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Sustainability lessons from appropriate technology
Catherine P Bishop
This article will focus on the evolution of the concept of
appropriate technology and provide a brief review of current
ideas and strategies surrounding innovation for sustainable
development. The article will examine the impacts of the
diffusion of technologies that were designed to be appropriate
for particular local contexts and have persisted over several
decades. The long-term viability of the innovations provides
material evidence of social and economic sustainability, and
offers valuable lessons concerning intended and unintended
environmental impacts of technology diffusion over time. The
concept of appropriate technology is still highly relevant as a
model of technology for development.
Address
Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Water Quality,
17 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333-0017, United States
Corresponding author:
Bishop, Catherine P (catherine.p.bishop@maine.gov)
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2021, 49:50–56
This review comes from a themed issue on Open issue 2020 - Part 2
Edited by Eduardo Brondizio, Opha Pauline Dube and William
Solecki
Received: 31 January 2020; Accepted: 27 February 2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2021.02.011
1877-3435/ã 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Evolution of the idea of appropriate
technology
Economic development and poverty alleviation have
served as guiding principles of international relations
since the end of World War II. Theoretically, interna-
tional development programs would win the hearts and
minds of local populations through the subsidized transfer
of technology and infrastructure to stimulate economic
growth, create jobs, and generate foreign exchange oppor-
tunities. This promise of modernization tapped into the
euphoria of the achievement of national independence in
many former colonies and the aspirations of the citizens of
emerging nations. However, many actors in the burgeon-
ing field of international development insisted that the
path to industrialization in Europe and North America
could not be reproduced and accelerated in other parts of
the world. Before the end of the 1950s, observers had
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2021, 49:50–56
already begun to insist that the direct transfer of the
means of industrial production to new social and geo-
graphic contexts often resulted in technological failure
and corruption [70]. Programs of modernization and
industrialization failed to grapple with consumerism,
waste, and social and environmental degradation. The
idea of development as linear macroeconomic growth did
not resolve these pressing contradictions. Some experts
claimed that a new kind of technology could intentionally
be created to conserve resources and promote social
equity, and from this idea the concept of appropriate
technology emerged in the 1960s. Optimism surrounding
this new approach to development rapidly coalesced into
the global Appropriate Technology movement, a social
movement triggering major changes in economic devel-
opment policy and programming.
More than a movement, appropriate technology emerged
as a particular discourse: a way of apprehending and
communicating about the world that rests on assump-
tions, judgments, and contentions to provide the basic
terms of analysis and discussion [1]. Yet the meaning itself
of ‘appropriate technology’ has always been shifting and
unstable. E.F. Schumacher’s inspiring depiction of
‘technology with a human face’ served as a widely cited,
anthropocentric basis for determining what ‘appropriate’
might mean [2]. Depending upon the perceptions of the
actors involved in innovation, manufacture, and use,
different types of technologies were considered appropri-
ate in different situations for different reasons. While
some advocates emphasized the utility of labor-intensive
machinery requiring little capital investment for creating
jobs, others highlighted the need for technologies that
would conserve natural resources and reduce pollution.
Yet others emphasized production efficiencies and pov-
erty reduction. The discourse of appropriate technology
incorporated all of these ideas, emphasizing some more
than others depending upon the context and the goals and
objectives of particular actors.
Problematically, the criteria for determining whether a
technology was or was not appropriate was often estab-
lished in London, Washington, D.C., or Rome — far from
the localities where diffusion and circulation would most
likely occur. The idealism of appropriate technology
engineers in the 1970s and 1980s led to naı̈veté with
regard to the complexities of innovation and diffusion,
particularly in cross-cultural milieus. Although some
appropriate technologies became incredibly popular
and are still continuing to expand in circulation after
nearly half a century, the majority of the technologies
invented and promoted as ‘appropriate’ were in fact never
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adopted [3]. Engineers trained in the United States and
European countries excelled at creating technologies that
could respond to ecological imperatives, but very often
their innovations were not suited to geographically spe-
cific cultural or historical contexts in rural areas of their
own nations, let alone in the context of communities
elsewhere in the world. The anticipated simplicity of
promoting appropriate technologies was greatly compli-
cated by social, cultural, and political processes that were
misunderstood, and generally overlooked, as important
elements of diffusion.
Engineers currently engaging with the challenge of
developing appropriate technologies have remarked that
the ‘conceptual and semantic tangle of defining
‘appropriateness’ has been replaced with a more straight-
forward focus on control’ [4] (p. 47) on the part of the user.
