| Every
year the St Andrews Prize for the Environment attracts entries from
all over the world on a diverse range of topics. A winning idea from
India involved training ‘barefoot engineers’ to install
and maintain solar power equipment in remote Himalayan villages.
Another successful proposal was aimed at North Vietnamese rice farmers
to encourage them to stop spraying harmful insecticides. From Kenya
came an idea to use song, dance and drama to make rural communities
more aware of environmental problems affecting Lake Victoria.
Several winners and runners-up have secured funding for the projects
as a result of their initial success at St Andrews. For example,
a South African project about environmental degradation caused
by mining has now become a community-based rehabilitation project
supported by local government and the mining industry. A project
to turn olive oil production waste into valuable by-products received
grant aid from a Middle East bank.
