Today’s NYT article titled Ecosystem in Peru Is Losing a Key Ally tells the familiar story of how poverty and cultural tastes are rapidly sealing the fate of the arid-dwelling huarango, a unique species of trees that can live more than one thousand years. According to the article, haurango rivals teak in hardness and its embers are prized for outlasting any other form of wood charcoal. It is also viewed by Peruvians “as the prime wood for charcoal to cook a signature chicken dish called ‘pollo broaster.’ ” (Judging from the online recipes, comments, and images, the dish might make Continue reading
Human development
MIT's Amy Smith: Visionary, inventor, genius.
Speaking at TED a few years ago, Amy Smith, the MIT professor and McArthur Genius Award recipient, made a compelling case for the widespread introduction of simple technologies that could solve major environmental, public health, and poverty problems in developing countries. Her bio on the TED page sums it up best: Invent cheap, low-tech devices that use local resources, so communities can reproduce her efforts and ultimately help themselves. Smith hatches her ideas at D-Lab, the MIT unit responsible for coming up with some of the coolest technological fixes for two thirds of the world’s population. If her ideas are Continue reading
Can briquettes save Africa's mountain gorillas?
Virunga National Park in the DR Congo is home to the largest population of the critically endangered mountain gorillas. In a recent visit to New York, the park’s Chief Warden, Emmanuel De Merode, told us that the greatest threat to the survival of the gorillas was the persistent destruction of habitat at the hands of the charcoal producers that ring the park. Every year thousands of acres of forest are cut to produce the wood charcoal the local population depends on for cooking and heating. In his most recent dispatch on the subject, Emmanuel writes: Replacing Charcoal with Briquettes – Continue reading
Hello charcoal world!
Charcoal. You may not think much about it. But if you care about public health, poverty alleviation, and the environment, then it’s a big deal. Why? Because more than two billion people use wood, charcoal, dung or agricultural resides as primary fuel for their cooking and heating needs, leading to significant health, economic and environmental consequences. Consider these stats presented by MIT’s Amy Smith: Almost 2 million deaths each year are caused by breathing smoke from indoor cooking fires [1] Respiratory infections are the leading cause of death of young children worldwide.[2] An estimated 50 billion hours are spent collecting Continue reading