The Charcoal Project

VIDEO: The Business of Charcoal in Dar es Salaam, TZ.

This is the trailer to a short documentary on the charcoal sector in Africa portraying the specific example of the city of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. The film was published jointly by the World Bank and the Government of Tanzania in August 2009.

We featured the longer version of this film in a post back in August.

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NEWS: Uganda: Charcoal Boon is a Bust for Forests

According to the Uganda National Environment Management Authority, pressure on land, water, forest and biological resources has dramatically increased to meet the needs of a growing population, leading to a loss of 76 percent of the country’s forest cover.

Geoffrey Oryema, the district leader of Nwoya, said poverty and lack of a meaningful livelihood source were the driving factors for environmental destruction.

“What do you expect somebody in the village without money to pay for his needs such as soap, salt, medicine and food to do?” Oryema said. “People are struggling to find alternatives to survive.”

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NEWS: World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars-UN

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.

As the world’s population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially.

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PHOTO ESSAY: How Manila’s slum-dwellers eek out a charcoal living

This being the UN-declared Year of Sustainable Energy for All, we hope policy-makers and all those pushing for clean fuels in the developing world will look into the eyes of this little girl and remember that solar and wind are not the only solutions. The world needs clean charcoal, too.

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Postcard from Rubaare: A man, a problem, a solution.

In researching the fuel briquette solutions, we discovered there were multiple options available and no decision tree on how to choose between them.  The Charcoal Project team spent the first six months researching and talking to developers, implementers, manufacturers and others with experience in the field.

Our research eventually led us to Isaac Owor, founder of EnviroCoal, a fuel-briquette manufacturer based in the capital, Kampala.

 

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