[Stoves] Haiti: GACC 2

[Traveller]

Paul:

This is about the report *Haiti Cookstoves and Fuel Markets Assessment,
Preliminary Report* prepared for GACC. (No date but seems like in
mid-2016). A reasonable piece, though parroting some views uncritically.
They are "soliciting feedback", so might as well give mine for what it's
worth.

It mentions presidential elections and ".. the interim nature of the
current government creates uncertainty as to the sustainability of new
policies or agreements".

As I write this (3 Jan 2017), I see Moise's election as the next President
of Haiti has just been certified
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/haiti-certifies-presidential-victory-of-first-time-candidate/2017/01/03/3f0b5d16-d1c9-11e6-9651-54a0154cf5b3_story.html>
this
morning and that he will be sworn in 7th next month.

It's not easy to work in Haiti, I have read in some reports.

Now about this report:

Its take-away on p. 88 is "From the 1980s until present, Haiti saw over 20
different cookstoves and fuels projects." None of them had sizable lasting
impact, it seems.

I am guessing the fastest growth in cooking market is in LPG and
electricity, both at home (from various DHS data of limited utility) and
outside (which nobody bothers to measure).

The ExSum notes, "Specifically for LPG and ethanol, the lack of existing
regulation inhibits increased imports and taxes do not encourage further
scale."

*** I am afraid this may push some commercial users and upper-income
households to electricity, which too is likely to be fairly expensive for
an island utility running mostly on oil products. ***

By sections,

A. The Macro Environment section (p. 10-23) reports generally available
statistics from reputed sources up to p. 22. On page 23, I find some
interesting observations:

i) In some households, the noontime meal is the only one eaten by adults,
given the lack of money to cook a meal for the entire family.
ii) While breakfast or supper need fairly short cooking time, the midday
meal requires a longer cooking time, particularly in the case of mashed dry
peas (sospwa). Meals such as meat stew, braised vegetables and braised
“leaves” with meat take a longer time to prepare.
iii) Lunch is usually eaten around noon during the midday break that lasts
several hours. It is usually rice and beans, with ham hocks, peas, or meat
in a sauce if the family can afford it.

*** My inference: Lunch cooking taxes women who have income earning
opportunities during daytime outside the homes. If charcoal cooking is
faster, this may explain the shift to charcoal from wood on p. 39 (as also
a 2 percentage point shift to non-biomass cooking. Says nothing about the
amounts of energy used in total at the household or non-household level,
usual data problem with census, DHS, and even energy surveys.  ***

B. The "Environmental, health, and social impact" section (p. 24-36)
implicitly argues that the "save the forests" ideology is dead, and "save
the lives" campaigns must be launched for LPG. (It's a pity nobody bothers
about electricity and its pricing. I an guessing induction cooking can
easily take 10% of the Haiti cooking demand in two years.)

i) The report rightly recognizes that "more data is needed" to determine
the relative importance of household cooking energy to deforestation. As
the later section on "Fuel Supply" notes,


a) The majority of firewood users collect small branches from areas near
their home –there is not a strong culture of firewood purchase.
Quantitative data on collection practices, however, is limited and should
be examined more closely.


b) the extent of sustainable domestic charcoal production is a topic of
debate, with little data available... the extent of the cross-border
charcoal trade is debated –some estimates suggest that 70-86% of charcoal
used in Haiti comes illegally from the Dominican Republic (Checo,2009),
while other sources claim the fraction of charcoal coming from DR is almost
insignificant..The largest beneficiaries of the charcoal trade are the
transporters who bring charcoal to urban centers, in particular
Port-au-Prince. Charcoal transportation accounts for 50% of the profit
earned on a bag of charcoal.


*** So much for the tons of tears shed - and millions of dollars wasted -
on deforestation in Haiti. (I will get around to commenting on Bailis 2015
- The Carbon footprint of traditional woodfuels - some other time. I have
no patience for fNRB and quantification of carbon emissions. Luxuries of
the theory class.) ***

ii) At page 31, it parrots the GBD blather about HAP as "the 3rd leading
Risk Factor", but instead of saying "For Premature Mortality" says "For
Mortality".

