‘This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner. It shows how

But isn’t the re-design of development beyond the reach of poor nations?
Design for eco-services would be of benefit to both over-developed and under-developed nations.

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Positive Development
Poorer communities in developing nations, facing immediate threats to survival, have the most to gain 
from low-cost, low-tech, net Positive Development. Most diseases and injuries in developing nations 
could be averted through small biophysical interventions and community development programmes 
in the local area [Box 16]. For example, we know that roughly 6000 children in poor countries die 
from dirty water each day. Dirty water can be: 
•
Prevented in the first place by protecting its source in natural systems through, for example,
restoring the health, absorptive capacity and resilience of watersheds
• 
Reduced by development that avoids earth moving, tree clearing or components that involve 
mining and toxins that seep into groundwater
• 
Filtered by home-made, low-cost clay and coffee ground filters baked in cow dung or glass
cones that use evaporation to extract clean water
• 
Treated with low-cost, low-tech strategies, like landscape or building systems that utilize the
principles of Living Machines to clean water and create useful products
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Professional organizations (like appropriate technology societies) and organizations (like Architects 
sans Frontiers or Engineers without Borders) are working to provide commonsense solutions to 
social problems resulting from the over-exploitation of resources. Due to vested interests in existing 
wealth transfer processes, however, many development initiatives in poorer nations are still highly 
capital- and resource-intensive. A case in point is the Three Gorges Dam in China, a ‘single function’ 
use of land and resources that has dislocated hundreds of thousands of poor people and drowned 
millions of hectares of agricultural land and soil. It may reduce some small floods in the future, but 
it may also exacerbate bigger ones.
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