[Stoves] Off-topic news: World Bank opinion piece on LPG

[Nikhil Desai]

Increasing the Use of Liquefied Petroleum Gasin Cooking in Developing
Countries
<http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/707321494347176314/pdf/114846-BRI-PUBLIC-add-series-VC-LWLJfinOKR.pdf>,
May 2107

Mostly cite-o-logy and platitudes, some interesting new references I will
read and post later.

What caught my eye is

"Additionally, because smoke from neighboring biomass-burning households or
kerosene lamps could compromise the benefits of cooking with clean fuels,
GLPGP and other environmental health experts recommend that all households
within a community transition as fully to LPG as possible at the same time,
to ensure that the maximum health benefits are achieved. Some Indian states
such as Karnataka are adopting this approach, with designated “smokeless
villages.”

This can be both promising - social pressures for behavioral change - as
well as dangerous - because when combined with government powers in a
fractured society that is India, it risks stigmatizing the poorest, many of
whom do not have permanent homes or kitchens, and not even food from one
week to another.

Fuel per se is not the cause of "smoke", and "clean fuels" is not the sole
answer. Besides, smoke is not the only risk, nor necessarily the most
significant one.

I suppose underlying the idea of "smokeless village" is the argument that,
"all households within a community transition as fully to LPG as possible
at the same time, to ensure that the maximum health benefits are achieved."

This claim from environmental health experts has no theoretical or
empirical validity. Besides, there is always a declining marginal benefit
per $ of expenditure on clean fuels, and this kind of absolutism is
dangerous in a democratic society.

+++++++++

There is more smoke in environmental health and economics
claims: "Household air pollution in low- and middle-income countries caused
an estimated $1.52 trillion in economic losses and $94 billion in lost
labor income in 2013 (World Bank 2016)."

*** Yeah, compared to what? The woman in attached picture -- just got it a
week ago, trying to ascertain the location - is carrying roughly 30 kg of
wood balanced on her head, with a nursing baby in front. What employment
opportunity would she have compared to about $1-2 (depending on whom she
sells to) she gets from this activity?

I have no doubt many cooks want to save time, not health or forests or
climate, and earn $3-4 a day outside if someone else would do their cooking
and child care. But it is also the case that at the Bottom of the Pyramid,
simple nutritional intake is implicated in lifetime productivity. Food
insecurity data are rather weak, but child mal/under-nutrition estimates
are done annually. In South Asia there are 60+ million children under 5 who
are victims of "stunting", and wasting is declared "a critical public
health emergency" (28 million children under 5) by WHO last month. In South
Asia, no fewer than 15% of under-5 children are at increased risk of death,
says WHO.

Food, not solid fuel combustion, is the crisis that leads to early deaths
and lost productivity.

Says who? Well, WHO. In 2004,WHO attributed more deaths
<http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_part2.pdf>
and
DALYs in low-income countries to "childhood underweight" than it does to
indoor air pollution from household fuels, with a large share of child
deaths from diarrhea, measles, pneumonia, and neonatal or other infections
attributed to undernutrition. But by 2012, IHME had changed its methods and
concocted new data on household air pollution - emissions as well as
exposures - and thrown in dubious assumptions of equitoxicity and
Integrated Exposure Review, to put big numbers to fool those gullible
enough.

Anyway, the economic theory of sources of productivity growth and
estimation of lost productivity are as goofy and spongy as those of
premature mortality and risk factors. This World Bank (2016) report was
cooked up in part by IHME, with frank admissions for data quality and
assumptions. On that some other time.

"Clean energy" has so far bypassed the poor, and the risk is, so will this
"clean fuel" mania. Unless biomass stove community gets its act together
and offers a competitive choice. Kirk Smith's challenge is loaded.  ***


Nikhil





[image: Inline image 1]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831 <(202)%20568-5831>
*Skype: nikhildesai888*
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