1.three billion individuals on the planet, largely resource-poor and dwelling in rural areas, wouldn’t have entry to protected, sustainable types of power. three billion individuals must burn biomass to cook dinner their meals, which causes indoor smoke air pollution. Because of this air pollution, four million individuals, largely girls and youngsters, lose their lives annually.
Extending the electrical energy grid to offer entry to those that lack it’s usually not possible since many reside in distant and rural communities, which makes it too costly and technically difficult. Stand-alone, native options counting on renewable power sources, equivalent to photo voltaic and mini-hydro, are in these circumstances usually the most effective options.
But entry to electrical energy and cleaner cooking can change individuals’s lives and assist rural communities progress. Especially if that power is harnessed together with different revolutionary applied sciences and purposes for some type of “productive use” – for instance the creation of sustainable native microenterprises, agricultural worth addition, the availability of providers to the group (e.g., training, clear water, sanitation, healthcare, banking, data/ communications), or by catalysing wider social group advantages equivalent to improved gender equality, empowerment, and democratic engagement.
It is that this revolutionary mixture of entry to fashionable, clear power with productive use and group growth that we take into account constitutes a rural group or village being “Smart”. We consider the idea of “Smart Villages” serves as a beneficial counterpoint to “Smart Cities” for the half of the world’s inhabitants (and majority of the world’s poor) who don’t reside in city areas, and may also help be sure that, though rural populations could also be distant, they’re not deprived by a scarcity of infrastructure and providers.
Instruction for submission
Please fill within the kind on our web site, the place you’ll specify to which class you want to submit your picture. Please additionally inform us your identify, age, nationality, and embrace a caption or title and description for your picture/s. Please additionally inform us the place the picture is taken (together with village/district names and areas in addition to international locations), and the names of any people featured within the photographs.
Application Deadline: Application deadline is April 30, 2017.
