In 2018, I nominated Alexandra Elbakyan, the creator of Sci-Hub for the John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science.   The award

Recognises the work of individuals who promote science and evidence, advancing the public discussion around difficult topics despite challenges or hostility.

As you may know, Sci-Hub provides free access to an extremely large corpus of academic journal articles, circumventing traditional publishing paywalls and copyright.

My nomination was an attempt to help recognise Ms Elbakyan’s immense contribution to the opening up of scientific publishing.  Ms Elbakyan made it to the final shortlist, but did not win.   I am nominating her again this year, as I feel a win would be a much needed further boost to the open science movement.

The shortlist for the Maddox prize has not previously been made public.  I feel the nominations themselves deserve a platform, not to mention the shortlisted nominees.  I make a plea to the panel: in keeping with the open science ethos, please consider creating a platform not just for the winners, but for the shortlisted nominees, together with a summary of the panel’s deliberations

The nomination:

Dear Prize Committee, 

I would like to re-nominate Alexandra Elbakyan for the 2020 John Maddox Prize, for her efforts setting up, maintaining and defending Sci-Hub, a website that provides free access to paywalled research. Alexandra Elbakyan may not be a typical candidate for the John Maddox Prize, however, I hope to make a convincing case that she is a worthy one.

I do not know Ms Elbakyan personally, and have been unable to obtain agreement to nominate her.  However, I have sent a message to inform her.

I have addressed the four stated criteria below:

How clearly the individual communicated good science, despite challenges

Access to and dissemination of scientific research has historically been controlled by journals and journal publishers. Subscriptions to these journals are bought by universities, and are made available to the academics within those universities, but not to those without such privileged positions.  While the prevailing publication model may have had some justification in an era of dissemination by physical methods, with the advent of the internet, and essentially free/zero costs of dissemination, it is harder to justify these archaic models.  Furthermore, many of these journals, which were previously affordable, have risen in price, unaffordable even to rich institutions.

The majority of institutions and academics in the developing world/global south are further impoverished by this lack of access. Despite a vocal open-access movement, a significant proportion of the scientific literature remains behind paywalls. Inertia, power dynamics and conflicts of interest have prevented rapid change, and thus an innovative/disruptive solution was necessary – Alexandra Elbakyan provided this solution with Sci-Hub.

The majority of published research is publicly funded, with much of the work in the reviewing process carried out by volunteers, yet remarkably, the public who have funded it are typically unable to access it without charge. The public are hampered in accessing scientific information, preventing learning, innovation, and citizen science.

The ramifications of these barriers to access are innumerable, but to pick just one example doctors, patients, and researchers are often unable to efficiently (or cheaply) gain access to all the potentially relevant literature – they are therefore disempowered in their decision-making.  Likewise, journalists, who especially in an era of increasing ‘fake news’, play an indispensable role in disseminating accurate information, may not have access to original sources.

In the traditional sense, Alexandra Elbakyan has not ‘communicated good science’.  She has instead worked at a higher level and directly facilitated the communication of science via opening access to everyone on the planet who has access to the internet.  It is hard to think of a greater individual contribution to the communication of scientific knowledge.

The nature of the challenge(s) faced by the individual

Unsurprisingly, given the nature of powerful institutions, and the economic incentives to maintain the status quo, Alexandra Elbakyan, has faced very significant challenges in initiating and maintaining Sci-Hub. So far, she has been the subject of two legal cases, both found against her by default.  The first case was brought by Elsevier, and awarded $15 million in damages.  The second judgement, in favour of the American Chemical Society (ACS), of $4.8m, also awarded an injunction “against all parties in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub”. This essentially provides the ACS, and those who wish to align themselves, with the tools to attempt to censor Sci-Hub.

The effect of these judgements is that Alexandra Elbakyan fears that if she travels to Europe or the USA, she may be arrested or extradited on further hacking charges.  Clearly, she would be unable to live or work in the USA due to the financial penalties she faces there.

How well they placed the evidence in the wider debate and engaged others

Sci-Hub places ALL the evidence into the wider debate; and in doing so, it brings the evidence to the people, and brings previously disenfranchised people to the debate.

As of March 2017, Sci-Hub’s database contains 68.9% of the 81.6 million scholarly articles registered with Crossref and 85.1% of articles published in toll-access journals.

