[Stoves] Fuel and Forestry etc.

[Ronal W. Larson]

Samer etal


On Jan 18, 2014, at 11:03 AM, Samer Abdelnour <samer.abdelnour at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ronal and all,
> 
> I'm glad you like the research. I'll do my best to clarify your questions where I can. I see these as revolving around two subjects: charcoal use and the potential consequences of employing stoves as being able to solve significantly complex problems using 'narratives' as evidence (as opposed to causal evidence).
     [RWL:  OK - but I am raising other issues as well.  I am worrying about present charcoal-making, as part of char-using stoves.  I also am concerned about some language you have employed at one place (repeated below).
> 
> I'll start with the latter, as it is a topic I've been thinking about for some time. I will disagree with you on the point that no stove people are involved in propagating the 'stoves reduce rape' rhetoric. Most certainly, a number of (mostly US-based) stove designers and promoters (including NGOs, advocacy organizations, and networks such as the GACC) have used such rhetoric as a means to justify and direct resources to the promotion of stoves in humanitarian-conflict contexts. As I've shown prior, suggesting that i) there is relationship between fuel and sexual violence, and ii) stoves can manipulate this relationship, depends on a number of 'narratives' that verge on 'myth'. If sexual violence is indeed a complex and pervasive problem (i.e. women are at risk in camps as much as they are outside of camps, at hands of neighbors, while collecting water, while going to market, at work, etc.) then sexual violence is a comprehensive problem to which stoves can do little to address. Why? Because they depend on certain myths to be true (i.e. women are only at risk while collecting fuel, nowhere else).
    [RWL:  I think if you go back, my claim was that the rape topic was never (? - at least rarely) a subject on this list.  If it had been, this list would not have taken it up seriously - because we agree with you:  rape prevention (with the possible exception of solar cookers and charcoal-making cookers with supplied fuel) is not something that most stove designers can significantly impact.  I agree with your last two sentences.  You have certainly convinced me that “stove people are involved.”  Just none who communicate on this list.   I think you are mistaken in believing many stove folk are promoting this rationale for stove improvement.
> 
> The consequences of promoting stoves as a solution to rape risk, for poor women, is quite serious. Why? This changes the fundamental questions humanitarian policymakers, donors, and workers ask, and the work they do. For example, the question 'how do we understand and stop rape?' is replaced with 'how do we develop the most efficient stoves?'. Millions of dollars have been raised in fundraising campaigns under the guise 'give $30 and stop the rape of African women in Darfur'. And today, many NGOs and UN agencies have picked up on the stoves-rape narrative and are handing out stoves in other countries. In doing so, these organizations actually believe (and they tell their donors also) that they are addressing violence, when they are absolutely not able to do so. Hence vulnerable girls and women are left in a situation where those who claim to serve them assume the problem is solved, when it isn’t.
    [RWL:  OK I agree.  There is a tiny connection at best  (but probably some for the stove types I have mentioned above (and liquid fuel stoves), where all (repeat all) fuel gathering is halted.   I have spoken out in favor of liquid fuel stoves where the liquid is a bioliquid (especially if co-produced with char).
> 
> If you can forgive my academic writing, I'll have you read the following from the discussion section of the paper:
> 
> The stove panacea is a myth: fuel-efficient stoves are deemed effective not because of empirical evidence, but from the powerful narratives that promote claims of what they are able to accomplish (i.e. ‘stoves reduce rape’). As stove promoters become increasingly dependent on the legitimacy of these claims, the actual effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of stove interventions becomes inconsequential. Regimes of truth are thus construed in ways that render them increasingly unquestionable (Introna 2003). The myth of the technical panacea enables its diffusion from an originating context to ‘everywhere’, or more accurately to ‘no-where’. We define this panacea effect as the propensity for a technical intervention to transform from a context-dependent response into a universal solution.
[RWL:  Agreed, but don’t expect agreement that this is a common belief amongst stove designers.  If it had been, we could find the topic in this list archives.  If not believed by Sudanese officials, they should have indicated their displeasure.
> 
> The consequence of the panacea effect is an increase in the burden of poverty whenever user-beneficiaries are thought to self-emancipate through participation. According to stove advocates, through the simple act of cooking the global poor will decelerate deforestation, impede global warming, reduce sexual violence, improve family health, develop ‘sustainable’ markets, and produce an enduring stream of carbon offsets. On this latter point, through the intermediating efforts of carbon-certified stove initiatives, women across the developing world may soon—unknowingly and through utter necessity—subsidize the polluting activities of global industry. From a neoliberal perspective, technical panaceas justify the expansion of global industry and the conversion of poor beneficiaries into mass consumers of rescuing (western) technologies, techniques, and business models. This too is a gendered process: inherent in the global concern for women’s welfare is the belief that poor women will progress through the technologies of the liberated and developed west (Nader 1989; Wade 2009). The stove panacea inadvertently (and very subtly) transfers the world’s most serious problems into the private lives of the most vulnerable.
    [RWL:  I believe this is the paragraph that Erin Rasmussen found objectionable today.  You are putting underserved blame on women.  Can you find a way to rephrase your thinking here?
> 
> On the topic of char. I'm well-aware that charcoal markets are alive and well in Sudan. However, and though I've seen wood and charcoal being traded in Darfur's camps (there are large markets in the camps, since the time they were established) I don't have the figures you are looking for. What I can assure you is that point 2.e. is still wedded to the idea of an 'exclusive' relationship between fuel and rape. This is not so. In the Dadaab camps example (explained in the paper), agencies that postulated a relationship between wood and rape found that given women wood reduced firewood-related rape but that overall incidences of rape remained constant. Rape is not dependent on firewood.
    RWL:  My 2e said (where “this” referred to a char-making stove situation obviating the need for fuel wood gathering) :  " e.   This, like solar cookers,  would eliminate all gathering of wood;  would it be fair to say that this form of fuel supply would reduce rape?
        I guess I deserve this criticism - but I deny thinking about “ xclusivity".   I did use the term “reduce”, not “eliminate”.   Especially if the Dadaab data says that overall rape incidence did not decline.  Any similar incidence data in Darfur  (for families receiving improved stoves?  I would have guessed that all women never leaving camp should have lowered rape incidence overall.  It should depend a lot on who is doing the raping.  Your account provides some data on this - but I don’t claim any expertise here.

