We published last month an interview with Dennis Tessier of ARTI-TZ, a Tanzania-based non-profit working to promote the manufacturing and marketing of briquettes made from the char produced in improved charcoal kilns. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Tanzania’s forests are disappearing at a whopping rate of 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 sq. miles) annually. That’s about four times the size of New York City or half the size of Virunga National Park in the DRC. In our Q&A with Dennis he mentioned ARTI-Tanzania’s Waste to Wealth (W2W) project and we wanted to find out more. Below Continue reading
August 2010
Madagascar: Drought forces farmers into charcoal devastation
(WWF) Toliara, Madagascar — Two years of drought and late arrival of the rainy season in south western Madagascar have forced hundreds of farmers into charcoal producing which is devastating forests, according to WWF field staff at Tollara.
“Charcoal production in the South of Madagascar is particularly unsustainable as people cut the natural spiny forest, a unique ecosystem which exists nowhere else” says Bernardin Rasolonandrasana, Spiny Forest Eco-regional Leader for WWF in Toliara. “We are horrified to see the amount of charcoal currently coming out of those forests.”
Why the market alone cannot solve the clean cookstove gap
Can it be that the emphasis on finding market-based solutions to energy poverty alleviation and the large-scale deployment of improved cookstoves is just not practical? “Probably,” say a group of researchers investigating the pressures placed on grass-roots NGOs to adopt market-based approaches to solving household energy and health issues in the developing world.
Namibia: Clean electricity from invasive trees?
(AlertNet) WINDHOEK, Namibia – The country’s first bush-to-energy plant is under construction north of Otjiwarongo and expected to open in September.
Aid to Pakistan via Acumen Fund
We’ve received the following appeal from Acumen Fund
Pakistan has been affected by the worst floods in living memory. 13.8 million people have been displaced by the floods in Pakistan and 6 million of these require immediate help according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).