Practical Action Publishing
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The Charcoal Dilemma
This book examines the history of charcoal production and its chief industrial applications - pig-iron and steel making. It argues for the need for economic and environmental sustainability as the means to ensure the future of the industry. Brazil faces serious socio-economic, environmental and fina...
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Cloning Grameen Bank
Inspired by the enormous success of the Grameen Bank in providing financial assistance to the poorest of the poor, four individuals - a central banker, an appropriate-technology NGO organizer, a professor of international relations and a top-level communist official - each sought to replicate and ad...
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Crops, People and Irrigation
In the case studies presented here, irrigation engineers describe water distribution practices as they actually occur in various schemes. Six of the schemes (in Indonesia, Mexico, Portugal and Bolivia) are farmer-managed, and two (in South India and Bali) are managed jointly by farmers and technical...
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Dairy Processing
This book outlines traditional methods of processing milk to produce cheese, butter, yoghurt and other milk products, and discusses how hygiene and quality control can be improved. It avoids introducing completely new products or processes, but suggests low-cost modifications to traditional methods...
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Starting a Small Food Processing Enterprise
This book brings together important aspects of both the technological and business skills needed to successfully start and operate a small food processing business. The emphasis is on thorough planning before the enterprise is established and then careful control of production to minimize costs and...
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Stone
This useful general survey describes the varieties and uses of stone as a building material - whether cut or field-stone - and how to extract, work and use it. A new chapter on stone and the environment emphasizes the importance of planning, waste recycling and quarry rehabilitation as part of the e...
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Sustainability of Water and Sanitation Systems
This book comprises forty papers from the 21st WEDC conference, held in Kampala in 1995, on the theme of sustainability of water and sanitation systems. Developing countries experience special difficulties in maintaining systems in full working order, so maintenance is a recurring topic. Other wide-...
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Trade and the Poor
The new second edition updates this popular book, and provides new chapters on alternative trading systems, and international trading organizations such as GATT and the World Trade Organization. Trade and the Poor examines North-South trade in commodities, services and tourism; transnational corpora...
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Trading the Silver Seed
David Lewis, Geoffrey Wood, Rick Gregory
This is the first study of social, economic and technical aspects of aquaculture in Bangladesh. The authors analyse rural society through the trading activities necessary in aquaculture. These insights have practical implications and this book shows how it is possible to build on existing relationsh...
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The Urban Opportunity
Nicolas Hall, Robert Hart, Diana Mitlin
It is now being recognised among development professionals that urban poverty is massive and growing and that rural development initiatives are no longer relevant in slowing rural to urban migration as growth has its own internal dynamic stemming from natural population increase. This book is an imp...