[Stoves] Last? Alternative to Charcoal

Sat Apr 20 18:23:37 CDT 2013

Dear Ron

I do not think you will find the project that I was thinking of on line.

The issue in Chad was the unsustainable drawing of the resource from areas controlled by village chiefs who were not a) doing anything to protect the resource and b) not replanting or conserving the trees. The reason was there was no money in it for them.

A plan was introduced to have the villages trained in the management of the tree resource and a price put on charcoal so that the trees, the source of it, had to be bought so it became something worth protecting. Once implemented this worked very well. It ran for 4 years. For the first time, there was an income stream for the village from taxes on the sourcing of charcoal instead of just letting some individual haul off the trees for their personal benefit.

The trees became protected as a revenue source and there was for the first time a reason to plant and care for them. It was a new income stream. Everyone was happy, almost.

The whole thing came to a sudden halt after 4 years because the wife of a certain highly placed individual, who was previously in the charcoal business, found herself having to pay fees for the charcoal she previously got basically for nothing.

The ‘cure’ was to have her husband ban the sale of charcoal ‘to conserve the forests and preserve the environment and anything else that needs to be said to kill the competition and remove the tax’. I assure you there is lots of charcoal being traded but it is only possible if you are one of the anointed who can avoid prosecution. The law applies to stay the hand of those would tax the resource.

If that is not blunt enough, the purpose of the ‘ban’ was to put things back to the way they were before. Not everything that happens, happens for the reason stated. Some people are above the law. The tax plan was invented and implemented by someone who occasionally reads this list. It was one of the most successful and innovative charcoal interventions ever and was brought to a halt by vested interests. I can name several other countries where similar things are happening right now.

When there is no ‘return’ for the people whose resource is being pillaged, the maximum return is gained for the individuals involved by taking as much of it as possible. This is a well-known phenomenon in the cattle grazing sector. Prof Bembridge from the University of Fort Hare developed a formula for the economics of cattle grazing in which the cost of grazing was a variable. When the cost was zero, the system maximised benefit by having the largest possible number of cattle standing on the denuded land each close to death from starvation. That is akin to the trees all being chopped down and a few guys getting a little for the privilege of taking off the whole resource. As soon as there was a cost to grazing, akin to the cost of getting those trees, the benefit was maximised at having a particular number of cattle of high value on land that was lush. 

This was demonstrated one the municipal commons in the Eastern Cape in the 1980’s when I live there. Bembridge proposed charging for grazing, per head, and the money going to the community as an income stream from commonly held lands, shared equally. That put everyone in a position to benefit and thereby being willing to protect and enhance the resource. Eminently sensible. Unless you have more cattle than average.

If someone was paying nothing and benefitting enormously from the commonly owned resource by being the only person with cattle, they have a strong interest in banning all grazing, then bribing their way through the guards onto the grasslands. Logical, yes? Better to pay a couple of guards than the whole village.

Whether it is trees cut for building materials and firewood or trees cut for charcoal, the principle remains the same. Until there is a managed resource, it will disappear. Faster or slower makes no difference. In the end it will be gone because the arrangement is such that taking it as fast as you can maximises the benefit for you who have access to it.

Biomass production and distribution issues are not solved by ruminating over a cup of tea. These things are complicated and involve multiple social dimensions. Whinging about tree cover won’t bring back the local tax.

I do not know where the tree line is at the moment in Chad, but the grass line has moved into the desert 500 km over the past 30 years. As we have roughly 60 year climate cycles perhaps for the next 30 it will move south once again as we go into the next cooling cycle because cooling means drier conditions. That is bound to affect the availability of trees in the Sahel.

Regards

Crispin

Crispin and List 

     I gather (after very little googling) that, after outlawing char in Chad, the price is up and more illegal material is coming in than ever (because the price is up).

    The key word "sustainability" is, apparently, still elusive in Chad.

   See  http://www.guardian.co.uk/journalismcompetition/longlist-chad-s-charcoal-challenge
and     http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/agro-charcoal-in-chad-as-vocational-enterprises/

and lots more from googling.  

     The offered solution (from the little googling I did) s apparently to make charcoal briquettes from various straws.    But again a good bit of energy is wasted in the pyrolysis process that could be saved with making pellets from straw and then using any char-making stove to make the char (possibly making money while cooking).  Of course,  I think the char-making stove can be so much easier to use than a char-using stove, that the char can become biochar - with all the soil productivity and climate advantages of biochar.

   Were you thinking of still making char this way  in the field when you said

    " Innovative changes to the charcoal market, as were tried very successfully in Chad, can dramatically change the entire market into a sustainable, profitable and effective system for provision of non-fossil cooking fuels."

     Or if not that, what was the "innovative" technology you were envisioning?  

   Do you agree that the past system for Chad (with annually decreasing forest area) was unsustainable and had to be stopped?  

   Can you agree with Paul M, that there might be better economics with the transport of fuel pellets than char briquettes (which entail as much wasted pyrolysis gas energy as  if working with trees)?

Ron

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