If you travel, why not pack a construction guide and spread some solar fire! If you talk about the energy crisis people will listen. You’ll make interesting friends ... One has a saw, another has welding machine, still another a drill, steel you can find in a scrap pile, some money is sent from home to buy odds and ends ... a low tech solar concentrator is born.

Luckily, you also did some digging and found addresses and emails of people that already work in environmental and humanitarian projects on location: in agriculture, health, education, women’s rights, for instance, are all concerned by low tech solar concentration. With their help solar fire can not only spark but catch.

In explaining the principles of deforestation and solar energy ... some already know, others start talking. You take out a folder, some picture, or laptop, people start thinking. Why live in the past? they say.

Countries most affected by desertification/deforestation
Africa : Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Senegal, Mauritania, Cote divorce, Chad, Sudan, Erythrée, Djibouti, Sierra-Leone, Guinea, Guinea, Niger, Madagascar, Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Ethiopia, South Africa ...
Asia : Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turquie, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Turkmenistan, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Quatar, Oman, Tajikistan ...
South and Central America : Costa-Rica, Brésil, Cuba, Venezuela, Chili, Peru, Mexico...
Europe : South Spain, South Italy, Greece, South France ...
Almost all the islands of the Pacific Ocean
Australia

Eva Cantavenera
May 2008