Sci-Hub is now internationally known as the best way for those without privileged access to read scientific papers.  It is even used by those with access, as it often provides the fastest method of downloading papers. Even for members of Western universities, Sci-Hub often provides a better level of access than their institutional subscriptions. According to an article in eLifeSciences, “For toll access articles, we find that Sci-Hub provides greater coverage than the University of Pennsylvania, a major research university in the United States”.

According to an article in Science “Over the 6 months leading up to March [2016], Sci-Hub served up 28 million documents. More than 2.6 million download requests came from Iran, 3.4 million from India, and 4.4 million from China”.  Even this old data demonstrates both the depth and breadth of the reach and influence of Sci-Hub and how it’s providing access for exactly the people it was designed to help.

Their level of influence on the public debate

Beyond providing access to the disenfranchised, Sci-Hub’s success has driven public debate as to the ethics of traditional subscription-model publishers as well as to how to achieve a more equitable system. The concrete and visible action of actually providing a working alternative, has had a significant effect on driving the debate out of ivory towers into a more public forum.  Sci-Hub has acted as an advocacy tool for open access.  Barriers are often invisible to those for whom they are not a problem; by creating a system without barriers, Sci-Hub has helped delineate and highlight these barriers.

I write having spent years working in Ecuador, where my students worked without the benefit of privileged levels of access to public research. I saw directly how a lack of access affected every one of my students.  And having introduced my students to Sci-Hub, I see how it enriched their scientific lives, and unlocked their potential – helping them to find postgraduate positions in prestigious European universities.

Article 27 of the UN Convention on Human Rights, cited by Ms Elbakyan, states that “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”  This statement implicitly acknowledges that science and scientific advancement is not an individual pursuit, it is a societal activity. Yet right now, while some of us are standing on the shoulders of giants, others are scrabbling at their shoelaces.

Ms Elbakyan’s activism has included actions that are considered by some to be illegal. Those with established financial interests in academic publishing have been particularly vocal in their opposition.  I would like to draw a parallel here with the Suffragette movement, who faced imprisonment for acting according to their values.  The cause of the Suffragettes is now almost universally lauded, illustrating how the law shifts as society changes.  Thus I would encourage the panel to put aside the question of legality, and consider the value and wider impact of Ms Elbakyan’s actions.  These actions, along with those of other advocates of open science, have arguably resulted in a paradigm shift in thinking about equality of access to science.  The movement has been so successful that even dominant academic publishers have been forced to change their own models in fear of being left behind, even if they have not changed their underlying philosophy.

Alexandra Elbakyan is an activist, acknowledged by Nature in 2016 (alongside 2018’s co-winner Terry Hughes), who has risked her liberty to confront a system that impoverishes humanity. Recognition is essential to activists, not only to further their work, but also to protect them for persecution and prosecution. I hope that you’ll consider extending this recognition to a true revolutionary.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Fergus Kane

Although I no longer practice in Ecuador, I often get questions about therapists who are trustworthy and competent.

The following is a list of therapists who I have worked with and interacted with personally.  I have had positive feedback on all these therapists from clients.

Liliana Podvin.
Approximate cost.  $50 per session.
Hotel Quito area, Quito
099-592-6935‬
M.A Marriage, Family and Individual Therapy in San Diego University for Integrative Studies (California).
lilianapodvin@gmail.com

Alejandra Morales.
Approximate cost.  $40 per session
Voz Andes y Juan Diguja / Cumbaya Parque Central .
099-904-6704‬

Daniela Ordonez
Approximate cost: $50 per session.
6 de Diceimbre y Whymper
Cumbaya
http://danielaordonez.com
Master’s in Family Counselling from Universidad Javeriana, Colombia

Andrea Yadun
Approximate cost:  Between $35 and $45 per session
Isabel la Católica N24-848 y Coruña
C.C. Centro Plaza, Av. Pampite
https://www.terapiasecuador.com/sobre-nosotros
Masters in Systemic Family Therapy from King’s College London
0978602564

I try to keep this list up to date based on people’s feedback.  Please, if you would like to recommend a therapist in Ecuador, contact me directly.  Also, if you would like to provide any feedback on there therapists I have listed (both positive and negative), that would be very useful.  You can find my contact details on my main webpage:  www.ferguskane.com

Why I’m writing this.