Accordingly, in this study I rely on a definition provided
by John Tharakan in the Proceedings of the 2010 Howard
University Symposium on Appropriate Technology:
As a concept and a practice, appropriate technology,
or AT, is rooted in technology selections and solu-
tions that seek to empower individuals and com-
munities at the local level, enabling control and
efficient utilization of local natural resources to
enhance the quality of life and the standard of living
in developing communities [5] (p. 6).
This definition is intentionally broad and open-ended,
while retaining an emphasis on social and economic
justice and environmental conservation. Tharakan’s defi-
nition also draws on the aspirational dimension of tech-
nology diffusion as a movement toward improvements in
the quality of life for all.
The drawback of Tharakan’s definition is the idea that only
developing communities are the intended consumers of
appropriate technology — a conceptualization that was
roundly criticized during the debates of the 1980s as
reinforcing North/South patterns of political dominance.
Rather, the Appropriate Technology Movement was better
understood as global in scope, fostering innovative inter-
national and intercultural collaboration. Much of the early
literature is based on observations of international pro-
grams, as in Schumacher’s writings derived from his expe-
rience in Southeast Asia. Yet the work of innovation was
performed in workshops and labs around the world. For
example, the National Center for Appropriate Technology
was established in the 1970s specifically to meet the needs
of low-income communities in the United States, while in
Ghana the Technology Consultancy Centre of Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology emerged
in response to the needs of local small-scale industries.
Tharakan’s definition is broad but ideally would encompass
all communities, rather than ‘developing’ communities.
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Sustainability lessons from appropriate technology Bishop 51
Many critics have insisted that the AT movement quickly
peaked and then disappeared in the mid-1980s. This was
the beginning of the period of ‘Reaganomics’ character-
ized by neoliberal policy focusing on national economies
and a blatant lack of interest in energy conservation and
alternative technologies [3]. Popular culture in the United
States during this period was ‘profoundly antithetical to a
movement that believed ‘Small Is Beautiful’’ [6] (p. 630)
and federal funding for technology innovation, nationally
and internationally, was redirected. A new discourse of
development emerged that obscured and rejected appro-
priate technology as a topic to be contemplated or seri-
ously considered in public forums. Key elements of the
appropriate technology approach were retained; however,
as policy-making shifted to development of microenter-
prises and soon after, microfinance. The discourse of
microfinance remains a dominant force in contemporary
development strategies, promoting a neoliberal approach
to poverty alleviation that does not necessarily respond to
the needs of diverse low-income populations and even
creates new problems [7–9].
The idea of appropriate technology has continued to
motivate people but is now understood and analyzed in
different terms. The discourse of technology for devel-
opment has changed over time so that the term
‘appropriate technology’ is used infrequently but is still
considered fundamental [10,11,12]. New, more
nuanced, concepts have emerged such as frugal innova-
tion ([13–21]; The European Journal of Development Research
special issue on frugal innovation January 2018). Similar
to the concept of appropriate technology, frugal innova-
tion is meant to contribute to social and environmental
sustainability however it emphasizes the minimization of
cost and resource usage. Frugal innovation is often geared
to consumers living on less than USD 2.00 per day [13].
Yet it responds to needs in industrialized nations as well,
including the United States, in sectors as diverse as
agriculture, ICT, and health care [22–25].
Other contemporary categories of the ‘right’ model of
technology for development include constraint-based
innovation [26,27], grassroots innovation [28–30], and
responsible innovation [31,32]. Categorization and defi-
nition of these models of innovation is analytically chal-
lenging due to the high degree of overlap in meaning,
differences across geographic areas of practice, locally
specific needs and goals, and political and social motiva-
tions for innovation. Thus the discourse surrounding
technology for sustainable development continues to
increase in complexity over time, in sharp contrast to
the desire for simplicity with regard to technology appli-
cation. This proliferation of refined definitions of tech-
nology for development is not just a matter of adding
analytical precision but helps particular actors and insti-
tutions to stake claims in the field of sustainable devel-
opment [1]. Explaining the nuanced differences across
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2021, 49:50–56
52 Open issue 2020 - Part 2
these discursive iterations is an interesting analytical
exercise, yet does little to provide empirical evidence
of whether the technologies contribute to social justice
and environmental sustainability by conserving resources,
reducing pollution, and improving human welfare in the
spirit of ‘technology with a human face’.
