[Stoves] MUST <WOOD OR> CHARCOAL BE A CAUSE FOR CONCERN?

[Richard Stanley]

I view with a certain amount of curiosity, this ongoing debate about charcoal versus wood while both fade,  in comparison to the sustainable use of non wood biomass in a hand briquetted form. 

We are seeing the repeated use of such as Eucalyptus leaf blends to drive off mossies ---without smoke..as one dries their hand made, non wood non charcoal biomass fuel called the holey briquette, around the stove--just before inserting it...
Nkuni ya Kisasa, Huni Itsva, Millenium fuel, Kuni za Leo, Nkuno za makono, las Briquettas..whatever name you have for them, they lie nicely outside the wood-charcoal debate it seems ! 

We're enroute, returning to Tanzania to help host the briquette producers workshop funded by (plug) the McKnight Foundation.

If any of the past meet-ups like this are any indication, I think we will get swept up in a very lively exchange of some 50 participants most all of whom are  actual producers and trainers who actually earn their living off the art..Hopefully what we all learn from that,  can be extrapolated to this forum in support of real, user-driven development.  
 
In the meantime: Charcoal... wood: Whats that ???

Richard Stanley
ww.legacyfound.org


On Oct 13, 2010, at 4:16 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:

> Dear Otto
> 
> You certainly have a way with words.
> 
> Before criticising Kevin you should learn more about people in 'poor'
> countries. We in the oh-so-superior West think that smoke is a bad thing,
> that anyone with 'common sense' would know that.
> 
> Read and learn:
> 
> In Moto Grosso in Brazil, people are VERY aware that fires can create smoke
> and that it is very beneficial. This is diametric opposition to the Western
> medical view.  Without it the Nambiquara would die younger. Dying young from
> malaria or any of numerous other diseases carried by mosquitoes is not
> preferable to learning how to creatively use something as useful as biomass
> smoke.
> 
> At night when the mozzies are particularly bad, people light a smoky fire
> using damp wood in the room (open fire). They lower a woven cloth over the
> doorway so the entire room fills up with smoke until it reaches the lowest
> edge of the cloth, then escapes outside. In Swaziland the same technology
> was traditionally used in their 'guqa na thandaza' beehive grass huts so it
> is probably widely known.
> 
> The level of the bottom of the cloth is secured about 25mm vertically above
> the nose of the people sleeping on the floor. The whole room fills with
> smoke down to that level and kills the mosquitoes as they enter the room.
> The people sleeping on the floor are protected throughout the night or as
> long as the smoke lasts. You already knew this, right?
> 
> If you brought a nice clean-burning gasifier with low CO into these homes,
> they would ask, "What foreign idiot invented a stove that can't make smoke!?
> Duh! Have they no common sense??"
> 
> Replacing open indoor fires in Mozambique will definitely increase the
> incidence malaria and probably other diseases born by roof-dwelling insects.
> "He died young from malaria, but at least he didn't die of black carbon
> smoke inhalation as an old man!"
> 
> Stoves function in a complex medical and environmental and economic matrix.
> Reducing fuel consumption reduces prices and puts people out of work - often
> the only paid work available. Food prices are depressed internationally
> because of vast US and EU dumping of subsidised production. Growing food is
> therefore not usually a viable option, though it would be the obvious
> alternative.
> 
> People who buy fuel, and who buy less when they have an improved stove, will
> spend the money on other things - usually not things provided by the fuel
> industry workers.  
> 
> Stove producers, often cited as providing employment, have other products
> they can sell and rapidly switch if their stove making business drops off.
> And there are not many of them compared with fuel suppliers.
> 
> Stove and fuel promoting requires tough decisions made after considering
> many implications. Some efforts are misplaced.  Look at the efforts made to
> ban or suppress paraffin on the basis that it is a 'dangerous, smelly, smoky
> fuel' responsible for 'burning thousands to death'. Jet aircraft burn
> paraffin very cleanly. It is the STOVE not the FUEL! Crikey. Get a grip.
> 
> Let's elevate the quality of discussion to the point where the content
> provides useful guidance.
> 
> Regards
> Crispin
> 
> 
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