[Stoves] LPG India update and comments--- Fwd: [stove and climate] Timely op-ed
Paul Anderson
psanders at ilstu.edu
Fri Feb 17 23:21:22 CST 2017
Kirk and Crispin,
Kirk might want to reply to your comment about the killing impact of air
pollution.
I note that "ari pollution kills...." is not specific to "air
pollution from cookstoves kills..." Article says the indoor
pollution causes about half of the impact.
To me, seeing this as an "op-ed" comment in a leading newspaper shows
that the pro-LPG people are good at using the media. I need to learn
from them, and utilize the forces of the media to show realistic
alternatives to billion dollar subsidies. That will make the news.
Paul
Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email: psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website: www.drtlud.com
On 2/17/2017 10:46 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
>
> Dear Paul
>
> Here is the first line of the article:
>
> “Air pollution kills more Indians than any other risk factor with
> estimates ranging from 15 to 20 lakh premature deaths annually.”
>
> So right from the start there is misrepresentation of what is
> happening. Air pollution kills = air pollution contributes to
> premature deaths.
>
> Could you think of a sneakier way to induce the public to think that a
> life shortened, a ‘premature death’ is a death directly caused by air
> pollution?
>
> Kirk wrote this? Come on Kirk, surely this is beneath you!
>
> Crispin
>
> Dear Stovers,
>
> I received the message below because I am subscribed to the Google
> Groups "stove at lists.berkeley.edu" <mailto:stove at lists.berkeley.edu>
> group. I thank Kirk Smith for providing this.
>
> A few key points:
> 1. India on track for 50 million LPG stoves for BOP (base of pyramid)
> households by 2019. (Previously reported cost to be US$1 billion.)
>
> 2.
>
> Discussions are on to double the target for early next decade.
> This would mean a remarkable enhancement of clean kitchens for
> hundreds of millions of people.
>
> That would probably be another billion dollars of government subsidy.
> That would be a total of 100 Million LPG stoves for the BOP
> population, which the article notes to be about 200 million households
> burning solid fuels. Therefore, with full success the LPG efforts
> could accomplish half of the need. What about the other half? (My
> answer is TLUD woodgas stoves (gas burners that make there gases from
> dry biomass, analogous to biogas stoves with gas from wet biomass).)
>
> 3. From "chit chat" messages from India, I have heard
> A. of LPG stoves not being used because of distance to get a refill
> of the tank (and of course the gas is not free).
>
> B. people with the subsidized tank-refills selling them for a profit
> to restaurants that would pay substantially more to refill their tanks
> at the commercial level. (and possible kick-backs to the people who
> are hired to prevent such dealings.) That is only hearsay from a
> couple of sources, so do not quote it as proven. Illegal actions are
> difficult to document, for obvious reasons.).
>
> 4. I do not know how much LPG India has and can continually produce
> for how many years. Any data would be apprreciated. Might be
> abundant, and might actually help the most accessable half of India's
> BOP households. But LPG is a limited fossil-fuel resource that does
> contribute to atmospheric CO2 increase. In contrast the TLUD woodgas
> stoves (gas burners, not stick burners) use renewable fuels and can
> even become carbon-negative when charcoal is collected and buried as
> biochar. And at a fraction of the billions of dollars that are going
> to the LPG industry.
>
> REQUEST: Can anyone help get this message to any decision makers in
> India? I would like to have a fair hearing about this (about the
> TLUD woodgas stoves, not about the LPG aspects, for which the LPG
> lobby already has its support lined up.)
>
> Paul
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>
> *Subject: *
>
>
>
> [stove and climate] Timely op-ed
>
> *Date: *
>
>
>
> Fri, 17 Feb 2017 06:17:04 -0800
>
> *From: *
>
>
>
> *To: *
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 0p-ed in Indian Express, one of India’s national newspapers, Feb 17, 2017
>
> This proposed program, Ujjwala-Mamta, meaning bright motherhood, is
> proposed to be a follow on or supplement to the highly successful
> Pradham Mantri Ujjwala Yojana program started last May, which has
> already provided LPG connections to 17 million poor households and is
> on track to achieve a goal of 50 million by 2019. This on top of the
> 12.5 million from the Give it Up campaign from the year before. Now
> we need to find ways to focus on enhancing usage among the most
> vulnerable, such as pregnant women./k
>
> *The pollution in the house*
>
> Petroleum and health ministries need to push access to LPG, promote
> its use.
>
> Written by *Kirk R. Smith*
> <http://indianexpress.com/profile/columnist/kirk-r-smith/> and *Ambuj
> D. Sagar* <http://indianexpress.com/profile/columnist/ambuj-d-sagar/>
> , Indian Express, Feb 17, 2017
>
> LPG, LPG use, LPG usage, air pollution, pollution, cooking gas,
> cooking fuel, cooking pollution, ministry of petroleum and natural
> gas, LPG connection, JSSK programme, reduce pollution, indian express
> news, india news, indian express opinion
>
> An LPG connection is a necessary first step, but there is need to
> ensure usage as well.
