Decades ago, the mathenge tree (prosopis juriflora) was introduced to East Africa from South America to combat desertification. But the “law of unintended consequences” turned the experiment into a failure. Now residents of Baringo district in Kenya are finding new uses for this reviled tree species.
Charcoal
Tragedy in the DRC’s Virunga National Park
It is with extreme sadness that we received today’s announcement that three park rangers and five Congolese soldiers were killed during an attack on their patrol vehicle in Congo’s Virunga National Park. (Read the blog post by Emmanuel de Merode, Chief Park Warden and member of the Board of Adviser of The Charcoal Project.) Illegal charcoal production in the park is the single greatest threat to the survival of the mountain gorilla. Virunga National Park, which has implemented a successful briquette program in communities surrounding the park, has been a partner and supporter of The Charcoal Project since day one. Continue reading
PAPER: Biomass Briquettes: Turning Waste Into Energy
Tom Selleck says, “if there’s a global alliance to put a clean cookstove in every pot, then there should be planetary partnership to but a better briquette in every clean cookstove.”
Haiti’s charcoal crisis comes into focus, but is anyone listening?
(Reporter William Wheeler writes about Haiti’s addiction to biomass in the most recent issue of Good Magazine)
Elizabeth Sipple, an agronomist who recently took a post as the director of International Lifeline Fund’s Haiti program, is working to wean Haiti off a lethal addiction: wood and charcoal, which supply the majority of Haiti’s energy needs.
The main source of revenue in the countryside is cutting trees for firewood and charcoal production—part of a hugely inefficient wood habit that consumes trees much more quickly than they can regenerate.
This dependency has cost the country its forests, sapped its fertility, and set the stage for an increasing series of natural disasters, including—by driving migration into the congested, anarchically-constructed capital—the human impact of the earthquake that killed roughly a quarter of a million people.
TANZANIA: Economic recovery hurting energy poor; shift to charcoal from kerosene
The prices of kerosene, cooking gas, and electricity have gone up by 6, 20, and 18.5 per cent respectively. Experts say this leaves most households in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and other urban centres with little choice but to shift to charcoal.