[Stoves] News: National Geographic on promotion of gas stoves over improved woodstoves - in Guatemala

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Tom

I would like to point out that Xavier’s call, and mine if you look back far enough, is not to reject ‘current methods’, but one in particular that has caused and continues to cause so much loss and disappointment, recognised or not.

I appreciate your efforts and tolerance in providing a platform for discussions to take place. That robust presentations are made indicates your success at gaining recognition that this is the place to present news, ideas and research.

I approve of Xavier’s initiative to have the WBT tests declared unreliable, and that the results should not be used to inform policy nor to trade money (as such trading is being done presently through/by the Gold Standard).  There are sound reasons for making this call, principal among them the fact that the WBT 4.x does not report the fuel consumption, but continues to be used, and defended in certain quarters, by claims that either it does, or that it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t.

Clearly it has its defenders. It has been defended for 15 years by those with a vested interest(s). Appealing as it might be, I do not see a graceful way out of this. The graceful path was the 2008-9 initiative to create a new WBT through the ETHOS technical committee established for that purpose. The result was a response that favoured a request from Berkeley, to the Chair, not to change the calculations so much that the performance reported would conflict with, invalidate, earlier tests conducted using WBT 3.1. This created a conflict of interest, as the WBT4 calculations were planned to correct numerous, serious error in the core of the WBT 3.1.

What happened, following the realisation that some members of the ETHOS-constituted technical committee would not accept retention of the core defects, was that the conversation was taken off-line (the discussion was taking place another channel on Bioenergylists) and some of the members isolated from the process without informing them they were being cut out. The result was WBT 4.0, then 4.1, which retain nearly all the core errors of WBT 3.1. If Berkeley had not intervened to protect their earlier works, we might not have this current situation.

Having wasted the graceful opportunity, we are now faced with large projects trading and expending major funds based on indefensible ratings. It is no longer enough to ‘correct’ matters within the testing community. There are organisations administratively locked into WBT-rooted assessments and the only way to get their attention is to have this community declare them unreliable, and recommend other methods to be used.

Historically, USA-based institutions, Shell and GIZ have led on this count (developing and promoting methods). If these institutions are not willing to publicly and cooperatively correct or replace the WBT, they could help those who are willing to do so, by publicly washing their hands of the WBT and its results. Everyone could go further, of course, by consistently requiring that any proposed evaluation method be expertly reviewed to ensure they are as reasonable as possible. Instead of ignoring published expert critiques, they should be welcomed, as with any scientific endeavour.

It is remarkable that one cannot spend $10,000 on a health project without referencing the methods to be used and cite why that method is valid for that particular purpose in a population of that type. In the world of stoves one might spend $50m on a project without demonstrating anything at all about why that method is valid for any purpose. What happens instead is that a method is ‘validated’ by reporting it has been used by others who used it because some other organisation used it because someone else used it because it was there.

It is unacceptable situation and must be corrected.

Regards
Crispin


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