I have worked in Ecuador as a psychologist for about three years now, both as a therapist and, for a time, as a teacher at Universidad San Fransisco, de Quito.  Over that time, I’ve heard numerous tales of bad practice,  running the gamut from fraudulent psychologists, inappropriate relationships with patients, through to serious breaches of confidentiality.  As a result, I felt it was important to write a guide to finding a good enough psychologist.  It’s not a guarantee of finding a perfect therapist, but hopefully, it will help avoid the very worst!

There are many different things to consider when choosing and sticking with a psychologist.  To some extent, this will depend on what you need from them and whether their skill set matches with that.   I’ll deal with that briefly and then move onto some more basic issues – like whether your psychologist has any real training, whether they are running to Ecuador because they lost their license in their own country, whether they use an evidence-based approach and whether they can do the basics like talk about and maintain confidentiality!

Basic Questions.

I’ll start with some commonly recommended questions you might want to consider asking, and then I’ll move onto discussing the issues in more detail.  I’ve adapted these questions from the American Psychological Association (APA) and added some of my own.

• Do you have, have you ever had, or have you lost a license to practice psychology? (there is no licensing system in Ecuador, see below)
• How many years have you been practising psychology?
• What is your approach to confidentiality?
• Do you currently have your own supervision?  If not, why not?
• I have been feeling (anxious, tense, depressed, etc.) and I’m having problems (with my job, my marriage, eating, sleeping, etc.). What experience do you have helping people with these types of problems?
• What are your areas of expertise — for example, working with children and families?
• What kinds of treatments do you use, and have they been proven effective in dealing with my kind of problem or issue?
• What are your fees? (Fees are usually based on a 45-minute to 50-minute session.)
• Do you have a sliding-scale fee policy?
• Do you work with insurance companies?

Is your psychologist a good match?

Besides the basic ethical and competence issues discussed below, the most important thing in therapy is that you and your psychologist are a good match, both in terms of the difficulties you face and in terms of the ‘therapeutic relationship’. Whenever possible, your psychologist should have experience in working with the kind of difficulties that you are facing; if they don’t you may still be able to work together, but in this case, it is important that the psychologist has regular access to high-quality supervision with someone who does.  It’s also important that the type of therapy matches the issue you face.  For instance, a number of therapies have been shown to have good outcomes when working with trauma (CBT, EMDR and Narrative Exposure Therapy included) and it’s generally best to stick to these proven treatments.

Likewise, it’s generally acknowledged that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is extremely important.  In a good therapeutic relationship, you can expect to experience what Carl Rodger’s described as ‘unconditional positive regard‘, to feel like you are being listened to and understood, and that you can be open with your psychologist without fear of judgement (for many people, this can take some time even with a great therapist).  Therapy should also feel like a collaborative process.   Conversely, it’s essential that you don’t feel bullied, pushed way beyond your limits, told what to do, or like the therapist is imposing their own beliefs on you (to pick just a few issues).

It’s also worth noting that not every psychologist will be able to work effectively with every client.  Some people may have preferences for the gender of their psychologist, while for others there may just be something in the relationship that does not quite work.   Even if a psychologist comes with great reviews, but you just don’t seem to be able to mesh, please don’t assume that therapy won’t work for you.  A great psychologist will be able to listen to you when you say therapy is not working and either suggest a new approach or refer you to another psychologist.

That covered briefly, let’s move onto the issues that I think may be particularly important here in Ecuador.

Licensing

Now for a bit more detail, let’s start with licensing.  One of the most serious problems with psychology in Ecuador is that there is NO licensing system here.  It is quite simply not possible to lose your license, because it’s not possible to get one in the first place.   To be clear, a license is not a degree, but part of a post-qualification system that is designed to make sure that only qualified, competent and ethical psychologists may practice.  Importantly, a degree cannot normally be rescinded, whereas a license can be rescinded at any time following a complaint and investigation.  In many other countries, such as the UK and USA, you are always able to check whether your clinical psychologist had their license challenged due to malpractice.

It’s not possible to check the status of an Ecuadorian psychologist’s license unless they trained or worked abroad.  It is, however, possible to check the previous status of foreign-trained psychologists.  For instance, a clinical psychologist working in the UK has to be registered with an organisation called the HCPC.  Although I let my registration lapse when I left the UK, as it no longer seemed relevant, you can still look me up here, via my surname.  In addition, you can also google my name and phrases like “UK lost license” “ethics” etc.   I’m aware of people who have found out a lot more about their psychologist using this latter method and I thus recommend it for anyone looking for a psychologist.  For US-based psychologists, in particular, there is a lot of information available from state psychology boards.  For Ecuadorian psychologists, although there is no license system, it might be worth checking what Google knows about them!