>
> Air pollution kills more Indians than any other risk factor with
> estimates ranging from 15 to 20 lakh premature deaths annually.
> Although outdoor air pollution garners most public attention, it is
> well-known in health circles that pollution from chulhas is about half
> of the problem because people in households are directly exposed to
> such pollution. It is less well-understood, however, that the two are
> linked: One of the reasons India has such bad outdoor air pollution is
> that nearly 200 million households are still burning biomass every day
> for cooking. Solving the household dirty fuel problem will also help
> reduce the outdoor air problem, although not solve it on its own.
>
> Although reducing outdoor air pollution remains difficult for Indian
> policymakers given the multiplicity of sources involved, the country
> is making major strides in addressing household air pollution. First
> with the Give it Up scheme and now with the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala
> Yojana (PMUY) programme, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas
> (MoPNG) has targeted 5 crore BPL households to be connected to LPG by
> 2019, a massive increase in the rate of uptake by historical and
> global standards. Discussions are on to double the target for early
> next decade. This would mean a remarkable enhancement of clean
> kitchens for hundreds of millions of people. But accomplishing the
> project will involve major challenges.
>
> An LPG connection is a necessary first step, but there is need to
> ensure usage as well. An LPG connection alone does not help health
> much if the cylinder and stove sit unused in a corner, and are used
> occasionally for making tea. A near-full transition to LPG as the main
> cookfuel is needed to stop the household and ambient pollution from
> traditional biomass use. Although experience from all over the world
> shows that gas is a superior and aspirational fuel and that households
> can reasonably be expected to eventually shift to using it, there has
> not been much experience in creating the incentives for poor
> households to move quickly through the transition. Cost is certainly
> an issue, but for hundreds of millions in India, other issues are also
> important, such as reliable and rapid access to refills, clear
> messaging around health, and changes in community expectations.
>
> The health sector has long dealt with these issues. It does no good
> just to give people access to latrines, condoms, birth facilities, and
> vaccines, if no one uses them. As with LPG, access is essential, but
> that is just the beginning to secure health benefits. Thus, in the
> next stages of the LPG programme there would be real advantage if the
> two sectors, petroleum and health, were to work together to make sure
> LPG makes its full contribution of health — the former to provide
> access and the latter to help ensure usage.
>
> One arena with which India’s health sector has good experience is
> conditional cash transfer (CCT) or the provision of cash incentives
> for specific behaviours that promote health in vulnerable groups — one
> such project is the Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) programme among
> poor pregnant women. It has recently been expanded under the Pregnancy
> Aid Yojana scheme to provide a minimum of Rs 6,000 in incentives for
> healthy practices during pregnancy in poor households. There are risks
> with this approach, of course, but it works well if the funds are
> reserved for producing highly-effective behavioural changes that do
> not result in long-term financial commitments and, importantly, are
> transferred directly to the women’s bank accounts where they are most
> likely to be used for the benefit of the household.
>
> There is a parallel opportunity for LPG use — to initiate a
> sub-programme of the PMUY that focuses on providing not only LPG
> connections but refills during pregnancy to all biomass-using
> households. The impact on birth weight and other adverse birth
> outcomes for a pregnant woman using biomass has been established in
> several studies in India; a recent study in Africa shows reduction in
> hypertension in pregnancy with clean fuel use. Thus the Rs 1,800 or so
> that the LPG would cost during a pregnancy to maximise the reduction
> in biomass smoke looks to be well worth the cost for the country. The
> project could be supported by the ugraded JSSK programme.
>
> Such a joint effort between MoPNG and the Ministry of Health and
> Family Welfare (MoHFW) to promote the health and well-being of poor
> pregnant women — and by extension, their newborn children — could
> serve as a model for future collaborative efforts that might be
> undertaken by the MoHFW to address other pressing sources of air
> pollution. Such innovative partnerships are required to address
> India’s complex development challenges.
>
> Smith is professor of global environmental health at the University of
> California, Berkeley and Sagar is Vipula and Mahesh Chaturvedi
> Professor of Policy Studies at IIT Delhi
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD <krksmith at berkeley.edu
> <mailto:krksmith at berkeley.edu>>
>
> Professor of Global Environmental Heath
>
> Chair, Graduate Group in Environmental Health Sciences
>
> Director, Global Health and Environment Program
>
> School of Public Health
>
> 747 University Hall
>
> University of California
>
> Berkeley, CA 94720-7360
>
> 510-643-0793 (fax: 642-5810)
>
> http://www.kirkrsmith.org/
>
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