zimbabwean participants to produce a set of recommendations for U.K. scientists. They concluded that innovation does need to point in a different direction, but collaboration can be hugely positive “when there is a story to tell”—that is, when it starts with some concrete benefit in mind. The Zimbabwean scientists recognised that in many cases, given the asymmetry of resources, Western scientists would have to lead research, but this research should recognise the value of local knowledge and work to empower Southern scientists and build their capacity. They also recommended immediate steps that could be taken, such as opening up access to all scientific journals.

Back in the United Kingdom, we went to visit Mark Welland in Cambridge. We were keen to see what lines could be drawn between the needs of people and science, to stretch the connection back to the research base. Welland runs Cambridge University’s Nanoscience Centre, but he is also codirector of the Yousef Jameel Science and Technology Research Center at the American University in Cairo. His research team is driven by scientific curiosity, but he encourages his colleagues to reflect on public value as part of their work. At one of his centre’s nanoscience seminars, we told the scientists about our time in Zimbabwe and asked for their thoughts and questions.

In Zimbabwe, scientists saw community participation as a vital, if hugely complicated, part of what it means to do good science and engineering. In the United Kingdom, systems work against community or public engagement. Talking to the young researchers at the Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) in Cambridge about our experiment, it became clear that many of them have an appetite to use their skills to contribute to human needs. But advancing in their scientific career often feels like a routine progression through certain stages in which they have “no control over their own research projects, social impacts or otherwise.”

At the moment, the gravitational pull for these scientists is towards certain sorts of innovation—marketable technologies or a narrow definition of world-beating basic research. We need a broader understanding of innovation, which places greater value on the needs of people in the developing world. The young scientists in Cambridge recognised the scale of the challenge that this poses to established systems, but were unsure how to continue the conversation and change things from inside.

39.4 Balancing risk and opportunity

Bürgi and Pradeep [18] observed that “the convergence of the newly emerging technologies of the twenty-first century has the potential to revolutionize social and economic development and may offer innovative and viable solutions for the most pressing problems of the world community and its habitat. However, a better understanding of the potential benefits and hazards of nano-scale science and technology is essential because it will provide policymakers with better tools to take responsible choices.”

Research on the ethical, legal, and social implications is, according to Mnyusiwalla et al. [19], lagging behind the science. As evidence for this view they quote the low number of citations in the literature and the fact that in the United States, there are research funds available that are not being used. For example, the National Nanotechnology Initiative allocated US$16–28 million to social implications but spent less than half that amount. One of the main reasons quoted for the lack of awards was the paucity of good quality proposals.

In our society, where there is a risk, the insurance industry will be key players in identifying and analysing that risk. The Benfield Group (Benfield is the world’s leading independent reinsurance intermediary and risk advisory business) concluded their assessment by stating that “the industry’s current focus is on risk management and containment, for example in the manufacture and transportation of nanotechnology” [20]. A study by Munich Re (the largest re-insurance company) echoing the emphasis on risk management states, “up to now, losses involving dangerous products were on a relatively manageable scale whereas, taken to extremes, nanotechnology products can even cause ecological damage which is permanent and difficult to contain” [21].

An increased risk potential of nanotechnology, according to Schmid [21], can arise from:

Materials fabricated on the nanoscale have properties that are different from those that are manufactured at a normal scale. For example, the precise way in which the atoms are arranged often leads to unusual optical and electrical properties. Carbon at the nanoscale can conduct electricity better than copper. In other cases the small size may have the effect of being more toxic than normal. A distinction can be made, in terms of risk assessment, between active and passive nanoparticles. Passive particles, such as a coating, are likely to present no more or less a risk than other manufacturing processes according to French [20]. However, she goes on to assert that in the case of active nanoparticles, their ability to move around the environment leads to risks associated with control and containment.

In the United Kingdom, nanotechnology is being seen as an opportunity to have an earlier and more open debate about emerging technologies, to avoid the antagonism and distrust generated with genetically modified (GM) foods. The government is supporting the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering’s call for “a constructive and proactive debate about the future of nanotechnologies … at a stage when it can inform key decisions about their development and before deeply entrenched or polarized positions appear” [13]. The nano-dialogues are a set of opportunities for early public debate. One of these aims to engage communities in Zimbabwe in discussions about emerging technology.

Views about the relevance of application areas for poor people converge on two sectors, namely, water and energy. These were the sectors, according to an international group of experts convened by the Meridian Institute to advise a Rockefeller project, thought to be where applications of nanotechnology are likely to bring potentially beneficial products that could offer solutions for poor people. According to one recent study, the top three applications that would help developing countries are energy storage, production, and conversion; agricultural productivity enhancement; and water treatment [22].

We chose water treatment as a focus for our dialogue. First, in development terms it is a well-established priority. Second, technology is at a stage where it may be able to make a significant contribution to filtration and decontamination. The Millennium Development Goal is to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Our dialogue sought to introduce the views and values of people for whom clean water is an everyday problem into debates about possible technical solutions. By involving scientists who are engaging in leading research, we can move the debate upstream. We hope one of the outcomes will be a sustained dialogue between scientists and end users that enables new technology to deliver on human needs rather than be driven by market wants.

39.5 Future directions

The emergence of nanotechnology has coincided with greater openness in science and innovation policy. For government, public engagement has become a way of avoiding a repeat of past mistakes. Depending on who you ask, nanotechnology might be the Next Big Thing, the Next Asbestos, or the Next GM. But before its impacts have been felt, nanotechnology has become a test case for a new sort of governance. It is an opportunity to reimagine the relationship between science and democracy. For public engagement to matter it must go beyond risk management. New conversations with the public do not provide easy answers. They ask difficult but important questions, and take us into a vital discussion of the politics of science.

The concept of new technology presents many challenges to those concerned with how it can be used to reduce poverty in the world. The promise of many new technologies has been high yet their ability to deliver sustainable change in the lives of poor people has been limited. At the same time the very models and assumptions underpinning much of international development have been economic growth. The essay presented a case for using a new paradigm based on enabling choices to be made that fulfil the needs of people. This requires a move away from the old paradigm, which is supply driven, delivering products to a market at a price that will maximise profits for the owners of the intellectual capital.

The dialogues held in Zimbabwe are one small step towards this new paradigm. They connect the needs of poor people with scientists who are in the process of developing new applications of nanotechnologies. The next step will be to move beyond dialogue towards the engagement of the scientist with relevant stakeholders in developing countries.