Appropriate technology offers empirical
evidence of sustainability
Appropriate technology was for several decades consid-
ered a key element in the quest for sustainable develop-
ment even before the term ‘sustainable development’
was a term used in the global arena. In 1987, the Brundt-
land Report formally defined sustainable development as
‘development that meets the needs of the present with-
out compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs’ [33]. However, sustainable devel-
opment is not a structured program or set of evaluative
indicators but is, rather, a dominant global discourse
centered on merging economic and environmental factors
to stimulate processes of capital growth [1]. In the late
1980s into the 1990s, sustainability was the descriptor
used to label efforts that met Brundtland’s criteria of
conserving resources for future use. Over time, the con-
cept of sustainability expanded to encompass the social
and economic dimensions of development, resource con-
servation and management, enhancing the role of local
actors and groups in development, and the use of science
and technology to achieve results [34]. These elements of
sustainability were further enumerated and reinforced in
2015 with the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development
Goals [35].
How is appropriate technology related to these ideas of
sustainability? From the standpoint of early appropriate
technology practitioners, sustainability was understood as
the persistence of diffusion and circulation over time and
space. Sustainability was not only linked to conserving
natural resources for future generations, but also the
capacity of local populations to produce and consume
the technology without external assistance from, for
example, foreign aid projects, government subsidies
and grants, or charitable donations. This view of sustain-
ability merges social, economic, and environmental
dynamics as factors inherently relevant to the overarching
goal of resource conservation and environmental steward-
ship, and fits many of the aspects of the meaning of
sustainability as it is currently understood in the global
development arena. This review incorporates literature to
evaluate the sustainability of appropriate technology
based on the perspectives of the engineers and practi-
tioners who initially promoted the innovations referenced
in this study.
Much of the current literature concerning technology for
development refers specifically to sustainability as a
major issue; however, the scope of the work is most often
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2021, 49:50–56
present-oriented and future-oriented. Recent literature
reviews of frugal and constraint-based innovations, for
example, emphasize ‘state of the art and future
perspectives’ [26,36], while another review of innovations
in the agricultural sector proposes a ‘starting point’ for
practitioners [27]. In studies of frugal innovation, authors
claim that technologies ‘would, in principle, be sus-
tainable’ [37] and have the potential to contribute to
sustainability but that the ‘current research lacks a suffi-
cient base of empirical evidence on the economic, social,
and ecological impacts of frugal innovations on sustain-
able development’ [20] (p. 150). Scientific, measurable
assessments of the sustainability of appropriate technol-
ogy, broadly conceived, are scant [11,38,39,40]. To
determine the sustainability of appropriate, frugal, con-
straint-based, or other technologies requires empirical
data with regard to processes and impacts of adoption
and diffusion over space and time.
Although appropriate technology as a conceptual model
has essentially disappeared from the development
agenda, appropriate technologies as material objects have
persisted over the longest time period (compared to more
recent innovations developed under ‘frugal’ or
‘constraint-based’ rubrics) and provide tangible evidence
of intended and unintended impacts. Evaluation of the
technologies that have continued to circulate for twenty,
thirty, or forty years offers valuable insight into the drivers
of adoption and diffusion. This is particularly important
with regard to the measurement of environmental sus-
tainability, as environmental processes may undergo sub-
tle, incremental transformations that are difficult to iden-
tify within shorter timeframes. The dearth of longitudinal
studies of the sustainability of appropriate technologies
constitutes a major gap in knowledge, although a body of
literature is emerging pointing to mixed results and
varying degrees of sustainability.
Impacts of appropriate technologies over time
One of the more studied technologies introduced in the
developing world in the 1980s is the Kenya jiko stove.
The consumption of wood and charcoal for cooking and
heat is a major contributor to land degradation and
deforestation, and, within households and communities,
a source of air pollution with disastrous effects on public
health. A wide variety of stoves have been invented and
promoted with the goal of slowing biofuel consumption,
reducing toxic indoor emissions, reducing household
labor associated with fuel collection and cooking, and
providing economic benefits through savings on fuel
purchases. The jiko stove burns charcoal in a ceramic
liner surrounded by metal cladding, and can be manu-
factured in urban areas using locally sourced and recycled
materials. Developed in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands
of the stoves are in use across much of eastern and western
Africa and numerous studies have demonstrated the
social, economic, and environmental impacts of their
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diffusion at the scale of households. Reflecting the find-
ings of earlier studies, current research has confirmed the
economic savings for women due to reduced charcoal
purchases and quicker cooking times [41,57: p. 106].