Qualifications and Experience

If you can’t check for a license, what can you check for?  Qualifications.

Ecuador has a system for registering your degrees run by SENESCYT.  With a person’s ID, you can check here which degrees they have registered with SENESCYT (this applies to all professionals, so you can also check out your architect etc).  If you do this, you’ll see a list of the degrees that have been registered (click on the image to see an example from my record). It is also possible to check details with a person’s name, but for foreigners this has to be done on a separate page/tab, which has slightly less information.  If you want, give it a go with my name.

Now I do not wish to suggest that just because a psychologist has not yet managed to register their degrees in Ecuador, that they can’t be trusted.  In my case, it took quite some time to register all my degrees, because of some random bureaucratic obstacles when registering doctorates.

Regardless of the status of a psychologist’s registration with SENESCYT, please ask about your potential psychologist’s qualifications and experience.    Even if not registered yet, they should also be able to show you their certificates and consent for you to contact their place of training if you so wish.

How much training and experience should a therapist have?

Experience.  There is no easy answer to this question.  Generally one would assume that the more experience the better; however the evidence is, as usual, more complex than that.  For instance, it has been found that there may even be a negative long-term effect with the most experienced therapists being slightly less effective, perhaps related to a common finding that sticking closely to the protocol (therapeutic integrity)  rather than going ‘off piste’ may be related to better outcomes.    A newly trained psychologist with supervision may be far better than a more experienced, unsupervised, burned out and cynical psychologist!  Whatever the case, it’s likely that the majority of variation in therapist effectiveness is due to other factors than simply years of experience, which brings us to training and evidence-based practice.

Training. In the UK, to call oneself a ‘clinical psychologist’  requires at least a first degree of three years and a three-year doctoral degree (DClinPsych) from an appropriate university.  In practice, many therapists qualify with significantly more experience than that, often at least a Master’s degree and sometimes a PhD.

In Ecuador by contrast, the term ‘clinical psychologist’ does not appear to be protected and so anyone can call themselves a psychologist or clinical psychologist.  In practice, some ‘psychologists’ have only a 3-5 year degree (often with rather little actual psychology) while others simply have no related qualifications.   I highly recommend, where possible, looking for a psychologist who has at least a Master’s qualification from a foreign university (there is no Master’s degree in clinical psychology in Ecuador).  In particular, watch out for ‘internet’ or ‘mail order’ degrees, they are often not worth the paper they are written on.  None of this is to say that a newly qualified ‘psychologist’ in Ecuador with just a first degree can’t be helpful, but please do be aware that it’s a level of training that would be unacceptable in many other countries.

Evidence-Based Practice.

I practice CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), both evidence-based therapies.  What does this mean?  A full discussion would be too much for here, but essentially, at the very least, nowadays it means the therapy has been tested to see if it is more effective than a placebo.  It also means that the basic assumptions of the therapy will have been tested to make sure they are correct.  Evidence-based therapies are also constantly re-evaluated and improved, and the results of studies are published in peer review journals.

In Ecuador, one can find a wide number of therapies, many of which come under the term ‘esoteric’.  These include things like ‘family constellations‘ therapy.   While these therapies may come with great reviews from some of their participants,  they have generally not been scientifically tested and moreover may be actually dangerous. Beyond that, they are often allegedly based on untested or untestable concepts like ‘morphic resonance‘ and rely on guru like figures.    Worryingly, just in Ecuador, I’ve heard multiple reports of people being left feeling traumatised following family constellations work, and being blamed for the failure of the therapy to work.  It is one thing to know how to get a person to revisit a trauma, and another to be able to safely guide them through a therapeutic process.

I do not mean to rule out complementary techniques.  Indeed I fully encourage trying meditation (which I also teach/practice), having a massage, attending support groups, exercising, horse riding, spending time in nature and such like – all these may be important components of recovery and living a good life.  However, I advise being cautious in taking serious issues to poorly trained practitioners selling untested or miracle therapies.  For instance, many practitioners will have little or no training in working with suicidal thoughts, flashbacks, trauma, the disclosure of abuse and so on… all of which are key parts of good training for clinical psychologists.

