Presentation, WAME workshop - June 17, 2015, Milano

1. Le rinnovabili e l’innovazione per fornire
energia sostenibile a tutti
Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da
Vinci” - Milano, 17 giugno 2015
INNOVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE
ENERGY, FOOD, WATER
Claude HENRY
Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University
1

2. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
Why should we muster the best of our resources
both human and material
in order to implement a more sustainable and equitable
form of development?
• because billions of our fellow humans live in unacceptable
poverty
• because the condition of our planet worsens at such a pace
that all forms of life, including ours, will come under the
most serious threats during the present century, be they
biodiversity erosion, water and fertile soil scarcity, energy
obesity and climate change.
Current generations are – at an unbearable pace - squandering
the heritage of natural capital in their hands.
2

3. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
It will not be easy, to say the least,
to switch from the present development trajectory
to a significantly more sustainable one.
Success requires mobilizing the resources
and strengthening the will of human societies:
scientific, technical and managerial resources on one hand,
behaviors and institutions on the other hand.
More of the required methods and instruments than currently
appreciated are available;
and among those that are not, some of the most critical ones
might be developed in time
(electricity storage, carbon capture from ambient air, biological
rather than chemical technologies in agriculture, etc.).
3

4. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
This I will illustrate for three different
resources in three different countries:
• energy in India
• food in Kenya
• water in Cambodge
4

5. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
Husk Power Systems: providing electricity in rural India
• Bihar, one of the poorest states, > 80% of households deprived
of access to electricity
• Husk, byproduct of the rice crop: 75/80% of the 2M tons/year
were rotting in landfills
• Husk Power Systems: small husk-fed gasifiers, gas is then
burnt to drive a turbine, from which electricity
• Training: Husk Power University
5

6. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
Push - pull systems: protecting crops in Kenya
• a biology-based method of protecting maize
• first target: maize stemborers; they reduce yields by 20-40%, even up to
80%
• second target striga hermontica, a weed that parasitizes the maize, losses
ranging from 30 to 100% in the infested fields
• research led to identifying a tree, silverleaf Desmodium, for the push, and
two varieties of grass, Napier grass and Sudan grass, for the pull
• push: Desmodium, intercropped with maize, repels female moths of
stemborers; Its roots emit in the soil a chemical substance that checks the
growth of the striga weed
• pull: Napier/Sudan grass, planted along the borders of maize-desmodium
parcels, emits volatile chemical substances that attract female moths and
make them lay their eggs there, and is home to various predators of the
eggs and of the larvae coming out of these eggs
• one million adopters by 2020 a realistic objective
6

7. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
Mille et une fontaines: drinking water in Cambodia
• provision of safe drinking water in rural Cambodge
• technology is characterized by innovative sobriety
• production is centered on preexisting communities of
consumers
• local plants run by local technicians-managers recruited from
the local communities, trained in the Mille et une
Fontaines «Academy»
• a central body for dealing with problems that cannot be solved
at local level and for geographic expansion (from 60 plants in
2011 to 250 in 2015-6)
7

8. C.Henry, Innovation for sustainable development under climate change:
energy, food, water
Conclusion
8
• entrepreneurship is a driving force, embodied in small teams of
pioneers or in local R&D organizations
• technology is “as simple as possible, but no simpler” (to
paraphrase Albert Einstein)
• implementation is centered on preexisting communities of
consumers or producers and on underused locally available
human and material resources
• duality between the running of the local means of production
and the impulse and supervision from the core of
entrepreneurship