Improved charcoal stoves such as the jiko are more
fuel-efficient, reduce emissions, and save up to 30% of
the fuel required for cooking [42,57: p. 106,68]. Engineers
and entrepreneurs continue to adjust the stove design and
introduce newer models to respond to local market
demands.1
However, while reductions in woodfuel burning at the
household level have been documented, there is little
evidence to claim that jiko stoves have induced a sub-
stantive decline in biomass consumption, deforestation,
or greenhouse gas emissions at the national or regional
scales [68: p. 386]. There is a general consensus that the
stoves are not used by enough households to achieve a
large-scale environmental impact [42,43,68]. The stoves
allow households to adapt to and mitigate environmental
problems surrounding woodfuel consumption but have
not slowed the global acceleration of deforestation and
pollution. Jiko stoves have contributed to environmental
sustainability at the scale of households and localities but
not at broader national or regional scales.
Grameen Shakti (meaning ‘rural energy’) is another
important example of successful appropriate technology
for domestic energy. As a sister organization of the
extremely influential Grameen Bank in Bangladesh,
the business was founded in 1996 to deliver solar energy
systems, biogas digesters, and improved cookstoves
designed to meet the needs of low-income families in
rural areas. The design of the system was intentionally
reduced in complexity in order to simplify repairs and
maintenance and this has led to successful diffusion [44].
The biogas technology uses the process of anaerobic
digestion to transform locally sourced green waste from
food, agriculture, manure and other forms of recycled
waste into household fuel. It is a renewable source of
energy that can replace natural gas or coal. Recent
research has confirmed that the use of household biogas
digesters promoted by Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh has
reduced cooking costs [45,46], reduced women’s work-
loads [45], and reduced indoor air pollution while improv-
ing sanitation from the removal of animal manure [45].
More than 70 000 units have been built in Bangladesh
while at the global scale, over 50 million units have been
documented in use over the past one hundred years [47].
Although a highly acclaimed renewable energy source,
poorly managed digesters may generate harmful environ-
mental impacts during the phases of technology manu-
facture, transport, and importantly, operation, when the
1
See the Jikokoa G3 (https://www.burndesignlab.org/projects/
the-jikokoa) and the SuperSaver Premium Charcoal stove (https://
envirofit.org/product/cookstoves/supersaver-charcoal/).
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Sustainability lessons from appropriate technology Bishop 53
potent greenhouse gas methane may escape into the
atmosphere as well as ammonia and sulphur dioxide
[48–50]. Like the case of the jiko stoves, the biogas
digesters have not been widely enough adopted to trigger
broad improvements in national and global environmen-
tal sustainability despite documented greenhouse gas
emission reductions.
Oral rehydration salts (ORS) is a case of an appropriate
technology innovated in the public health sector, one that
quickly reached millions of users during the height of the
AT movement and dramatically reduced death rates from
cholera, diarrhea, and other bacterial and viral illnesses.
Drinking a formulated mixture of sugar and salt rapidly
replaces lost fluids and minerals in the body in lieu of
intravenous therapy. The treatment was first developed
in Bangladesh in the late 1960s for victims of a series of
catastrophic cholera epidemics. As early as 1978, the
British medical Journal The Lancet, declared ORS poten-
tially ‘the most important medical advance’ of the twen-
tieth century [51]. Considered a ‘high impact’ technology
it was rapidly disseminated worldwide and by 1984,
80 million packets of ORS were produced and distributed
annually by international development institutions, gov-
ernment agencies, and private enterprises [52] (p. 16).
Currently, the use of ORS ‘represents the most cost-
effective medical treatment known’ [53] and arguably
demonstrates a high level of social and economic sustain-
ability with regard to its global scale of dissemination for
more than fifty years. Global institutions including the
World Health Organization and the United Nations pro-
mote and disseminate ORS and researchers worldwide
continue to improve and patent new formulas to increase
effectiveness and palatability for patients.2 Yet the con-
tributions of this technology to environmental sustain-
ability are difficult to measure. Although it has contrib-
uted to improved public health outcomes and reduced
mortality (particularly in children), only 30% of victims of
diarrhea cases worldwide receive treatment rather than
the 80% goal for global uptake [54]. Like the case of the
jiko stove, a determination of the sustainability of ORS is
hampered by the ecological fallacy whereby positive
environmental impacts at the individual and household
levels do not translate to benefits at greater scales, despite
widespread circulation of these technologies.
Appropriate technologies in other sectors have also dem-
onstrated varying degrees of sustainability. Human-pow-
ered treadle pumps for irrigation save time and labor
compared to manual watering and may lead to expansion
of cultivated surface areas, thus contributing to increased
crop production and incomes [10,55]. The pumps require
no fuel thereby reducing biofuel energy consumption and
pollution, however overuse depletes ground water. Like-
wise, small-scale mechanized palm oil expellers in Africa
2
For example see US patents US20110142962A1 and US10238687B2.