Confidentiality.

This is the most basic cornerstone of psychological therapy, yet based on what I’ve been told, it something that seems to be ignored by a lot of ‘psychologists’ working in Ecuador.  My personal belief and training is that confidentiality should be clearly and openly discussed the first time that you meet with your therapist – and it should be the therapist who brings it up, ideally before anything else.  With specific exceptions, a therapist should never discuss identifiable details of your therapy with anyone else without your specific permission.

It is NOT ok (without your consent) for your therapist to tell their family and friends about your therapy, it is not ok for a therapist to let others know you are in therapy, and it is not ok for them to discuss  your therapy with your family or friends.

In other countries, a therapist could lose their license for such lapses.   I have heard far too many examples of broken confidentiality.  Again, it’s not ok.

There are exceptions to the above rule, and these should also be discussed in therapy.  For example, a therapist may have to break confidentiality in the case that they are concerned for your safety or that of others. Equally when conducting therapy with children, confidentially is important, but there are times when a therapist will need to disclose information to the client’s parents – generally this should be done with the child’s knowledge.

Supervision and further training

It is my belief that any good therapist should be consistently questioning and updating their own practice.  Part of this includes continuing to attend conferences and training though-out one’s career.  Another part of this, which I consider essential, means being part of a system of supervision.  Supervision allows a psychologist to talk to another psychologist about their clients and to explore any doubts about the approach they are using.  Good supervision regularly provides useful insights into what a therapist might be missing and helps improve the therapy that our client’s receive.  Please ask your psychologist about their supervision practice.

Defensiveness and your right to ask questions!

It’s natural to get a little defensive when asked questioned about one’s abilities, training and practice – and that’s as true for psychologists as for anyone.  However, a psychologist should be able to recognise this in themselves and deal with it.  They should also recognise that it’s entirely for reasonable and indeed sensible for a client to ask certain questions about their psychologist’s professional training and approach.  If your psychologist is not willing to answer such questions, that could be a warning sign.  It may point to poor training, or it may even indicate that the psychologist is hiding something.

Professional vs Personal Questions.  Having said that, most psychologists do set boundaries between themselves and their clients, for good therapeutic reasons.  That means that they may be cautious in disclosing personal information about themselves.  Each therapist has their own boundaries. My take on this is that while a therapist should be open to professional questions, they have every right to gently refuse to answer personal questions.  I do sometimes share information from my personal life when I think it might be therapeutically useful, but I also maintain certain boundaries.

Signs you’ve already got a dodgy therapist.

I may still write something on this, but Joseph Rauch’s 25 Signs of a Bad Therapist: You Deserve Better is pretty good!

That’s it for the moment.

I hope that this is useful to some of you who might be looking for therapy.  As always I welcome comments and suggestions.

Next up hopefully… making the most of your therapy.

It’s been a while now.. but now back to the first purpose of this blog, to share interesting media items related to mental health.  This time something from the wonderful Radiolab.  Here, in a set of pieces called ‘Elements’, the team interview Jaime Low about her experiences with Lithium, and in the process play an old recording of one of her manic episodes.  Well worth a listen, and I think a good item for teaching and it seems also (according to the comments) for some people coming to terms with their diagnosis and medication.

This post became a bit longer than I’d planned, so I’ve separated it into two parts:

Part 1. Some background to my research on filters.
Part 2.  A description of the various types of filters available and their pros and cons.  To be written!

Potable Water Everywhere.  Not Just a Dream.

Living in a country like Ecuador, where the quality of the tap water is far from assured, leads one to consider alternative options for obtaining healthy drinking water.  In Ecuador, one can generally trust that bottled water is of good quality – while in other countries, one must be more cautious, as bottles may just be filled with tap water.  Regardless, drinking bottled water has unnecessary costs, both financial and ecological.  Ecologically, transporting non-reusable plastic bottles of water is unjustifiable in the majority of situations.  Financially, buying bottled water all the time can be… well just silly.

While I have long used water filters on my travels, two things focussed my mind on water treatment in 2016.  The first was that I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to help build an ‘Earthship’ school in Uruguay in February.  The second was the devastating earthquake that hit the coast of Ecuador on the 16th April.  Both made me think very seriously about one concept in particular: autonomy.  What has become very clear to me over the last year, is that with a combination of fairly basic technology and education, access to cheap clean water for everyone can be more than an aspiration, it can be a reality.

