[Stoves] Off-topic: Time to shut off dripping drivel - mine or GACC's? (Re: Tom Miles)

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at outlook.com
Sat Jan 14 19:23:42 CST 2017


Dear Tom and Nikhil

I think we have to frankly admit that the GACC is now dominating the cooking stove space more than any other organisation, if we evaluate it in terms of resources committed to raising awareness and advancing the concept of an ‘international stove test’ first at the IWA level (which doesn’t mean much) and then at the ISO (which does). [I am ignoring the so-called ‘Lima Consensus’ because a) it wasn’t a consensus and b) it was the sound of one American hand clapping.]

I have noticed at least two underlying problems with Hillary’s GACC exercise. I doubt she was aware of either of them at the time and the reputational risks involved.

1) The determination right from the start to have a ‘universal test’ that would be used to rate performance of all stoves on a ‘common testing basis’. That such testing is meaningless for regulatory and sales purposes is, I believe, widely accepted, yet the GACC persists with it. The (regular) EPA goes to great lengths to make sure that space heating stove testing is as close to contextual use as possible. Many discussions are held to ensure it is as realistic. This approach, the result of applying common sense, is broadly used in WB sponsored stove programmes (and others). It has never been promoted by the GACC nor that section of the EPA devoted to domestic cooking stoves.   Similarly it has been avoided by Berkeley, the authors of the WBT in it modern form, and strenuously resisted by Aprovecho, a co-author, the University of Colorado and other less important academic players in this sector.  Why?  It is always claimed by these same groups that stoves need to be tested on an equal basis for making ‘international comparisons’ even though to the most casual observer, there is no value in doing so because it doesn’t provide anything realistic about how they will perform if you buy and use them. That is not how countries regulate products nor how people buy them.

2) The determination to create an international testing and trading paradigm in such a way as not to invalidate the unscientific approaches that passed for ‘performance testing’ up to and including the IWA 2012:11. This is much less obvious than resistance to contextual testing paradigms but it is surely there. An extension of the concept that ‘things have to be internationally comparable’ is the idea that ‘we have been doing it correctly all along’.  Nikhil often says he doesn’t care for the technical squabbles over how well the ratings are calculated (unless misrepresentations are being made for particular traits). He says we should focus on what the heck we are supposed to be achieving. He has been involved in this sector professionally for longer than most people on this list and in case it is not already apparent, he is saying the king has no clothes on, never had any clothes on, and that the new supposed golden cloth, not even the size of a golden fig leaf, is costing a lot more than it used to, without any proper accounting of goals, achievements and accountable expenditure.

I submit that the ‘stove community’ must at this critical time, during the development of international standards for evaluating all aspects of performance, dispose entirely of the idea that stoves can or should be rated on a ‘common basis’ that is abstract from any context of use. If ‘performance’ includes acceptance and use by owners, so much the better because any great invention that is never put employed is useless, by definition.

I further submit that there is no need to implicitly validate unreliable and obsolete test methods, no matter who wrote and used them. I believe we are making some progress on this score, save for the special case where charcoal making stoves are being held up as a reason to continue to misrepresent the cooking performance of stoves that have a high fuel consumption but make charcoal. There is no reason to represent some stove models’ performance properly and misrepresent others because someone finds in them a fashionable interpretation.  Like customers, I have always found the truth fashionable.

It was, I admit, a surprise to find out that the GACC was not an organisation in its own right (a legal person).   I checked the contract with the SeTAR Centre and indeed it was signed with the UNF, not the GACC. The GACC never appears on any document as a contracting party. It is therefore odd that the GACC is said to have a ‘CEO’ instead of a Programme Manager. When the “CEO of the GACC” negotiates with the representatives of a government, say a Minister of Energy, over support for a national stove programme, is the Minister aware that she is not negotiating with the GACC but with the UNF?

There is widespread belief, to the point that journalists and others say so directly, that the UNF<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Foundation> is a agency of the United Nations<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Foundation>, which if course it is not and never was. I have never seen a statement from the UNF correcting any such misleading statement by others. I have seen the GACC (through its newsletter) provide links to online documents stating that 4.3m people die each year from inhaling cooking stove smoke, referring to deaths instead of 4.3 premature deaths. No correction in the text containing such links makes reference to the gross misrepresentation of GBD-attributed premature deaths as deaths caused by stove smoke. There is nothing unique in this misrepresentation – examples abound – however if it is one’s bread and butter to promote understanding, which is I believe on purpose of a newsletter, there is an expectation that constant education and shared understanding, as provided on this list, would be the norm. Why should it fall to (unpaid) Nikhil to correct these misunderstandings and misrepresentations?  Why should it fall to (unpaid) Cecil to bring the women and the cooking environment into the evaluation process?  Why should it fall to (unpaid) Penn Taylor, Yixiang Zhang, Fabio Riva and me to correct the technical test methods? Why should the volunteers chase after the paid in order to clear up serious misunderstandings about the nature and impact of cooking stoves?

It looks like all the money is being hoovered into a single pocket where there is not only questionable leadership, but resistance to its responsible execution. I think we need to find a new ‘pocket’ to fill with a mutually agreed and re-imagined sense of purpose and accountability.

Regards
Crispin


Tom:

You write, "shall we just shut off your dripping drivel? If you have a better program let’s hear about it."

