[Stoves] Fwd: Support Potential Energy (my organization) this Giving Tuesday!

Sat Nov 25 06:13:15 CST 2017

I appreciate your cynicism for academia Nikhil. However, it is a huge
dis-justice to promote the idea that conflict-affected women and children
are safe from gender and sexual violence in camps. This is a lie/meme that
organizations delivering stoves specifically for Darfur (Darfur Stoves
Project/Potential Energy included) began promoting in marketing materials
as a means to legitimate stove interventions. Academics and chefs aside,
this is a meme that has had significant consequences: in Darfur, it gave
the impression that the problem of sexual violence was being resolved when
it was not. It also redirected hundreds of thousands of dollars in
protection programming to cookstove interventions, which may have been
better off spent elsewhere. It also gives the uninformed consumer of this
information the false impression that a simple donation will prevent rape.
This, when the good people behind these NGOs are well-aware that camps are
not safe nor is there evidence that stoves reduce violence.

On 25 November 2017 at 01:57, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Samer:
>
> I have a very different take on this. For one, there is no evidence that
> people donate money - or extend support otherwise - based on specific
> promises extended in advertisements.
>
> It is slightly different when a large donor - public or private - or even
> a commercial financier is to extend money to specific activity. In US
> politics, donating money to candidates in return for fulfillment of
> promises can land the recipient into jail.
>
> But I have another reason to argue against both promises and those who
> demand "evidence". It is that kind of mindless evidence-seeking enterprise
> generated over the last 20 years by academics in the aid industry that has
> sometimes degenerated into spurious theories of change and wasting time and
> money on bean-counting.
>
> Go ahead, accuse me of wanting to give away money - other people's money,
> no less - for no evidence. It's just that while designing projects and
> trying to raise funds for them, I was self-confident enough to explain and
> emphasize my theories of change - behavioral and physical - and mold the
> metrics of "results" the way I believed they ought to be perceived and
> measured, instead of getting silly questionnaires filled up and then
> subjected to sillier econometrics (which is arguably a redundancy).
>
> So what if stoves do nor do not reduce sexual violence upon women?
> Americans these days are finding out that electing sexual predators they
> admire may have nothing to do with the extent of sexual violence in the
> country.
>
> I know next-to-nothing about Potential Energy. Just checked out their
> website - I recognize the logo from some time ago - and discovered they
> claim, "massive health, economic, and environmental repercussions."
>
> Ok. There are repercussions for everything, including the blind faith in
> GBD numbers and ISO TC-285 metrics, testing protocols and tiers, namely
> that the efficiency protocols will somehow avoid more CO2 emissions and
> deforestation and that PM2.5 protocols will "save lives".
>
> Of course, then the academic junket turns to producing fictions of aDALYs,
> and avoided "climate change-related temperature increases", whatever that
> is supposed to mean. (From Anenberg, et al. "Although climate impacts are
> uncertain, we estimate that all scenarios would reduce expected climate
> change-related temperature increases from continued solid fuel use by 4%–6%
> over the next century." Air pollution-related health and climate benefits
> of cleancookstove programs in Mozambique
> <http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5557/pdf> ERL
> February 2017. )
>
> And what was the modeled global temperature increase? Under their
> scenarios, 44 to -412 microKelvins in 2100. (Yes, 10−6 C, even which I
> find untenable, but I don't have access to their climate model. All I can
> say is that the cumulative GHG emissions from Mozambique household solid
> fuel use will probably be less than a millionth of the cumulative GHG
> emissions worldwide since 1750.)
>
> If you are so angry about "irresponsible and simple (sic) untrue" claims,
> why don't you go after the big fish of the academe?
>
> All this "results mania"  - the Anenberg paper is one egregious example,
> but there is much more coming from BAMG and GACC - is intellectual smoke,
> intellectual rape. Keeps the focus on spending hundreds of millions of
> dollars on pollution exposure monitoring and epidemiology -- some of which
> should have been spent to prove the utility of hurried "reviews"
> commissioned by WHO in 2013 in order to come up with the utterly baseless
> Household Fuel Combustion Guidelines in 2014.
>
> I don't understand why nobody utters a peep that EPA/WHO/GACC have done
> next to nothing to support R&D in stove designs to make them more usable,
> more marketable, and THEN (or simultaneously) monitoring the metrics that
> have relevance to the cooks, not to the US professoriat such as those in
> Anenberg's piece.
>
> I do think Anenberg ought to be held accountable; she was one of the
> godparents of GACC.
>
> I believe in holding publicly financed projects accountable, with
> transparent methods applied to their own operations before getting into
> whether their projects failed or succeeded. Projects fail for any number of
> reasons, but sometimes the financiers' decisions are responsible for
> seeking to solve non-existent problems in order to promote bureaucratic and
> academic glories. As I have said before, I look to incentives and ignorance
> before alleging any crookedness. This "stoves" enterprise does not have
> great success record over the last 40 years and blindly trying to kill