What’s an Earthship?

The ‘Earthship‘ was dreamed up by the North American architect, Michael Reynolds.  To cut a fascinating story short (sorry)*, Mike was fed up with the wasteful way in which buildings are constructed and run, and thus decided to make something better; this journey eventually led to the Earthship.  Key to the Earthship design are two concepts: 1. Using other peoples’ junk, and 2.  Finding a way to live autonomously and ‘sustainably’.  Mike believes that an Earthship should ‘encounter’ the world, not use it up, nor contaminate it.

Put briefly, an Earthship is a house that collects its own energy and water, that uses its water intelligently and efficiently and which treats its grey and black-water waste as a resource to enrich it’s environment.  Perhaps most importantly for areas with large temperature ranges, it uses passive solar gain and thermal  mass to do all its heating and cooling.   Often people who live in Earthships also grow a fair amount of their own food.  Importantly, the house does not need to be connected to electricity, gas or water networks.  This has huge advantages for both the environment and for those who live in the house.  In particular once you have built an Earthship (or similar design), you are free from having to pay for electricity, heating, cooling water and sewage treatment.  You now ‘just’ have to think about how to pay for healthcare, education, food and perhaps some fuel for cooking.  Most relevant to us right now however, is how an earthship deals with water, of which more later.

Potable water on the coast of Ecuador.

Before the April 16th Earthquake, people on the coast of Ecuador either relied on rudimentary water collection (pretty rare in Ecuador), rivers, municipal water supplies or bottled water/coke**.  Following the earthquake, those people who were reliant on municipal supplies of piped water found themselves with nothing other than sea water and dirty, untreated river water.  They most certainly did not have control over their own water supply.   Fortunately a rapid reaction by the people of Ecuador meant that supplies of food and water were immediately on their way to the coast, brought by people in their own pick-up trucks.  Indeed, many Ford F150 trucks got their first day’s real work – and went off to do something more appropriate than shopping in Supermaxi and driving to the bar.

It was a beautiful display of shared humanity, but also somewhat absurd.  The shops of Quito were immediately emptied of all their bottled water as millions of bottles, big and small, were shipped to the coast – for weeks and weeks.  In the process the supermarkets and water companies received an lovely earthquake bonus.

Things could have been much worse.

Although the earthquake was devastating and although the death and destruction was magnified by terrible building control, things could have been much worse.  If the epicentre of this earthquake had been somewhere else, such Guayaquil or Quito, we would have been looking at a totally different scale of disaster.  At the time, Quito’s local volcano, Cotapaxi was also threatening to erupt or unleash deadly lahars..  In a worst case scenario, a combination of eruption and earthquake would certainly have overwhelmed the country’s very limited and unprepared emergency resources – and would have left many many people to survive on their own for much longer.

How things can be better with autonomy.

An autonomous house does not rely on functioning municipal water systems. Thus it is the perfect ‘ship’ for surviving after an earthquake (assuming the building survives – which is another topic).  Ruptured pipes?  No problem.  Contaminated rivers?  No problem.

In an Earthship, rainwater is captured from the roof and stored in cisterns, which then feed a Water Organising Module (WOM).  The WOM is a series of  progressively finer filters, which clean the water for washing and, with the finest filter, for drinking.  Such a system has a number of advantages over relying on municipal water.  Firstly, water captured from the rain is about as reliably non-contaminated as one can find.  A municipal water supply can be contaminated at many points, from the input, through the processing stage, though to the delivery pipes.  This contamination can be accidental or deliberate.  When collecting rainwater, the only possible sources of contamination are the atmosphere, the rooftop, the cisterns and the filters.  The only one of these over which the owner has no control is the atmosphere.  Secondly, short of your cisterns being damaged, you will always have water available.

Would an Earthship system be suitable for Ecuador, especially at the coast which is very dry?

The Earthship concept was conceived in Taos, New Mexico, a place with just 50cm of rain per year, most of which comes in torrential downpours.  This is enough to classify Taos as a high altitude desert, yet an Earthship in Taos can collect and treat enough water from its roof to drink, wash and shower all year round.  By way of comparison, Quito gets 100cm and Pedernales, which was close to the epicentre of the earthquake, gets 92cm.  This suggests there is not reason we can’t do the same on the coast of Ecuador, at least in the wetter areas.

