I first noticed them on the Uros Islands and later on Amantaní and Taquile also. In the middle of Lake Titicaca where poverty is a bigger concern than environmental sustainability, solar panels are popping up as an alternative to the fossil fuel energy of the developed world. This phenomenon provides not only interesting visual juxtapositions of traditional and modern technology for tourists who pass by but also hearty food for thought in relation to economic development issues.
What first struck me in regard to the growing use of solar panels on Lake Titicaca was that the rural subsistence economies that are benefiting from these technologies had never fully harnessed the benefits of fossil fuels that have spurred the development of the U.S. and the rest of the world's wealthiest nations. The Quechua-speaking farmers of Amantaní still clear fields and grow crops without mechanized tools or chemical fertilizer and fish in row boats. They have benefited in the past few decades from gasoline-run motor boats that have been responsible for making the island easily accessible to tourists, but for the most part, the Industrial Revolution largely skipped over Amantaní.
This makes it even more interesting that families on the island are now investing in small solar panels, a technology that is very expensive and almost elite in the U.S. The island had an electricity generator for a while, but it was too expensive and difficult to maintain on the isolated island. Individual solar panels are actually a better option - they're smaller scale investments and cater much more directly to the region's most abundant natural resource - solar energy.
I think this trend is a great illustration of an important and often overlooked tool in development. As Amantaní has developed its tourism industry and become incorporated in the international economy, it has not just benefited from receiving direct monetary investments from tourists who visit the island. Being connected to the rest of the world has also allowed the diffusion of ideas and knowledge from the vast storehouse of the developed world to the needy shelves of poor Peruvians. It is not just our money that we should think about contributing to international poverty relief - our ideas are just as important.
And along this line of thinking, some ideas will be more suited to developing countries than to our modern economy. I think solar panels have taken hold on Lake Titicaca precisely because it is physically isolated, abundantly sunny, and there is little competition from the traditional fossil fuel grid. We tend to think of technologies we use as the final fix to any problem anywhere, but we forget that the environments technologies are utilized in arecrucial to their success. Just because fossil fuels were convenient and economical in 19th century Britain doesn't mean that they will have the same efficiency in 2009 in remote Peru.
I found it so intriguing to see solar panels on Amantaní because like many people in the U.S., it is all too easy for me to fall into the trap of attempting to prescribe our Industrial development path to the rest of the world. Contrary to popular belief, a country doesn't have to start its growth with dirty coal and gasoline and only switch to sustainable energy options once it's rich. Sometimes, there is a benefit to being different and off-the-grid.
Side note - What, you may ask, were these solar panels actually used for on Lake Titicaca? On the Uros Islands, they provide electricity at night, radio, and sometimes sporadic television. According to a man born on the Uros who we talked to, one of the biggest benefits of these panels was that candles no longer had to be used at night, and thus, catastrophic fires no longer wipe out whole islands (photo is of these floating reed islands with a solar panel on a reed house in the background). On Amantaní and Taquile, they are also used for a few hours of electricity a day.
This technology is nowhere near perfect yet, however. For example, the doctor we talked to who is stationed on Taquile said that solar panels don't generate enough power for him utilize computers and many diagnostic machines that he needs to be able to give adequate care. As the name implies, development is certainly an ongoing process...
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