Equipping 50 percent of households that burn biomass with improved stoves by 2015 would cost about $2 billion upfront but would almost immediately yield $37 billion in fuel savings, leaving a net gain to the world’s energy poor of some $35 billion.
Over a ten year period this would generate an economic return of U$105 billion.
At two to 10 times above Mongolian and international air quality standards, Ulaanbaatar’s PM rates are among the worst in the world, according to a December 2009 World Bank report. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that health costs related to this air pollution account for as much as 4 percent of Mongolia’s GDP.
The Central Cardamom Protected Forest (CCPF) in Cambodia is a 400,000-hectare zone that the government created in 2002.
Conservationists see the Cardamoms as an ecological jewel. It is home to dozens of threatened species, including some that have become extinct elsewhere, as well as a vital watershed that supports hundreds of thousands of people downstream of its rivers.
But the CCPF is also home to more than 3,000 isolated villagers, many of them indigenous Khmer Daeum whose ancestors have lived in the forest for centuries.
In dealing with them, authorities have two choices: Offer a stick, or offer a carrot. Officials can tell the communities to stop using their ancestral forests outright, or work with them to end destructive commercial poaching and logging.
The latest quarterly update from the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (Bulletin 23)is dedicated to harnessing the power of the carbon credit market to support stove projects around the world. Continue reading
Industrialized and emerging nations are poised to leap into the clean fuel and green technology future, leaving behind nearly a third of the world’s population who is destined to continue burning wood, charcoal, and animal dung using noxious technologies that have remained unevolved for the last 3000 years. What’s up with that?