Absent in the majority of the speeches we heard at last week’s summit of African Energy Ministers in Johannesburg were references to biomass, either as a renewable fuel with the potential to deliver significant energy for economic growth, or for its contribution to sub-Saharan Africa’s energy balance.
Poverty
At last. The moment you’ve all been waiting for: a reality show about clean cookstoves!
There’s no shortage of reality-inspired cooking shows in which participants struggle against long odds.
Now there’s a new offering, with a difference. It’s Stoveman, a four-part video series documenting the efforts of two young men who are part of a “low profit” business aimed at providing efficient rocket stoves to poor households in struggling places.
(taken from Andy Revkin, Dot Earth. The New York Times)
REDD and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Climate change is likely to adversely affect the poorest people in the developing world. But solutions like REDD could end up hurting them as well.
NEWS: Congo’s poor need incentives to save giant forests
* Experts in Congo for talks on saving big three forests * Poor countries need incentives to save forest By Jonny Hogg GEMENA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, May 31 (Reuters) “Environmental experts from 35 countries were meeting in the Congo Republic, DRC’s smaller neighbour, on Tuesday for a week-long summit seeking ways to protect the world’s three largest rainforests — the Amazon in South America, the Congo in Central Africa and the Borneo-Mekong in Indonesia. The outcome of the summit could play a role in the preservation of some 80 percent of the world’s remaining tropical forest, seen by Continue reading
NEWS: The case for combining water treatment & clean cookstoves
From WASHupdate: Combined Household Water Treatment and Indoor Air Pollution Projects in Urban Mambanda, Cameroon and Rural Nyanza, Kenya, 2011– WHO.
The positive experience from these two projects concerning the apparently clear benefits of delivering household water treatment and household energy interventions in an integrated way has important implications for future programs. Specifically, the key strategic question is whether integrated delivery should be the norm, rather than, as at present, the exception and only seen in a few innovative projects.