Photographer and development expert Len Abrams has put together a visually arresting slideshow and some insightful commentary on the state of African charcoal and deforestation.
Charcoal
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
…and we’re back!
Tanned, rested, and ready to switch to turbo mode. The Charcoal Factoid of the Day, gathered during our recent travels in our native Nicaragua is that a “quintal” bag of charcoal for sale in colonial Granada, on the banks of Lake Nicaragua, retails for about fifty cents US. It’s going to be hard to find a competitive substitute at that price! We’ll be reporting more on our fact-finding mission shortly and lots more shortly. Kim Continue reading
Is a charcoal crisis looming for Tanzania?
Tanzania figures prominently when you google the terms “Africa, charcoal, poverty, and environment.” The facts and figures I came across gave me pause. Tanzania burns one million tons of charcoal each year, which amounts to clearing more than 300 hectares (about 750 acres) of forest every day to produce charcoal. For context, that’s about 1,000 sq miles each year or the equivalent of about two New York Cities, including its five boroughs. Unfortunately, the rate of deforestation outstrips the replacement rate by about 3 to 1. That means that, for every acre planted, three are lost. What’s more, the number Continue reading
Is it time to certify charcoal exports?
Some 1.35 million tonnes of charcoal worth about $400 million USD were sold and shipped around the world in 2007.
This means that somewhere, 5.4 million tons of wood where chopped down to make charcoal for export. With the exception of one seller in our research who described his product as coming from a “wild native” forest, none of the other traders indicated the source of their raw material.
The timber industry, retailers, and consumers have embraced certification schemes (FSC, SFI) for timber and finished wood products.
Isn’t it time we considered something similar for the international trade in wood charcoal? Continue reading