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2021, 49:50–56
54 Open issue 2020 - Part 2
have generated increased income and employment
opportunities for small producers since the 1980s, but
may also increase the runoff of processing wastes into
streams and rivers thereby jeopardizing environmental
sustainability [38]. Research is only beginning to evalu-
ate the long-term impacts of appropriate technologies and
to determine whether early claims of the environmental
sustainability of the technologies were warranted.
A recent analysis of sustainable entrepreneurship
highlighted the importance of articulating a ‘triple bottom
line’ of social, economic, and ecological gains that should
be integrated sequentially, rather than simultaneously
[56]. While social, economic, and ecological benefits
are equally desirable with regard to sustainability, it may
not be possible to achieve all three elements at the same
time and therefore sequential attainment reduces the
complexity of meeting market demands. The long-term
cases of appropriate technology diffusion demonstrate the
potential value of this strategy for future sustainable
development efforts involving technology diffusion. Prac-
titioners in the past have frequently claimed that all three
goals would be achieved through successful appropriate
technology diffusion, yet the long-term results show that
while social and economic goals have often been met,
environmental outcomes have been mixed. Planning
must therefore take into consideration multiple time-
scales (short-term, medium-term, and long-term) to antic-
ipate and accommodate social, economic, and environ-
mental dynamics and processes.
In Small is Beautiful Schumacher [2] claimed that tech-
nology should contribute to the creation of local employ-
ment opportunities and early appropriate technology
practitioners considered enterprise development as a
key component of successful diffusion efforts. Many
innovators, however, ignored this element of appropriate
technology and focused almost exclusively on design and
manufacture, paying little attention to promotion, mar-
keting, and business development. Current studies of
successful appropriate technology diffusion emphasize
the importance of market-based innovation strategies
and development of local supply chains
[10,38,55,53,57,58,69]. Technology must be culturally
appropriate, affordable, and perceived as modern or up-
to-date in order to appeal to consumers.
Appropriate technology is still relevant
Much research and literature has focused on the failure of
appropriate technology as a model of sustainable devel-
opment yet the contemporary resurgence of interest in
the topic suggests that the announcement of the ‘death’ of
appropriate technology [59] was premature. New itera-
tions of the concept of appropriate technology, such as
frugal innovation, are proliferating. Yet whatever the
designation, the fundamental concept of technology for
social justice and environmental sustainability remains
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2021, 49:50–56
highly relevant, inspiring a wide range of innovators,
entrepreneurs, planners, and policy makers (e.g. [60]).
The number of applied engineering for development
programs is growing [61]. Engineers are posing new
questions concerning community engagement, participa-
tion, capacity building, communication, and ethics in an
effort to reconceptualize the relationships between inno-
vators and technology users in development contexts
[39,40,61–67].
There is a strong link between the proliferation of infor-
mation and communication technologies and the
renewed debate concerning appropriate technology.
The devices themselves are arguably products of mass
global consumption and their manufacture is far beyond
the control of most communities, however some applica-
tions for localized contexts and specific needs meet
criteria for consideration as forms of appropriate technol-
ogy. The Information and Communication Technology
for Development movement is based on the skills and
interests of computer programmers and other technical
experts engaged in innovating IT applications for use in
diverse sectors including agriculture, public health, edu-
cation, and business. The concept of appropriate tech-
nology provides a framework for IT development projects
that is more ethical and more practical than dominant
development theories based on linear processes of capi-
talism-oriented modernization.
Insisting on the key role of local manufacturers and
consumers, the appropriate technology strategy takes
an arguably postcolonial stance. The approach offers
new choices and options based on local needs, and
strengthens local economies by creating benefits, to vary-
ing degrees, for a wide range of actors. An emphasis on
community-based, consumer-oriented innovation forces
innovators and practitioners to become intimately
acquainted with populations of technology users. Dia-
logue surrounding social values and cultural norms
encourages engineers to gain new perspectives on the
meaning of what constitutes ethical design, and to antici-
pate potential impacts over space and time. Cultivating
relationships between innovators and technology users
can be collaborative rather than a top-down perpetuation
of structures of global dominance and subjugation. Rather
than designing with a ‘need to help’ [4], engineers and
innovators need to identify and respond to consumer
needs in particular markets. Appreciation of local geogra-
phies, histories, and cultures in the design of technologies
for development will ultimately promote local control
over systems, processes, and resources to achieve the
triple bottom line of social, economic, and ecological
sustainability.
Conflicts of interest statement
The author has not identified any conflicts of interests
pertaining to this article.
www.sciencedirect.com

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