wood energy, women and health -...

Regional Wood Energy DevelopmentProgramme in Asia (GCP/RAS/154/NET)

Issued by the

December 1996/ April 1997 Vol. 12 No. 1

Wood Energy, Women and Health

ContentsEditorial ........................................... 2

Women, Wood Energy and Health .. 3

Health Hazards in the Woodfuel Cycle........................................................ 6

Environmental Conditions of UrbanPoor Communities in AsiaEffects of Indoor Air Pollution onInfants in Delhi and Manila .............. 7

Gender, Biomass Energy and Health8

Reducing Emissions from Stoves .. 11

The Fuel Ladder, Stoves and Health...................................................... 12

Gender Training Workshop,Kanchanaburi, Thailand ................. 13

Economic Factors in the Adoption ofImproved Stoves............................ 16

Woodfuel Interventions with a GenderBase .............................................. 19

A Stove Project with a Gender andHealth Orientation: Bedugul,Indonesia ....................................... 20

Forests for Life - A Reaction fromWWF ............................................. 22

Publications ................................... 23

News and Notes ............................ 23

Events ........................................... 27

Health Hazards in the Woodfuel Cycle...................................................... 28

Wood Energy News

Front page: In Asia, most woodfuel users are women

Editorial“The kitchen kills more than the sword” is an ancient proverb quoted by Prof. M RPandey in this issue of Wood Energy News. Prof. Pandey’s own research hasshown that today, the hazards of kitchens continue to affect many millions of people,largely in the form of smoke from improper cooking devices used in poorly ventilatedareas. Yet, in spite of the numbers being affected, the problem of indoor smokepollution has as yet received relatively little attention from governments andinternational agencies. The victims are mainly women and small children, as theyspend many hours in these unhealthy environments.

Wood and other biomass still dominate as domestic cooking fuels, especially in thekitchens of the region’s poor, and this is likely to remain the case for a long time. Butblame for the harmful indoor pollution should not be directed at fuel. Technically, itis a relatively simple matter to reduce emissions from biomass stoves, applying thefuels in a clean and safe way. Why, then, is so little being done and with so littleeffect? This is a simple question, but there are no simple answers – socio-cultural,socio-economic and political influences are all at work and must be recognized andaccounted for. As it is women in particular who are at risk, these influences areinevitably gender-related and must be analysed in order to obtain better understand-ing of the problems. The gender aspects then need to be incorporated into policies,projects and related interventions if they are to meet with success.

Biomass energy presents more causes for concern than just domestic pollution.The whole cycle of activities related to supply and use of these fuels implies serioushealth hazards. Again, it is mostly women who are at risk, and so gender aspectsmust be major considerations in addressing the problems involved in gathering,transporting, processing etc.

Household energy programmes have been and are being undertaken for acombination of different reasons. Amongst them are considerations of resourcemanagement, environment and energy efficiency. These objectives are still valid;however, awareness is also growing that improving the quality of life of half theworld’s population, through much needed upgrading of health conditions, must beof prime concern.

ColophonProject Information

The Regional Wood Energy Development Pro-gramme in Asia (RWEDP) aims to assist 15developing countries in establishing and strength-ening their capabilities to assess wood energysituations, plan wood energy development strat-egies and implement wood energy supply andutilization programmes. The programme pro-motes the integration of wood energy in theplanning and implementation of national energyand forestry programmes.

Wood Energy News

The programme’s newsletter, Wood EnergyNews, which is published on a regular basis,addresses a wide variety of wood energy issues,such as woodfuel resources, woodfuel flows,wood energy planning and policies and woodenergy technologies. Its purpose is to shareinformation on wood energy with its subscribers.Suggestions, reactions or contributions are morethan welcome, and don’t forget to share your ownexperiences.

Those wishing to obtain Wood Energy News canwrite to the RWEDP secretariat at:

Regional Wood Energy DevelopmentProgramme in Asia (GCP/RAS/154/NET)FAO Regional Office for Asia and the PacificMaliwan Mansion, Phra Atit RoadBangkok 10200, Thailand

Fax: +66-2-280 0760Phone: +66-2-280 2760E-mail: [email protected]

Project Members

Dr W Hulscher Chief Technical AdvisorAuke Koopmans Wood Energy ConservationConrado Heruela Wood Energy PlanningTara Bhattarai Wood Energy ResourcesJaap Koppejan APO/Wood Energy Conservation

Publications

The designations employed and the presenta-tion of material in this publication do not imply theexpression of any opinion whatsoever on the partof the Food and Agriculture Organization of theUnited Nations concerning the legal status of anycountry, territory, city or area or of its authorities,or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers orboundaries.

The opinions expressed in this publication arethose of the authors alone and do not imply anyopinion whatsoever on the part of the FAO.

Bangladesh:Chief Conservator of Forests, Forest Dept,Min. of Environment and Forest;Industry and Energy Dev., Planning Com-mission, Min. of Planning.

Bhutan: Dir, Dept of Power, Min. of Trade;Joint Secretary, Forest Services Division,Min. of Agriculture.