*** Premature Mortality is a statistical abstraction, and pushing HAP from
rank 7 in 1990 to 3 in 2013 is spurious quantification.  But I do
appreciate the smart authors use the phrase "Risk Factor" rather than
"cause".

Of course, in the world of GoBbleDygook, earthquakes and hurricanes don't
exist. Or UN imports of cholera.

The less said the better; the assertion that HAP "from cooking with solid
fuels is responsible for over 6000 deaths each year in Haiti, nearly 3
times more than in neighboring Dominican Republic" makes me gag. (DR is
roughly ten times richer than Haiti.) ***

iii) GBD blather on HAP mortality is even more doubtful considering "the
primary location for cooking is outdoors". (p. 32).

*** Just what is emitted and who is exposed to what how long cannot be
determined by DHS data p. 32 refers to. GBD reference to NCD is also
dubious; I would like to see death and causes of death statistics from the
Government of Haiti, not IHME or GACC. ***

iv) The graph on p. 34 "How Many Deaths Can Be Prevented Each Year in Haiti
by Switching 100,000 Households to Cleaner Cooking" is poppycock of HAPIT.

*** There is no baseline, so one cannot tell how many deaths are prevented.
"Cleaner cooking" presumably means "no solid fuels". I will skip this for
now; Ajay can defend if he feels like. If "Each Year" means 86 years from
now, I won't bother debating; I will be prematurely dead long before then.
***

v) On p. 36, I see the claim "There is also potential for health funding to
benefit cookstove programs that emphasize cleaner fuels."

*** I wonder if this is the real marketing here -- HAPIT-generated aDALYs
marketed to some dumb grant donors (so the government will not have to
negotiate a loan or credit from IADB or WB.) I don't see what GACC brings
to the table for promotion of LPG. Household promotion of LPG should be
done via a policy change with long-term commitment, not some project to
cook up aDALYs and sell them to suckers. ***



C. The "Fuel Usage and Trends" section (p. 37-43) is unremarkable except
for the acknowledgement on p. 43 - "More data is needed on the practices of
institutions (schools, bakeries, etc.) to determine which are appropriate
targets for interventions aimed at achieving large-scale impacts."

*** I am not particularly insistent on "data" until I know how they can be
put to use, and how much can be collected as a project gets going. On the
other hand, it seems that Haiti has suffered the Poverty Tourism's Curse of
cooking up projections from limited data. Till now it was "Save the Trees"
tragedy; now it is going to be "Prevent Premature Deaths Next Year" farce.

To me, for far too long, stove promoters have been looking at the wrong
market - rural poor with "free" wood. They seem to have some notions about
poverty, preferences, that are driven by their mindset about objectives,
rather than the other way around. If they only got their heads out of the
firebox and looked at the cooks! ***


D. The key thing to notice in GACC analysis (p. 44-56) is that "new
technology" is defined only for households and as "cleaner/more efficient
technology" or "improved stoves", which is technically "fuel-neutral". The
"target population segment" of roughly 1.2 million households is largely
(~80+%) upper-income urban households using charcoal.

*** However, if the HAPIT claims of preventing deaths are to be
entertained, "neutrality" is beside the point. The main idea is to promote
LPG (which I have no problem with, except that I don't see GACC's role in
that case). There are still probably twice as many households that will
continue to use solid fuels in the meantime. I will be happy if
institutional solar cooking takes some market share and some solid fuel
stoves prove themselves to be usable and used in the Haitian context. ***

E. "Cookstove Supply" is addressed in p. 58-63 and "Fuel Supply" in p.
64-72. I have noted the reservations on firewood collection and charcoal
trade above.  I have no comments, nor for the subsequent sections on
financing, etc.


Another post on Ron's comments, then some more on Haiti. I am sorry I have
expressed some policy biases here. I am not paid to advise anybody and free
advice is worth just that.

Nikhil


---------

> Preliminary Report
>
> I have a .pdf copy (4 MB), and cannot find the source document on the
> Internet / GACC website.  If you and others cannot find it, please let me
> know.   It is a very informative document, but I cannot give you the link
> to it at this time.
>
> (And do read Ron's comments below about the LPG stove webinar.)
>
> Paul
>
> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <(309)%20452-7072>
> Website:  www.drtlud.com
>
>
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