[Stoves] Bans and taxes (Re: Anil)

Wed Sep 28 12:53:36 CDT 2016

Anil:

How dare you claim, without any peer-reviewed survey, that "the poor are
not fools"??

Experts' and advocates' careers depend on portraying the poor as ignorant
(of health risks and destruction of forests), incompetent (not doing what
they ought to do), and sexist (girls and women bear the burden of cooking.)

They inspect only what they expect to find. Some pictures I picked up from
the web (attached) amply show the role of men in the fuel cycle -
literally, cycles. Something of a counter-balance to the poverty
pornography of women in front of smoky stoves.

I am sure there is much truth in it, just that I am sick of mindless
regressions - a pun and a redundancy intended here - in peer-reviewed
publications. Some people get paid to complicate simple things.

Manufacturing data devoid of deliberation is dumb. Have made me numb.

**

Looks like you were picking up on another thread where banning of charcoal
was mentioned.

Banning of charcoal was attempted in Malawi and Rwanda (industrial use) and
talked about in Zambia, Tanzania.

Banning fuel use of particular type in specific areas is a necessary tool
in air quality management and land use planning. It may also help in tree
resource management - I think Himachal Pradesh in India was the pioneering
case in widespread dissemination of LPG, ban on charcoal production, and
strict forest management controls.

I happen to place stock in spatial and environmental planning, and am
amazed that the Johnny-come-latelys of the WHO/EPA/BAMG exercise on
modeling emissions, concentrations and exposures - with an explicit purpose
to misinform the ISO and the world, it seems - pay no attention to the
ambient air quality and fuel ban options. "Environmental damage" occurs all
along the fuel cycles; the key is modernizing the fuel cycles (which
includes the final combustion devices such as stoves), not mere "Clean
Cookstoves" silliness.

But I am skeptical about the mechanical association of deforestation and
charcoal business. True in many cases, but the processes are quite complex.
Why, the last I checked in 2012, charcoal in Mussoorie, an area of hilly
forests, came from Kutchh, which is the most arid part of India. Go figure.
Delhi and Washington think-tanks don't research except by cite-o-logy.

Have a look at Social Dimensions of Climate Change - A Discussion Draft
<http://www.who.int/globalchange/mediacentre/events/2011/social-dimensions-of-climate-change.pdf?ua=1>
(it was never finished). WHO was one of the agencies involved. In
particular, see Chapter 2 - led by UN Women - and Figure 2 - Convergence of
agendas and related benefits.

It too has an academic flavor and confuses fuels with pollution, but it
pulls together the interconnectedness of many processes.

I think a paradigm shift - to modernize and "clean up" solid fuel cycles
(not just stoves), to plan for urban or air basin air quality management
strategies - is required on the energy and environmental policy fronts
respectively. Health policy should focus on disease management, with
contribution of environmental and social health perspectives to energy and
environment policy. Those two subsume the angst of "clean cooking", women's
empowerment, climate protection (SLCP controls), and the like; some
problems cannot be directly attacked.

What remains is the huge problem of nutrition and education for children
and youth. We bleed our hearts over emission rates of household stoves and
ignore possibly the most significant confounding factors - other air
pollution and health care systems as I mentioned above and opportunity
costs - lost lives not just in terms of heartbeats and breaths as this GBD
chatter would have, but in terms of productivity loss - of poor nutrition
and poor education. You had a nice idea of "rural restaurants" - mass
cooking and serving of "good food" - but nobody is going to take that up.
Food industry and nutrition are fairly intractable issues the way public
administration and aid planning are organized. (Look at Wall Street Journal
Global Food Forum <http://globalfood.wsj.com/> coming up. I think GACC and
GAIN, WHO and EPA, should go there and share ideas.)

***

That said,

i) Markets for the non-poor are not separate from those for the poor.
Historically, oil and gas retail products were heavily taxed in Europe and
the practice continues throughout the world. The opposite - sharply
discounted prices - continues in some developing oil exporting countries.
Coal, despite the nonsense put out by the IMF "externalities" folks, is
rarely subsidized, though in some former Communist countries the production
costs were kept low by cheap technologies.

ii) There is an option to segment the market for the poor by region or by
changing the product (1-2 kg cylinders of LPG) or a "minimum block" tariff
for electricity of PNG. It's tricky, and once set, it's difficult to
change, I can tell from personal experience. Still, these options have been
used for LPG, PNG, electricity and work very well.

iii) Modernization of the fuel cycle for the BOP - what I call "ecosystems
of energy poverty" - and comprehensive air pollution control strategies
offer avenues for using bans and taxes for dirtiest processes and corporate
polluters. Enough of this "Gold Standard" insanity.

****

So fossil fuels have destroyed businesses and jobs, and are linked to
farmer suicides in Maharashtra. Let's get a grant for research and movie
rights for a fiction on climate change!

Nikhil

[image: Inline image 1][image: Inline image 2][image: Inline image 3][image:
Inline image 4][image: Inline image 5][image: Inline image 6]
Credits: sevenbythree.com, flickriver.com, afkinsider.com, afronline.org,
ipsnews.net, binghamsinzambia.blogspot.com, espa.ac.uk

On Sep 28, 2016, at 12:45 AM, nari phaltan <nariphaltan at gmail.com> wrote:

Nikhil.

Any technologies or fuels which supports life for rural or urban poor
should not be banned or taxed. The poor are not fools. They also like clean
air and when the affordable clean technologies become available they will
go for it. Till then they have to survive and if in doing so they pollute
the environment so be it. That is the law of Darwin. Survival is the first
order of scheme!

One of the unintended benefits of LPG availability for rural poor in
Maharashtra has been that people have stopped cutting trees and collecting
wood. Most of the people who use to sell wood and provide jobs to so many
for cutting it illegally in our area are closing shops.

Cheers.

Anil

Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road
P.O.Box 44
Phaltan-415523, Maharashtra, India
Ph:91-2166-220945/222842
e-mail:nariphaltan at gmail.com
           nariphaltan at nariphaltan.org

http://www.nariphaltan.org
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