Eco-Cooking Eases Climate Change in the Third World - The Epoch Times

Eco-Cooking Eases Climate Change in the Third World - The Epoch Times: "

Eco-Cooking Eases Climate Change in the Third World The Epoch Times Non-profit organisations like Sun Fire Cooking, Solar Cookers International (SCI) and Worldstove are offering these communities real alternatives to their ...

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Sudanese refugee carrying cooking pots walks at the Djabal Camp, southern Chad, on March 13, 2009. (Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images)

Biochar

Produced from a growing range of biomass fuels without harvesting trees—from nut shells to animal waste, bamboo and used vegetable oil—biochar generates syngas and bio-oil for cooking and heating while its co-product is applied to soils with many carbon sequestration benefits such as increased bio-available water and organic matter, enhanced nutrient cycling, and reduced leaching. Allowing them to cook on a gas flame as in “modern” kitchens, users can maintain cooking customs without environmental damage.

World Stove has several pilot projects making biochar technology available in Africa. Their large institutional stove, the Biucchi, is being used in women’s shelters and schools in several countries including Burkina Faso. As with solar cookers, indoor pollution is avoided and jobs can be created with small locally owned shops producing stoves specifically altered for local waste and cooking traditions.

Scaling Up

A refugee child carries fire-wood to assist her parents for cooking 06 September 2003 at the Salala Camp in north central Liberia. ( Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)

In 2008, the Senegalese Ministry of Biofuels and Renewable Energy entered an agreement with Solar Household Energy to produce and sell stoves locally, and mobile solar bakeries are now establishing to support communities. Currently, African solar cookers cost up to US$200 and are too expensive for war-affected communities without subsidies. RESPECT International is researching affordable designs and producing an instruction manual on how to build and use these designs based on surveys collected in Liberia about available materials available, and the type of food and cooking habits.

According to IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, carbon trading could achieve third world sustainability by enabling first world investors to help those most affected by global warming not to pollute. Private-public investment partnerships are vital in places like Africa with its growing number of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects able to massively cut global carbon emissions whilst multiplying energy production levels. United Nations Environmental Program’s (UNEP) Bakary Kante says, “Africa has an enormous potential to be eligible for more investment.”

The bottom line is that these simple initiatives are curbing carbon dioxide emissions whilst also enabling poor people to cope with climate change-related issues and still achieve sustainable, profitable growth—a worthy cause indeed for more researchers and investors to consider.

Since the early 1990s, expanding refugee populations in war-torn Africa have exacerbated problems with access to cooking fuel and clean water. Non-profit organisations like Sun Fire Cooking, Solar Cookers International (SCI) and Worldstove are offering these communities real alternatives to their reliance on firewood and charcoal, a major cause of deforestation and topsoil erosion in Africa, Asia, Latin America and other third world areas.

These carbon-negative projects are successfully linking with local governments and the private sector to stimulate sustainable initiatives. One potential area is for the carbon credit market to fill the gap via carbon offsetting, connecting the developed world’s emissions with solutions for those most at risk from the impact of global warming.