Gästbloggare
A few weeks ago I travelled to Kenya and Uganda to visit climate compensation projects in our portfolio. The insight that made most impression on me was the conflict between forest protection and the needs of rural households around Kakamega Forest. In this area women risk arrest every day because of well-intentioned regulations that protect the forest. Distribution of efficient cookstoves helps but this is only part of the solution.
ZeroMission sells credits from around 20 projects which we visit from time to time. I travelled with three representatives of the Swiss organization myclimate which developed projects, and five journalists from Germany and Switzerland.
One of the projects I visited is called Stoves for Life. It’s run by Eco2Librium (http://eco2librium.net/stoves.html) in Kakamega. The project installs locally-built stoves into rural homes to reduce wood use for cooking. 10 000 stoves have been installed in three years, to the benefit of many thousands of people who live on $1-2 per day.
Visiting householders, we saw the benefits of the stoves – saved wood fuel, income for local people to build and install the stoves, reduced smoke in the kitchens, saved time for women collecting fuel and cooking. But the local situation provided a vivid illustration of the need to combine reforestation with reduced fuel use, to tackle the problem from both sides, supply and demand.
The Kakamega project is located on the borders of a protected forest, from which it is illegal to collect firewood. Protecting existing forest is something we all support, but in this area the conflict between forest protection and the needs of local people is stark.
While the efficient stoves enable householders to reduce their wood use by about a half, people still need wood to cook. Most householders have some trees on their land, but the wood from these trees is insufficient for their daily needs. Wood is for sale but they don’t have the cash to buy, so householders – usually the women – must collect wood from the forest several times a week. Each time they risk arrest. Apparently thousands of people are arrested each year for illegally collecting wood, with many repeat offenders.
Alongside the Stoves for Life project, Eco2librium runs a reforestation project in the area called Trees for Life http://eco2librium.net/id84.html There is an obvious synergy between the two projects and it is in the combination of these activities that I saw the greatest potential to reduce emissions and change lives permanently for the better.