Cambodia: Chief Community Forestry Division, Refor-estation Office, Dept. of Forests and Wild-life

China: DG, Dept of International Cooperation, Min.of Forestry; Dp. Dir INFORTRACE.

India: Inspector General of Forests, Min. of Envi-ronment and Forests; Secr., Min. of Non-

Conventional Energy Sources.Indonesia: DG of Electricity and Energy Devt;

Dir of Regreening and Social Forestry, Min.of Forestry.

Laos: DG, Dept of Forestry, Min. of Agricultureand Forestry.

Malaysia: DG, Forest Research Institute;DG, Economic Planning Unit, PM’s Dept.

Maldives: Dep. Director, Agricultural Services, Min. ofFisheries and Agriculture

Myanmar: DG, Forest Dept;DG, Energy Planning Dept, Min. of Energy

Nepal: DG, Forest Dept;Executive Secretary, Water and Energy

Commission SecretariatPakistan: Inspector General of Forests, Min. of Env.,

Local Govt and Rural Devt.; Chairman,Pakistan Council of Appropriate Tech.;Chief, Energy Wing, Planning and Devt.Divison

Philippines Secretary, Dept of Energy; Secretary, Deptof Environment and Natural Res.

Sri Lanka: Conservator of Forests, Forest Dept;Sec., Min. of Irrigation, Power & Energy.

Thailand: DG, Royal Forest Dept; DG, Dept of EnergyDevelopment and Promotion.

Vietnam: Director, Forest Sciences Institute; Dep.Dir., Institute of Energy, Min. of Energy

Programme Focal Points

Vol. 12 No. 1, December1996/April 1997 page 3

Professor M R Pandey is a Royal Car-diologist, founder and chairman of theMrigendra Medical Trust, and presi-dent of the Nepal Heart Foundation. Heis based in Kathmandu, Nepal

per cent were caused by cor pulmonale.When a small trust we founded beganto work in the villages of Nepal, wefound a correspondingly high incidenceof chronic lung diseases and cor pulmo-nale among the women there. So webegan studies to investigate the rootcause of the problem and found it to liein the exposure of women and childrento smoke pollution from the use ofbiomass fuels in cooking and heating.We found that chronic lung disease andthe resultant heart damage hit womenafter a period of exposure, affectingthem between the ages of 30 and 50,which should be the most productiveperiod of their lives.

Health Effects of Domestic SmokePollution

The main health effects of domesticsmoke pollution are:

1.Respiratory diseases and cor pulmo-nale;

2.Adverse pregnancy outcomes (still-birth, neonatal death, low birthweight);

3.Cancer;

4.Eye problems.

Domestic smoke pollution is an impor-tant contributing factor for three majorclasses of respiratory diseases: acuterespiratory infection (ARI) among in-fants and children; chronic obstructivelung disease (COLD) in adults; andinterstitial lung disease.

Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI)Among Infants and Children

Out of about 15 million children underyears of age who die in the world eachyear, approximately one third die fromARI. Most of these deaths are caused bypneumonia. The overwhelming majorityoccur in developing countries. It cantherefore be concluded that passive in-halation of smoke may contribute to res-piratory infection in infants and children.

M R Pandey

More than five million children underfive years of age, most of them in thedeveloping world, die of pneumoniaevery year. Studies have shown thatindoor air pollution is an important riskfactor in pneumonia. Also, as well asmortality, pneumonia is also responsi-ble for a good deal of morbidity. Forinstance, in adults, chronic bronchitisand chronic obstructive lung diseasesare highly prevalent, especially in thehilly regions. These ultimately lead toheart damage (cor pulmonale) causedby chronic lung diseases. This latterfact obviously has great socio-eco-nomic importance, as the diseasescannot be cured, and the best medicalscience can do is to prolong a miser-able existence at considerable cost toall.

There is definite evidence that tobaccosmoking and indoor air pollution areboth important risk factors in chroniclung diseases. In the developed world,chronic bronchitis is overwhelmingly amale disease. But in the developingworld, in spite of much heavier tobaccosmoking by men, both men and womenare equally affected. Why is this so? It isbecause of domestic smoke pollutioncaused by the use of biomass fuels forcooking and heating.

Obviously women who do the cookingare exposed to this smoke. But so alsoare children, particularly infants andyoung children, who spend most of theirtime around their mothers.

Taking all the above factors together,the effects on children and on women,we can grasp the truth of the Latinproverb: “The kitchen kills more thanthe sword”. That there is an ancientproverb to this effect shows that, insome sense at least, the problem of

indoor air pollution (and of disease-carrying water) was recognized eventwo thousand years ago. Yet, in spite ofmillions being affected, the problem ofindoor smoke pollution has receivedrelatively little attention from nationalgovernments and international agen-cies. Even the Indoor Air Group ofinternational scientists in world confer-ences pays very little attention to thisproblem and concentrates on relativelyminor matters, like “sick building syn-drome” due to emissions from paint,furniture, etc. combined with inad-equate ventilation.

