By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Aug 22 1996 (IPS)

A fruitful co-operation has developed in Peru between the London-based Intermediate Development Technology Group (ITDG) and the Yanacocha Mining Company.

It has enabled ITDG to make a significant contribution to rural development, although it raised a number of dilemmas for ITDG Peru’s regional office in Cajamarca.

The kind of small-scale rural technologies which ITDG tries to promote are often ignored by large-capital-intensive projects, explains ITDG’s Steve Fisher who worked with ITDG Cajamarca in northern Peru.

“After all, what could be more easy to overlook than a group of enterprising women producing cereals as a snack food or a small turbine providing energy for an isolated village,” he says.

Yanacocha is the largest gold mine in South America and has grown rapidly in the past five or six years. It is jointly owned by a consortium of companies from Peru, the U.S. and Chile, and the World Bank. It has had a huge impact on the local economy which is essentially based on thousands of small enterprises and very little infrastructure.

ITDG first contacted the mine asking for support. “We lacked some pipes and cement for a project, so we called at the mien to ask if they could make a donation,” explains Fisher. The mine administration agreed but asked in addition if ITDG could help with interpreting for a visiting U.S. anthropologist, Deborah Korpi, who had been asked to evaluate Yanacocha’s local community support programme.

The mine had agreed with the Peruvian government to establish a rural development programme providing electrification, education and health services to the surrounding communities. This was one of the conditions for its being issued with a licence to operate in the region.

However, ITDG took the initiative and showed Korpi some of its own schemes in the region, in particular those based on micro- hydro power. “We persuaded her that the issue was one of access to productive rural energy rather then electrification alone,” says Fisher.

“Milling and other processing activities were, in our experience, the services most in demand around Cajamarca, and these did not use electricity.”

As a result Yanacocha entered into formal agreements with three NGOs working in the area including ITDG. Fisher admits there were “predictable gaps” between the approaches of ITDG and Yanacocha, “and some flexibility was needed on both sides”.

On balance, however, ITDG believes it was a good decision as it opened the possibility of helping some of the really poor and isolated communities north of Cajamarca as well as gaining finance for existing ITDG work. “We also felt that ITDG could be a positive influence on the design of Yanacocha’s programme,” he adds.

During the first 132 months, the programme has studied energy needs and potential in 17 communities. The main need identified was for ways of processing the main agricultural products such as maize and milk.

There was also a need for help with providing energy for cooking. The first demonstration projects was the design of a micro-hydro scheme to serve the village of Yanacancha.

In addition one school in the region has been reconstructed and a new one built. A health post and communal kitchen are also being built — all using low-cost improved building materials tried an tested by ITDG in earlier projects. The programme is now entering its second year.

Fisher says valuable lessons have been learned about the ways in which NGOs can co-operate with large companies. For ITDG there have been several benefits.

Finance was provided for work which was being threatened by lack of funding and ITDG’s work has been brought to the attention of a wider audience, in particular some of the poorest communities.

In addition small scale initiatives have now been established as a valid part of a major programme backed by the Peruvian government and the World Bank.

On the other hand, Fisher says large-scale mining is of little benefit to those not directly employed by it and this has implications for any NGOs which become involved with it.

“ITDG Peru considered this issue carefully before becoming committed to the agreement, checking the environmental record of the company and likely impact of the development programme in the long term,” says Fisher.

“However, by being involved from the start, ITDG was able to influence the way the company spent its funds rather than commenting from a distance.”

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