Charcoal producers in Kisarawe and Rufiji districts, (Coast Region of Tanzania) have a reason to smile after Barclays Bank Tanzania Limited earmarked more than 1.5bn Tanzanian Shillings (USD 1,002,875 / €768,746) to Dar es Salaam Charcoal Project (DCP) to train charcoal producers on how to cut down deforestation.
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Rainforest destruction progresses in waves
Tropical forest degradation progresses in a series of “waves”, with forests initially exploited for high value products like hardwoods and then eventually used for successively lower value goods like firewood and fodder, reports new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tanzania: Charcoal-making in five easy pieces
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
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.