CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week reported on a story we published back in January. The short video highlights a stove project run by international relief agency Mercy Corps in one of its refugee camps in North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Watch the video Continue reading
Technology
Nicaragua: Of Hurricanes, Volcanoes, Crocodiles, and Energy Poverty
In October 1998 I walked out of a Costa Rican jungle after narrowly escaping a disastrous film shoot with crocodiles.
The near fiasco had nothing to do with filming the animals up close in their natural habitat. Instead, what almost sunk the project was the relentless pounding of a tropical rain that soaked everything and everyone.
Back in our hotel in San Jose we discovered the cause of the rain was a major hurricane that had slowly swept across the Central American isthmus, causing massive death and destruction in Guatemala, Honduras, and in my home country, Nicaragua. Nearly 11,000 people were killed. The flooding caused extreme damage, estimated at over $5 billion (1998 USD, $6.5 billion 2008 USD).
When good stove projects go bad!
How many abandoned stove projects litter the world? How much money have donors sunk into ill-conceived stove designs? Poorly executed marketing campaigns? And lack of investment in capacity building?
I raise this question because a recent conversation forced me to rethink one of my cherished assumptions: that local stove production was the only way to go. Continue reading
A stove for Darfur
At the height of the Darfur emergency in 2004, women had to sometimes walk as long as seven hours to find firewood outside the refugee camps. The women were frequently the victims of rape during these treks.
Faced with these threats, the US government turned to Berkeley Lab scientist Ashok Gadgil to help find a solution to the problem. The Berkeley-Darfur Stove is the response devised by Ashok, his colleagues, and the women of Darfur. Continue reading
Relief agency "gets it" by putting the right stove in the right hands
A few weeks ago a story in the Financial Times led with the stove project of Mercy Corps, a relief agency working in camp for Internally Displaced People in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. We wanted to know more so we sent a list of questions to Elisha Moore-Delate. She is the Environment Program Manager for Mercy Corps in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the person responsible for the stoves program. We’re sharing her inspiring and insightful responses below. 1. When, and how, did you realize that introducing energy efficient stoves would help improve conditions for the IDPs? Continue reading