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2.44 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. George Foulkes): I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) on securing this debate. The House is grateful to her for highlighting the role that her own profession of engineering can play in helping to eliminate world poverty; I wish my profession of psychology also had a contribution to make, although it cannot be as advantageous. I also thank my hon. Friend for her positive comments about the Department and the White Paper.
As we have heard, engineering solutions can make an important contribution across a broad range of areas. My hon. Friend mentioned the need for access to safe water. I was struck by a recent estimate by the World Health Organisation that around 3 million children in developing countries die needlessly each year from waterborne diseases because of lack of access to safe drinking water. To give some meaning to that statistic, it is roughly equivalent to around one quarter of British children under 10 dying each year because they do not have clean water. We cannot tolerate that: the provision of safe drinking water for all must be a high priority for engineers working in developing countries. The Government have set a target for this sector for assistance under our international development programme and we are currently pursuing a number of new initiatives.
In Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana and India for example, we have recently started new projects that specifically target poor rural communities which do not have access to a safe water supply. In taking these projects forward, we are working with local engineers and encouraging an integrated approach to water supply, sanitation provision and health education, because that is the only way in which the full health benefits can be realised.
Engineers can help in several other ways to make a real difference to the lives of the people living in the world's poorest countries. For example, in many developing countries wood fuel meets more than 90 per cent. of the energy needs of the rural population. They have no alternative, but it is little wonder that the forests in many of those countries are fast disappearing, with the consequent adverse effect on climate.
Improved access to modern energy sources is another area in which engineers have a leading part to play in helping to find affordable solutions. Such solutions do not need to be complex. The use of a simple cooking stove, which can be made locally, can lead to a 50 per cent. saving in fuel. That can also save many hours of toil, especially for women and children. The time that would have been used to search for wood to burn can be spent in the garden to improve food production or, for the children, in study. The potential of solar power is also rarely used to maximum advantage and the installation of a solar cooker can make a real difference. The Department is actively working with engineers from a number of non-governmental organisations in our partner countries, helping to disseminate knowledge on those simple technologies and, in many instances, helping to establish a local manufacturing capacity.
The provision of mains electricity is often considered by many utilities to be too expensive for the poor. The reality is very different. The sad fact is that the poor are often forced to pay more for their energy needs than wealthy people. Lighting from a paraffin lamp costs about 100 times as much as lighting from mains electricity on an output-for-output basis, and running a radio on dry cell batteries is 1,000 times more expensive than using mains electricity.
Improved transport access is yet another area that can make a real difference to the lives of poor people living in rural areas. Without transport access, farmers cannot get their excess produce to market to help to improve their incomes. Just as important is the reduction in isolation that can result from the construction of a simple access track to a village that would otherwise be several days' walking distance from the nearest road. The Department is especially active in such work. In the Zambezia province of Mozambique we are, for example, currently funding the construction of 300 km of feeder road to help to re-establish farms in areas that were left largely uninhabited following the recent civil strife.
An interesting aspect of the project, which we are using as a model for other countries, is the idea of using construction works to help develop a local contracting capacity. The roads are being built by local people who have established construction companies specifically for that purpose. The project includes support for the new
companies from British engineers who can help them to develop into fully fledged commercial operations. Plant and equipment used on the project is purchased by the new contracting companies on hire purchase arrangements out of payments under our project. When we leave the area on completion of our project, our engineers will leave behind a new local industry that will be able to carry out future projects on a commercial basis without the need for outside support.
Installing new water supply systems, building rural roads or installing a solar power system will only be a short-term solution unless, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, a system is in place to maintain these facilities and to keep them in good order. Increasingly, for basic infrastructure provision, that means establishing a local maintenance capacity that involves the end users. Both in rural areas and in city slums, communities are forming user groups that can take on the responsibility for operating and maintaining community infrastructure. To help to develop the participatory approach to infrastructure provision, engineers need to develop new skills, and I am glad to say that I see that happening as I visit developing countries.
At the national level, adequate infrastructure provision is an essential ingredient for economic growth. Industry requires good transport links to import raw materials to the factories and to export finished products. A reliable power supply is required to keep production going. Studies have shown that there is a direct relationship between economic growth and infrastructure provision. If the poorer developing countries are to achieve the economic growth essential to the eradication of poverty, they will need to enable increased investment to be made in infrastructure.
Much investment will need to come from the private sector and, again, engineers will need to develop new skills and approaches. They will need to find ways of attracting private sector capital to help build and operate their schemes while at the same time ensuring that the services provided reach the poorest of the poor.
In that context, I am greatly enthused by Business Partners for Development, a recent initiative in which my Department is participating. It is designed to build partnerships between private utility companies and the poorer sectors of the community in order to improve service delivery. The interesting point is that the proposal came largely from private companies themselves. In the water sector, for example, the large European companies that have taken concessions to provide supplies in a number of cities in developing countries realised that their services were not reaching the slum areas. They wanted to work with slum dwellers to find a sustainable way to meet their needs, but lacked the in-house skills to develop the necessary participatory approaches. They therefore turned to the development agencies for help. Work of that type takes special skills and training, and it requires a multidisciplinary approach, with engineers working with a broad range of development professionals as part of an integrated team.
Helping to mitigate the results of natural disasters is another area in which, sadly, the skills of the engineering profession are being called upon all too often. The recent hurricane damage in central America is a case in point. There is an urgent need to improve transport links in order to get supplies into stricken areas and to reinstate clean water supplies to prevent the spread of disease.
My Department, and the donor community in general, are actively organising support both from professional engineers and in the form of materials to help address those needs.
No matter how hard they work, engineers and other professionals from developed countries cannot by themselves provide the inputs needed to eliminate poverty. Ultimately that will be achieved only if our developing country partners have their own professionals who can develop their own local solutions to local problems. That too is an area in which the United Kingdom engineering profession is leading.
My hon. Friend mentioned the Telford challenge, which is an initiative of the Royal Academy of Engineering and some of our major professional engineering institutions--I have the brochure here. Those institutions have jointly reacted to the call for partnership set out in the 1997 White Paper on international development, of which my right hon. Friend and I are rightly proud. They have approached the Department to find out how they might work with us to help to eliminate world poverty.
The resulting challenge fund, which is funded jointly by the Department and the UK engineering profession, aims to develop local indigenous engineering talent in the world's poorest countries, and provides a network of support to help them solve their local problems.
Our partner institutions in that endeavour have accepted that there can be no quick fix to those problems and that it will take many years. However, they have assured us that they mean to stick with us and are mobilising support from the engineering profession in general. That is an excellent idea, which I hope other professions will follow.
I agree with my hon. Friend--as do the Department and the Government--that engineers have an important part to play in eliminating world poverty. I am confident that professional engineers from the United Kingdom will continue to play a leading role in helping to achieve that.
We are grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue; and, more important, poor people in developing countries will be grateful to her for focusing the attention of the House on this important matter.
Question put and agreed to.
27 Nov 1998 : Column 519Adjourned accordingly at four minutes to Three o'clock.
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