[Stoves] GACC promises and premises: looking back to 2010

[tmiles at trmiles.com]

It would be a great surprise to GACC to know that you became a fan of theirs. You entered this discussion almost a year ago with several weeks of insults and blistering criticism of programs that you seemed to know nothing about and refused to personally contact or engage. In the process you drove several people off discussion list. A lot of your “revelations” are not new to us but simply issues that we try to deal with. There are more than 1600 organizations involved in biomass stove development and dissemination. For the last 15 years PCIA and GACC have been instrumental in providing opportunities for the stoves community to meet and exchange experiences. Contextual design is not new but has been practiced by many organizations, adapting stoves to local cultural situations. Many of the more than 600 stove designs are adapted to particular people and circumstances. Programs are inspired for many reasons, not just smoke. For example, two Central American programs were started by medical organizations to reduce the trauma (burns, skirt fires)they were treating that had been caused by cooking over open fires and to reduce smoke in the kitchen to improve health overall. You should interview them to see what improvement they have seen over the last 10 and 20 years. In some areas people have many different stove designs to choose from. Designs employing micro-gasification have been under development for more than 20 years. Well designed and supported projects using biochar from stoves have been under way for about 10 years. Carefully designed cookstove biochar projects have been implemented in Africa and Asia with funding from Global Environment Fund, EU and others for purposes of restoring land as well as health, food security, etc.  Food security has been the theme of GIZ and other stove programs for many years. 

 

So what is it that is new that you are bringing to the stoves community? Kirk Smith got the USEPA to support and catalyze stove development starting in 2000. How will Nikhil Patel catalyze stove development for the next 17 years?         

 

From: Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2017 12:30 PM
To: Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com>
Cc: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] GACC promises and premises: looking back to 2010

 

Tom: 

Thank you. If I don't write a thorough piece, it won't go to anybody. 

My writings and my chats belong to different universes. Let me begin a conversation, though and see if you or anybody else has a disagreement in principle. Our policy choices may differ and we may disagree on how I say something rather than that I say anything at all. 

If you recall, I became a fan of GACC CEO back in February. I may not like some approaches and don't  have factual material in terms of contract reports, annual reports, so I have to go by news items and intuition. My intuition is that a) she was given an impossible script by her predecessor, who in turn was following a script by State and EPA, in particular Jacob Moss and Susan Annenberg; b) it is in the nature of charity business such as UN Foundation to market false promises based on false premises, and the enthusiasm back in 2009-10 was so great, there were bound to be mistakes and failures. 

Washington, with all its facades and fibs, runs on certain transparency and honesty, even now. Rather, I cannot give up on the hope that some of the time. 

Yes, there are positive contributions - to me, the most positive is simply "awareness raising". (I am not being sarcastic. I made fun of dinners at the Imperial Hotel or White House South Lawn. But I know that is how Washington or New Delhi do business. I cannot suffer them, but hats off to GACC to playing that game.) 

I will say that some alleys GACC started on are dead-end -- DfID may not like my assertion about the "Evidence Base" project, whose results we don't know yet, but who knows, it may open up avenues of another kind of search. 

And I also don't think the TC-285 bandwagon will go anywhere or that public donors should do bulk procurement of cookstoves without regard to cooks, fuels, and contexts;  "international standards" for efficiency and PM2.5 emission rates is also a dead-end alley. 

UN Foundation was a bad choice for hosting GACC, but understandable due to Mrs. Clinton's support and the State/EPA history. 

If GACC did not directly provide money for, and oversight for, better solid fuel stoves, that is one negative. So is UNF interference with energy and health related SDGs. So moving GACC out is an idea worth tabling. It might even allow for different procurement and reporting procedures. 

Moving from cookstoves to fuels and foods is another thought, though I am sure many people on this list would disagree, and organizing a program on a broader set of problems will be even more difficult. Still, how about the principle of considering foods and fuels - and biochar for agricultural productivity or fuel markets - over the long term? 

Because, if we agree on "Healthier Human Environments" , they are not just about smoke sources but about foods. I happen to suspect that mal- and under-nutrition have not only life-long consequences but inter-generational consequences. 

If you are with me so far, please suggest other "positives". I think it's a time to go past the reductionist view of stoves as smoke devices, though I would also readily concede that material and design break-throughs must be worked on to deliver a clean enough cooking energy system to please the cook. 

You'd never know that pleasing sisters is my life-long passion, would you? :-) 

Nikhil





 

 

On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 2:48 PM, <tmiles at trmiles.com <mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com> > wrote:

We need to recognize the pros and cons of the program. While there are aspects of the GACC project that people may disagree with there have also been positive contributions. If you are going to do an opinion piece than be thorough. Otherwise it’s just conversation. 

 

Tom 

 

From: Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com <mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com> ] 
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2017 11:07 AM
To: Tom Miles <tmiles at trmiles.com <mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com> >
Cc: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> >
Subject: Re: [Stoves] GACC promises and premises: looking back to 2010

 

Tom: 

GACC aren't open about their history, so why bother asking them about their future? 

I don't know GACC; am considering writing an opinion piece. Opinions welcome. 

Nikhil




------------------------------------- 

 

 

On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:06 AM, <tmiles at trmiles.com <mailto:tmiles at trmiles.com> > wrote:

You should contact GACC about plans for the future. 

 

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org> ] On Behalf Of Nikhil Desai
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 9:24 PM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> >
Subject: [Stoves] GACC promises and premises: looking back to 2010

 

List members: 

Back in 2010, soon after Mrs. Clinton had announced the creation of GACC at the UN Foundation, there was an event on The Martha Stewart Show demonstrating clean cookstoves;  Clean Cookstoves Featured on The Martha Stewart Show <http://www.prweb.com/releases/clean-cookstoves/martha-stewart/prweb4923294.htm> .

 

Below an excerpt from some promises made at the time and the premises behind them. 

I have some impressions of where things have gone since then, though not quite sure where they stand for how long. 

Since WHO was a Founding Partner, I suppose the creation of Guidelines for Household Fuel Combustion can be said to have met the goal of developing air quality guidelines, but I am not sure. (WHO already had IAQ Guidelines, but of relevance to cookstove projects is whether in actual developing country residential environments, having emission rate targets for individual stoves is an adequate or even useful instrument for achieving compliance with indoor air quality guidelines. 

As things stand, the Alliance has three more years to go. Any views on what it can accomplish in the next three years, or what plans should be made beyond 2020 and by whom? 

 

Nikhil

"The reductions in emissions achieved by clean cookstoves have the potential to create revenues from carbon credits. Stove companies can use this revenue to reduce stove prices or expand into new markets. More broadly, the entire clean cookstove supply-chain should be a source of economic opportunity and job creation at the local level.

To achieve its '100 by 20' goal, the Alliance will establish industry standards; spur innovative financing mechanisms; champion the cause across the donor and development communities; develop indoor air quality guidelines; address global tax and tariff barriers; field test clean stoves and fuels; and develop research roadmaps across key sectors such as health, climate, technology and fuels. 

A thriving global industry for clean cooking solutions will provide a range of long-term benefits for the entire world -- from improving global health to combating climate change.

  

 

 

 

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