> non-existent geese will waste money and only cook the sumptuous meals of
> the expert class.
>
> For a start, I propose independent evaluations of specific stove design
> and adoption projects financed by GACC, the World Bank, IFC, and DfID,
> EnDev, and any other financier who has spent more than $50 million on
> cookstoves promotion over the last ten years. First, to see if the stoves
> were used and second to see whether the absence of some "international
> standards" made any difference to the uptake rate. At the same time, these
> audits could also try to advance hypotheses of what makes stoves usable.
> (Not avoided deforestation somewhere else nor aDALYs, though savings in
> fuel, labor, and fewer trips to health clinics or fewer instances of
> coughing are sure to have helped.)
>
> I know the expert class pretends to be only accountable to itself --
> "expert consensus" and "peer-reviewed publications".  But if we listen to
> professors and not to cooks - i.e., neglect the academic smoke and
> temperature increases - and not challenge both (yes, cooks too need ideas),
> it will take years more in the pursuit of usable, marketable stoves that
> are clean enough and modern enough.
>
> There are many people on this list who have been trying hard to design and
> market stoves, and they should grudge that their governments are wasting
> money on boiling water and ganja smokes.
>
> Nikhil
>
> PS: When you get a million dollars to prove Potential Energy's claims do
> not stand up to scrutiny, I would be happy to join you on the team. I don't
> know if I wrote this earlier, but I have vivid memories of coming down a
> hill on the then-outskirts of Addis Ababa in early 1003 and watching a
> young girl - 8-10ish - walking down with a pile of branches on her head and
> a younger boy - 5ish - following her. I was told, "People don't send older
> girls to collect wood because they often have to pay in terms of sex to the
> guards or other protectors of the forest. This girl would be at risk too,
> except that the boy can run down or at least see and speak."
>
> Sure, that wouldn't amount to a Randomized Controlled Trial test for
> substantiating evidence for the theory of fuelwood and sexual violence. I
> am as bothered as anybody by such claims -- I remember GACC CEO or Chef
> Jose Andres showing some numbers from Uganda at a GWU event I went to in
> January this year - but the answer is not that the academe can solve its
> own social problem of mindless theories. That would be like a techno-fix
> for a social disease, which I am sure you find unacceptable.
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 6:11 PM, Samer Abdelnour <
> samer.abdelnour at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear all. In response to the advertisement below:
>>
>> In contexts of violence refugee camps are almost never safe, to promote
>> camps as safe is irresponsible and simple untrue. Moreover, there is no
>> substantive evidence to support the claim that stoves reduce sexual
>> violence, even though women may risk attack when collecting fuel. Potential
>> Energy has a responsibility to substantiate these claims with evidence,
>> namely that there is no sexual violence in the camps in which they operate
>> and that their interventions actually reduce attacks, else they should
>> discontinue such claims.
>>
>> Best,
>> SA
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> *From:* Jessica De Clerck <jessica at potentialenergy.org>
>> *Date:* 24 November 2017 at 23:39:48 GMT+1
>> *To:* <abdelnour at rsm.nl>
>> *Subject:* *Support Potential Energy (my organization) this Giving
>> Tuesday!*
>> *Reply-To:* Jessica De Clerck <jessica at potentialenergy.org>
>>
>> Did you know that women and children collecting firewood beyond the
>> safety of refugee camps, are often subject to sexual violence? You can stop
>> this!
>> Is this email not displaying correctly?
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>> <http://mailchi.mp/83e903ffa740/your-donation-to-potential-energy-doubled-for-a-limited-time-2787545?e=e3fafde73e>.
>>
>>
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>> <https://potentialenergy.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=21345cd7ad25362168557c34e&id=3187dcc3b9&e=e3fafde73e>
>> Collecting firewood in Darfur
>>
>> *Join Us in a Movement of Giving Back!
>> <https://potentialenergy.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=21345cd7ad25362168557c34e&id=29860566e5&e=e3fafde73e>*
>>
>>
>> Did you know that women and children collecting firewood beyond the
>> safety of refugee camps are often subject to sexual violence?
>>
>>
>> *You can help stop this!
>> <https://potentialenergy.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=21345cd7ad25362168557c34e&id=d0ce18651f&e=e3fafde73e>*
>>
>>
>> In the midst of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping sprees,
>> #GivingTuesday is dedicated to something different: Giving back.
>>
>> Our goal is to raise $2K before the day ends. And we're starting NOW!
>>
>>
>> *Donate
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>>
>>
>> With $2k we can help 200 women access an efficient cookstove.  These
>> stoves reduce the amount of wood needed for cooking by half, so that women
>> can remain more often in the safety of the camps. Additionally, the stoves
>> emit 60% less smoke, helping to prevent respiratory disease and premature
>> death.
>>
>> Potential Energy has already reached 48,500 women in Darfur, Burkina
>> Faso, Ethiopia, India and Uganda. Help us reach more.
>>
>> Watch this video
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>>
>> Happy giving!
>>
>>
>> Jessica De Clerck
>> Managing Director, Potential Energy
>>
>> *Thank you!
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