Just as I pointed out the dripping drivel of GACC rhetoric five years ago, asking "What does UN Foundation have to show for chewing up donor money on fine-wind-dine-and-shine parties? The IWA circus with WBT?"

How much has GACC contributed to funding design and real-life testing of "better biomass stoves", purportedly this list's objective?

I think I did make positive contributions arguing for "contextuality" (Cecil's concepts) and "usability" (borrowing from Mike Toman's research following Results-Based Finance report on stoves). Critiquing the methods of researches and claims on "clean cookstoves", "health benefits", "climate benefits", "women's empowerment benefits" is also a positive contribution; so what if my language is negative?

Dogs need to bark when thieves surround the house.

If GACC and IWA are relevant to this List, critique of, and reforms in, GACC and IWA processes can be a positive program. Nobody has asked me or this List, but I am trying to shed light on the opaque adventures of GACC, WHO, ISO, and some US government agencies.

Independent financial and performance audits should be demanded by government members of the ISO and all the partners of GACC and donors to GACC, as well as an evaluation by technical experts (including this List itself), users of GACC-promoted "clean cookstoves", and some surveys among cooks exposed to GACC promises.

But exposes are imperative. Whether they are done in behind the doors and kept under wraps or stated in diplomatic manner. Or by my researching open source documents and pointing out the deceit. (A journalist's job is to wake up those put to sleep by propaganda, not comfort the comforted. I am hoping some real journalists take up the challenge like one courageous woman did with her Up in Smoke in India.)

It's your choice.

I will write one more post after this and shut down.

Maybe two, including an off-topic response to Ron about my 28 sins of impudence. I owe that to him and the List.

*************

As Kirk Smith said (the precise quote is not handy), about the Global Burden of Disease ("Millions Dead.." paper of his), there is a "natural urge" to confuse (or conflate, I forget) the "attributable" with the "avoidable".

You may avoid the rancor attribuable to me, but the facts are out there. There are enough problems with attributing x Burden of Disease to HAP as risk factor (read Kirk Smith). And many more problems to claim that this BOD can and will be avoided by mere "clean fuels and cookstoves". (Again, read Kirk Smith).

1. The term "clean cookstoves" has no meaning, and all the efforts of WHO/EPA experts to anoint Tier-hood to stoves via PM2.5 emission rates to "averted DALYs" is deceit.
2. GACC is less unaccountable than Chicago Police Department or Donald Trump and his appointees. At least, each of them has a well-defined job and most of them execute it well. Chicago police officers risking their lives patrolling communities that deeply distrust them. and resent the Consent Decree entered into with the US Department of Justice.

By contrast, GACC has no public financial data or independent technical examination by people who might know something about energy and poverty by groundwork (as many on this List do, which is why I decided to respond to Xavier Brandao's post about why it is so difficult to design a biomass stove that will appeal to users and reduce pollution exposures.

There is a larger problem than GACC. UN Foundation, Inc. is a private empire, running nearly 20 "programs and initiatives" and has no annual report after a "Five Year Annual Report"<http://www.globalproblems-globalsolutions-files.org/unf_website/PDF/5year_annual_report.pdf> since end-2002, which shows it having made some $500+ million grants in the previous five years, source of money unreported. As of today, it's webpage on Annual Reports is blank - http://www.unfoundation.org/news-and-media/publications-and-speeches/five-year-annual-report.html.

GACC's Five Year Report<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/406.html> or 2016 Annual Report<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/495.html> does not even mention finances. In its First Annual Report<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/274.html> it said it had "raised more than $78 million in partner commitments" and aimed "to raise $250 million over ten years". Out of the $78 million, "more than $53 million" were in "parallel five-year commitments from the US government" (State, HHS and EPA did much more than that, but all JFK promises are now subject to Congressional appropriations). In its three-year report<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/280.html> it claimed that in 2011-12 "Alliance raises $29 million in total for Secretariat and grant programs, and leverages more than $120 million in parallel funding"; and "To date, the Alliance has raised over $38 million in total funding for the Secretariat and its grant programs, and leveraged more than $200 million in total parallel support.

In the Phase I Report<http://unf.mediapolis.com/resources/283.html>, and the 2016 Progress Report<http://cleancookstoves.org/reports/GACC_AR_2016_FlowPaper2/#page=9>, curiously there is no mention of fund-raising. (The Secretariat is as much of a misnomer as CEO, since they all seem to be employees or contractors of UN Foundation.)

Indeed, on GACC's webpage for financial information<http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/01-01-1990-financial-information.html>, the purported link to "Alliance financial statement" has been broken for months.

Phase I Report confidently declared, "The global health community will fully embrace and act on the issue of household air pollution" and that by 2017, "60 million households adopt cleaner and more efficient cookstoves and fuels" (as if Narendra Modi needed GACC's gas.) The lady presented to the world as GACC CEO is declared as "Executive Director", without disclosing that she is the Executive Director of UN Foundation, Inc., since GACC is not a legal person.

Absent donor evaluations and detailed audited financial statements, I am forced to conclude that UN Foundation Inc. and its project GACC, are in need of a Chelsea Clinton. She raised questions about her father's Foundation, now she needs to come to the aid of her mother's Alliance.

Nikhil

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