[Stoves] report with disappointing results from cleaner cookstoves

Tue Dec 13 11:27:30 CST 2016

What a great reply!

Thanks Dieter.

Season's greetings from a cold and snowy Waterloo
Crispin

Dear Crispin,
You point to crucial issues: ownership and responsibility, replacement of wasteful methods and introduction of sustainable technologies. The "African Research and Technology Institutes for Sustainability (ARTIS)", I mentioned, should be dedicated to these and further challenges, creating millions of decent jobs per year in Africa.
In "A Christmas Carol" of  Charles Dickens we can read: "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"
Kind regards
Dieter

Am 13.12.2016 um 16:48 schrieb Crispin Pemberton-Pigott:
Dear Dieter

While I agree that this is the traditional view, it is not the only view. We should look at the success stories that are not wondered, and pondered, and discussed over coffee, but at those where it is working right now.

I gave the two examples of Chad and Rwanda. Haiti is not yet a success but there has been good progress on the legislation and on the farmer-front. It is not illegal to make charcoal in Haiti, as long as you planted and raised the tree. That is the key to getting the ordinary person involved in the charcoal fuel business.

All prophecies about '30 years' have failed. It is like 'peak oil' which has been re-told and recast for more than 100 years. The difference is that trees are renewable and oil, so far as we know, is not - unless the Russians are right.

So let's look at Rwanda again. It was supposed to be completely free of trees already- some years ago. The mountain gorillas were also supposed to be extinct as the last forest cover was removed. Rwandans use a heck of a lot of charcoal. Where is it coming from? The cutting of the forest has stopped. They are using masses of charcoal, and it is being supplied by local farmers.

In Lesotho, the value of a tree is well known. People plant them. Own them. And sell them, one by one. Last I heard a pine tree was worth about R300. That sets the fuel price. As in the Eastern Cape, people plant trees along the margins of the fields as a fuel crop. The difference between now and 'then' is the recognition that a tree has value, and an owner.

In the case of Chad, the trees were in 'everyone's land' and they were easily swept up by commercial, illegal charcoal mafias - no one could complain because no on owned them.  Legislation placed the ownership of the trees on common land into the hands of the local village, and the village was permitted to sell them to fuel industry suppliers (for charcoal or wood). Immediately, the villages had an income stream and something to protect, increase, harvest and prevent theft. It provided a village scale income and all was well, except for the crooks who used to run the illegal businesses stealing the entire resource without replenishing it.

So what do we want? Some want all charcoal to be illegal and are actually happy that they production is so inefficient that they can say 'it uses 12 tons of wood to make a ton of charcoal' because it reinforces their argument that it is a wasteful exploitation that must stop permanently. But it is the livelihood of millions of rural poor. Why not do what Rwanda did which was to have (at least 5) well funded campaigns to introduce far better methods of making charcoal with a goal of reducing the input to 3 tons of wood per ton of charcoal. Overnight the supply of charcoal is increased by a factor or 4 per hectare of trees. So over the past 10 years Rwandans no longer waste their trees with ancient and wasteful methods of making charcoal.

The same thing could be done in Madagascar, Zambia and Kenya. Is it on-going? If not, why not? South Africa produces a he amount of charcoal, There used to be nearly no trees in most of the country. The province of Mpumalanga had barely any trees 120 years ago. Now it is the centre of a huge forest industry, paper mills, construction wood, mine poles and charcoal. What did they do that Zambia is not doing?

These are matters of national policy. As long as the poor get no respect in terms of energy security and income generation, and as long as there is no legal path to creating a resource where there is none or little, the problem will continue. Malawi should immediately develop cooking stoves that operate on coal - clean burning and efficient, with pelleted coal (5-10 g pellets) and introduce it as fast as possible with a 20 year time horizon. They have the coal. This would give them 20 years to replant their entire forest that has disappeared because of illegal clear cutting to make charcoal in the most inefficient possible manner. It might surprise readers to know that this clearing was not done over a century, it was done over a very short period after the old president Banda died. He declared the forests were not available to the people. The new government said, 'these are your forests' and they set about hacking them down. No planning, no replacement, and no introduction of better charcoal production technologies.

Now they have to do something to prevent a total disaster which is the loss of the soil from the denuded hills. It is a crisis that can be converted into opportunity and restoration, with a permanent supply of high quality fuel to domestic users. Processed charcoal pellets as Dr Karve is making are a wonderful fuel. We can easily be forward looking without acrimony. It doesn't matter how the situation developed, it matters what we do about it when we have the chance.

In Liberia charcoal is made from rubber trees which have a short life cycle. It is a literally endless, farmed supply of trees. They make money from the rubber for years then turn the trees from the whole area into charcoal and plant it anew. I would create what they have on the north Tajikistan border - forests of walnut trees! They cook and heat with walnut wood! In Java they cook with teak! I have seen that in Nigeria too. And the rest of the world is paying dearly for those resources. We should coordinate these markets a little better!

Best regards
Crispin

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