[Stoves] Rwanda charcoal (Was Thai Bucket Stove)

[Cecil Cook]

Dear Nikhil et al,

I could not have said it better than you have in this post.  As a post
Marxist believer in the mystery of creation, I am moved to celebrate the
role of virtuous stove science in getting the stars to align correctly in
Rwanda. There is a wonderful quote from Max Weber where he concludes his
life long debate with Marx by saying that the material factors of
technology and production may indeed be the drivers of history but ideas
and sentiments are the "switchmen" who determine where these powerful
locomotives end up.

My personal take on stove replacement programs is the following....the
fewer the interventions by govt and non govt agents in any systematic stove
replacement program the more dependent the stove change process is upon the
sentiments and culture of the targeted stove using publics.

Long back in 1982 I wrote a thought piece for the USAID Africa Bureau about
spontaneous technology transfer... I found many examples of rapid adoption
of complex new technologies where early adapters had ample opportunity to
observe innovations in use on mission stations throughout colonial Africa
and then spontaneously imported big technological changes into the
indigenous culture.

The reverse is also true: where the change promoting agent multiples the
necessary interventions needed to incentivize stove change the more stove
switching becomes dependent on often unreliable outside funding sources and
expeits. Each stove replacement depends on multiple factors being aligned
to take place. It is the opposite of spontaneous....it often becomes a very
costly and chaotic process whereby govt and non govt agents try to impose
changes in the stove tastes and stove use behaviors at very high costs per
stove replacement.

I failed in my efforts to interest the WB in using a minimal intervention
approach to spontaneously change stove technology in situ or from the
inside out....by assisting local stove makers to incrementally change the
stoves they fabricate.

The interesting comparison to make is the relative cost of (1.) incremental
and in situ stove innovations which in many instances lead to spontaneous
adoption versus (2.) the international outsourcing of a strategy to
massively make over of stove design, fabrication, training. testing,
standard setting. financing, and roll out.

There is so much to say about insider versus outsider assessment of stove
performance.

Cecil the Cook
On Dec 5, 2017 8:03 AM, "Nikhil Desai" <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Crispin:
>
> Rwanda and Robert is an exceptional mix. What happened there simply cannot
> be easily replicated elsewhere. Different contexts. (Too many personal
> associations; I won't say more. But I am sure Tom Miles and some others who
> have designed and/or financed and/or implemented projects in cooking energy
> know how many stars have to be aligned before a success can happen and even
> more to replicate it.)
>
> Yes "It is reasonable to ask what the current situation is when assessing
> what to do or building an argument in favour of a certain intervention."
>
> First define the problem. Or parameters of a problem so you can define
> what the context is, and how to set service standards and public policy
> goals.
>
> Please get over this physik-ist, technocratic notions of efficiency,
> emission rates, blah blah. When you look at how much wood moves from place
> x to place y and z, where it or its product is burnt, ask -- "Who is doing
> the moving? Why? What are their incentives and what explains their lethargy
> or inability/unwillingness to what you think is the right thing to do? Are
> they ignorant and stupid, or are they quietly trying to tell you that you
> are the one who is ignorant and stupid?
>
> Sorry to sound arrogant (which I am, and not ashamed of it), but I have
> locked horns and bashed heads on this for decades. "Situation Assessments"
> in terms of wood resource and use efficiencies are singularly useless data.
>
> I have added Cecil to the cc list and am begging him, Ron, and anybody who
> has lived and worked among poor people and also tried to program monies in
> "stoves" projects to consider:
>
> a. Is "cookstove replacement" the right paradigm for change? Why? Why has
> it not been effective and sustained at a larger scale, with a faster pace?
>
> b. What are the institutional *processes* and characteristics of *market
> structures (for all the relevant goods and services) *that need to reform
> in order to make a lasting change, light a wildfire (sorry, I had to use
> that imagery)?
>
> It is the behavioral aspect that helps define the problem -- there are
> ways to improve women's and children's lives, give them modern alternatives
> to traditional cooking in order to help the cook re-optimize her time
> allocations and be pleased with herself, her chores -- and not the silly
> Btu/bean/CO2-counting malaria.
>
> And these behavioral aspects at the level of government and
> intergovernmental bureaucracies, regulators, financial intermediaries,
> research and advocacy organizations matter as to how monies can be moved.
>
> I will leave you with a concise thought - process, not just substance;
> capacity and incentives, not just reason and preaching.
>
> Merely moving aid money around won't make a lasting difference. I know
> what Gerry Leach was referring to in 1997 and I also know what Fernando
> Manibog wrote about in 1983; monies were spent, knowledge generated, but
> with very little evidence of change on the ground.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 12:23 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Nikhil and Ron
>>
>>
>>
>> It is reasonable to ask what the current situation is when assessing what
>> to do or building an argument in favour of a certain intervention.
>>
>> The situation with respect to the productivity of charcoal in Rwanda is
>> not now what it was 13 years ago. By 2009 there were already 5 major
>> charcoal production improvement projects under way. It became the thing to
>> do to “save the forest” even though the area under forest had increased
>> dramatically as noted below.
>>
>> The selective citing of national forests housing gorillas is an emotive
>> plea that raises money but does not reflect the national situation at all,
>> and never has, even if true for that locality. Robert told me last year
>> there was no further cutting going on there – it was simply too valuable a
>> resource for tourism and the government put a stop to it.
>>
>> The facts are that the area under forest has been increasing save for the
>> interruption noted below, and that as the population increased, the forest
>> area continued to increase even as the use of charcoal expanded. Now, the
>> situation is that charcoal is produced sustainably once again, the area of
>> trees is expanding and there are improvements both in the efficiency of
>> charcoal production as well as stoves using it. What’s not to like?
>>
>> All the waste material from the charcoal production can be used: some
>> fraction is left in the kiln, some branches are not charred, some roots
>> perhaps could be added to the process. The point is that all the biomass
>> should be charred. If the process heat can be used for something, great. No
>> one is objecting to that as far as I know. If a stove can produce $0.035
>> worth of charcoal per cooking event (assuming it has the same value per ton
>> as lump char) and people find that return acceptable, they will do it. Ten
>> cents a day is better than nothing.
>>
>> A major contributor may be the cost of wood compared with charcoal.
>> Meaning wood fuel at the market – it may be more expensive than charcoal
>> per kg, we should not be surprised.
>>
>> I would like a recent figure for charcoal production in wet tons of wood
>> per ton of saleable lump charcoal.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Crispin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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