I’d consider the Earthship rooftop collection system as the ideal solution for most places, however the full system has one serious limitation – price.  Firstly, one must design a decent rooftop collector with sufficient surface area and which must be made of suitable materials (long lasting, non-contaminating).  Secondly, one needs a large storage capacity, normally in the form of a set of cisterns, which can be expensive.  Thirdly, one needs a filter and pump system.  A second limitation is that all of this needs maintenance – and maintenance requires both understanding and motivation.  This is where a lot of well intentioned NGOs fail… they provide expensive systems that end up being abandoned for lack of local buy in.  Fortunately, however, there are an almost infinite way of adjusting the systems to local requirements.

After the earthquake

Two days after the earthquake, I went down to the coast with a group of local Ecuadorians and a fellow immigrant to bring supplies help build shelters on the coast.  As well as a bunch of shovels, saws and other tools, I had my trusty Sawyer filter.  This meant that instead of using the water that was being taken to give to those affected, I could filter my own water.  It also meant that in the worst case scenario of getting stranded and/or injured in an aftershock, I would have access to clean drinking water as long as I had a source of non-saline water.  One of the sources of water I used was a swimming pool, which got progressively greener as the weeks went on.. but which made a lovely example for demonstrating the filter to local people.  The water goes in green and comes out clear.  I’m just sad now I did not take any pictures.

Seeing the need for potable water, and seeing the incredible waste involved in bringing millions upon millions of tiny plastic water bottles down to the coast, the first thing I did upon my return to Quito was start researching as to what was available in Ecuador by way of water filters.  At the same time, a variety of groups and people started to bring water filters down to the coast (for example Waves for Water).  The majority of these small filter systems came from Sawyer or LifeStraw.

We also saw donations of larger scale systems from countries around the world.  Not that you’d know much about this, as the government seemed keen to take credit for all the work done by other organisations.  Here I should note that the apparent lack of emergency planning by the Ecuadorian government was fairly shocking.  But that’s another post.

It immediately became apparent to me, that all these different smaller organisations were doing pretty much the same thing, but without any coordination.  I therefore tried to put people in touch via WhatsApp and eventually via a Facebook group, which remains active.  If you are interested in joining us, please have a look here.  The group is dedicated to joining all people working with potable water and sanitation in Ecuador.

Delivering the promise of the filters is not easy.

Our group received a small donation of Sawyer filters and an offer of many more.  However, having attempted to train local people in the use of the filters, we realised that getting people to use the filters and use them well was not going to be easy.  Not all of the filters we handed out were actually used, and it was not clear that they were going to be used correctly.  Part of the problem was that in the town of El Matal, in which we were building shelters, people had been given free bottled water, and later, free tanks of potable water.  This, although very welcome, reduced the incentive to use the filters.  We thus decided to hold off until things had settled down before trying again.

We did anticipate these problems, as they are to be expected when such things are delivered rapidly AFTER a natural disaster.  Post-disaster is exactly the wrong time to be delivering new technologies.  The recipients are very unlikely to be in the right frame of mind to want even more change in their lives.  More than anything, they want things to go back to normal.  Thus the best time to deliver these initiatives is likely when people are more settled.

This is not to say that some of the water filters provides were used extremely effectively.  Some of ours were, and various filters provided by other organisations were clearly well set up and well used.  The LifeStraw filter pictured above, was one example of a well organised filter point.  A specific person had been given responsibility, there were clear instructions (in the right language) and a banner clearly advertising where people could get clean water.

Today at the coast.

All of which brings us to today, 8 months after the earthquake.  Having returned to my native Britain for several months, I’m somewhat out of date on how the filter systems that have been provided by the various groups are being used today.  I have my doubts that many of them will be in daily use, but we will need to do more research to find out.

Which means what?

Which means the real work starts now.  Hundreds, if not thousands of water filters have been delivered to the coast, all of which are suitable to provide a family with clean drinking water for years.  The challenge (IMHO!) is to provide workable, cheap systems for collecting and filtering the water.  But perhaps more important is the formidable process of providing proper education about sanitation and correct use of the filters we have provided.

Part Two To Follow:

Part two will actually be the more useful bit for most people. It’s here.

*It’s definitely worth learning more about Earthships. An easy way to do this is to watch the film Garbage Warrior.

**Believe it or not, I’ve met people on the coast who don’t drink water, but just drink soft drinks.  Often coke is cheaper than bottled water.