> Though Practical Action had an LPG programme for Darfur, during the trial phase the recent conflict forced them to stop their trials. I'm not sure what happened since. Is LPG an ideal option? I'm not sure. Sudan is a huge country with many natural resources. I'm sure with some strong management from the forestry ministry charcoal and other wood related industries could be sustainably regulated. Certainly there are bamboo industries cropping up in various regions, many supported by national agencies. Again, I have few statistics on this, as my focus of research was humanitarian actors and stove claims.  
    [RWL:   Many on this list may not know that Sudan (Africa’s largest country) is receiving major investments from Arab countries - as being that region’s “bread basket”.  Liquid biofuels will arrive as soon as (globally) we agree there is a serious climate problem - with Sudan able to be one of the leaders.  Bamboo is ideal for char-making.  Yes on char being able to be produced sustainably - but there is a long way to go. And we have char-making stoves coming along that will be better than char-using stoves, and can give women either zero or negative cooking fuel costs.  That is my meme.
> 
> That said, my deconstructing of the 'stoves reduce rape' rhetoric, as 1 of 3 claims that stoves are purported to solve by GACC and others, is in many ways a low hanging fruit. I'd love to see more research, along a similar manner, that explores the other claims (i.e. deforestation, health). For this a number of things need to be explored:
> 
> 1 - The problem thought to be solvable through stoves (i.e. health, deforestation, climate change) needs to be one that is either entirely caused by cooking or fuel use OR the specific contribution of fuel use/cooking to that problem needs to be wholly accounted for (separated from petrol/diesel burning, large industries including agriculture and livestock, logging, etc.). If this is not done, than the claims that stoves are able to 'solve' these problems (fully or in part) will remain 'myths', 'narratives', or 'memes’.
    [RWL:  You don’t have to use the terms “entirely” or “wholly" to have a topic be important.  I think you will find many countries, especially Sudan, where deforestation was almost entirely caused by making char.  It was certainly true 30 years ago.  A different type of home cooking can making a lot of difference - and can help recover the loss of biomass and soil productivity that follows deforestation.  I am not claiming that stove modifications are the entire answer.  I am saying that such changes are an important first step - and can point the way to even more important ways to bring Sudan greater prosperity.

> 
> 2 - How stoves are actually used over time.One such study is from the MIT poverty action lab, which shows little improvement on health due to decreasing stove use over time in 2600 households in India (see link below). This raises a major issue that needs further exploration: regardless of how stoves test in a lab at one point in time, if over a longer period of time stoves aren't used or aren't used properly, any claim of solving major problems will not hold water. Similarly, the tests used to legitimate stoves need further scrutiny. Testing X stove for Y energy flows/consumption in a lab does not mean X stove will use less Z fuel in practice.
> 
> http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/cooking-stoves-indoor-air-pollution-and-respiratory-health-india 

   RWLa:   Agreed, but if you can’t get good results in the lab, you have no hope in the field.

        b.  This report used data from ARTI.  I hope that the two Dr. Karves can add to this.

Ron

> 
> Just my 2 cents.
> 
> Warmly,
> 
> Samer
> 
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