We’ve received the following announcement: Dear Improved Stoves Working Group, In the framework of the Environmental Health Protection and Management platform, we would like to let you know that IOM (International Organization for Migration, not to be confused with Institute of Medicine of the National Academies) has funding available for quick wins environmental health project with community benefits to be started on July 1st and completed on September 1st. Budget is of $20 000 to max of $70 000 per project. Project submission details: Deadline for submission: June 30th by midnight. To be sent to sfernando@iom.int. Please copy Megan.Rapp@unep.org with any submissions. Good Continue reading
Haiti
A Man, a Stove, a Mission
Nathaniel Mulcahy’s speaks with the urgency and precision of someone on a mission and with little time.
Although he has patiently and politely dedicated the better part of an hour to our conversation, I know that the moment he hangs up he will be off to complete a million tasks on his to-do list.
Mulcahy has good reasons to be in a hurry. The first one is that he cheated death seven years ago following a really bad accident, so he’s a man on his second chance.
The second reason, which is linked to the first, is that he is determined to bring energy-efficient cookstoves to the world’s 2.4 billion people who sit at the bottom of the world’s energy ladder. They are the poorest of the poor who lack access to modern fuels and must make do with wood, charcoal, and animal dung to meet their everyday energy needs.
Recycled trash to fuel Haiti
A few weeks back, a radio reporter from US-based Public Radio International contacted us to discuss charcoal, woodfuels, and briquettes projects in Haiti. We are pleased to share with you her story. “Before the recent earthquake, Haiti was no stranger to natural disasters. In recent years, thousands of people have been killed by floods and landslides. To understand why the toll is so high, one need look no further than the country’s bald mountains. Haiti has lost about 97 % of its forests. And the main culprit is the nation’s most popular cooking fuel: charcoal. Reporter Amy Bracken looks at Continue reading
Can Haiti be the new Katrina?
What will it take?
What will it take to tip the scale in favor of a global crash program to swap out three-stones-and-a-pot for energy-efficient stoves, kilns, and sustainable alternative biofuels?
Will Haiti be to bioenergy what Katrina was to climate change?
How long before Al Gore, Angelina, or Bono take on bionergy as the next big inconvenient truth? The Charcoal Project’s intelligence services tell us there is already a film in the works. Will Bono embrace the rocket stove onstage to his fan’s delight?
Perhaps it will be the lure of a multi-billion dollar global market in carbon offsets from stoves, kilns, and briquettes programs that will do the trick. Or maybe it will be the on-the-ground realities of implementing REDD that will undo the Gordian knot.
And the point is…?
Actually, there are four points and they boil down to this: Continue reading
Haiti Earthquake: Greening of Hillsides Can Bolster Recovery
“To me this is one of the top three most important things for Haiti,” said Marc Levy, a Columbia University professor of international and public affairs working on a joint effort of Columbia and its Earth Institute with the United Nations Environment Program. Continue reading