We spend more time indoors than out-doors. Yet, outdoor air pollution gets somuch attention, while indoor air pollu-tion is rarely even mentioned in pass-ing. This lack of attention from policymakers and scientists at national andinternational levels, may be due to thelow status of women in developing coun-tries, especially the poor women whoare the worst affected by this problem.These are people with little political oreconomic clout.

Despite the important role of biomassfuels in the economy of the developingcountries, there are no occupationalhealth standards for domestic cooks. Isthis because domestic cooking, whichis done by women, is not even recog-nized as an occupation?

Why was I, a cardiologist, drawn tostudy the question of indoor smoke pol-lution and its effects on women? After20 years of working in hospitals inKathmandu, I was disheartened to seeso many cor pulmonale cases, most ofthem women. All we could do, afterintensive therapy, was to save theirlives for the time-being, while the symp-toms persisted. These women wouldcome back every few months, espe-cially in winter, eventually dying after acouple of years.

An analysis of Kathmandu hospital sta-tistics in the second half of the 1970srevealed that 15 per cent of deaths weredue to heart disease, and of them, 46

Women, Wood Energy and Health

Wood Energy News

chronic bronchitis, a high rate for non-smokers.

COLD leads to pulmonary hypertensionand cardiac enlargement, which ulti-mately cause cor pulmonale. Both oldand new studies have shown a relation-ship of cor pulmonale with domesticsmoke exposures (Pandey et al. 1988;and Sandoval et al. 1993).

Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes:

The effects of indoor smoke pollution onbirth weight have not been assesseddirectly in human populations. There is,however, substantial theoretical and in-direct evidence to suggest a significantimpact. It is proposed that the majoreffect operates though increased car-bon monoxide content in the indoor en-vironment, which limits oxygen deliveryto maternal and foetal haemoglobin, andby shifting the oxygen haemoglobin dis-association curve to the left, inhibitingthe release of oxygen from maternalhaemoglobin in the placenta. Given thewell documented effects of maternalcigarette smoking on foetal growth andrisk of pre-term delivery (Kramer, 1987),carbon monoxide is most likely to havethe biggest of all the impacts frombiomass smoke on foetal growth, lead-ing to still birth, neonatal death or lowbirth weight. Only one, unpublished,study has addressed the question, andit reports an 85-gramme lower averagebirth weight in infants born to mothersusing unventilated wood fires in ruralGuatemala compared to those born tomothers using propane stoves. A studyfrom Ahmedabad, India, showed a sig-nificant increase in stillbirth (OR = 1.5) inthose women exposed to domesticsmoke during pregnancy compared tothose who were not (Mavalankar et al.,1991).

Cancer

There are many chemicals in biomasssmoke which are known to cause can-cer in laboratory animals and are foundin mixtures known to cause cancer inhumans. A recent study in Japan(Sobue, 1990) found that women cook-ing with straw or woodfuel when theywere 30 years old had an 80 per cent

in pneumonia. But to give a final answerto the question “How much can wereduce ARI by reducing indoor air pollu-tion from biomass combustion?”, longi-tudinal intervention studies (taking thesituation before and after an interven-tion) are needed. A recent editorial inThe Lancet states, “The results ofPandey et al. suggest that the need forthese studies is now urgent, so that thenational ARI control programmesunderway in many countries can con-sider whether they should add improve-ment of the domestic environment totheir control strategies” (1992).

Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease(COLD) in Adults

Chronic bronchitis and chronic obstruc-tive lung disease (COLD) present gen-eral practitioners all over the world withsome of their most frequent problems.An early study in Papua New Guinea(Anderson, 1979) showed a possiblerelationship between domestic smokepollution and chronic bronchitis. A de-finitive study was conducted in Nepal(Pandey et al., 1988) to determine thedistribution and magnitude of these dis-eases in different geographical regionsof the country and to identify factorsresponsible for them.

An interesting aspect of the latter studyis that there was a similarly high rate ofprevalence of chronic bronchitis inwomen and men. This contrasts withthe findings of most other studies, whichshow a lower prevalence rate forwomen. Despite being non-smokers orsmoking less than men, women in Ne-pal had a prevalence rate similar to thatof smoking men. This can be explainedby the fact that a significantly higherproportion of women than men in thestudy were exposed to domestic smokepollution, and for longer hours.

As with the Nepalese studies, an Indianstudy (Malik, 1985) shows that evennon-smoking women who have cookedon biomass stoves for many years ex-hibit a higher prevalence of chronic bron-chitis than might be expected in similarwomen who have made less use ofbiomass stoves. Indeed, in rural Nepalnearly 15 per cent of non-smokingwomen (20 years and above) had

A South African hospital-based study of132 infants with severe lower respira-tory tract disease found that 70 per centhad a history of heavy smoke exposurefrom cooking and/or heating fires(Kossove, 1982).

A Nepalese study examined 240 ruralchildren under two years of age for sixmonths for incidence and severity ofARI. A strong relationship was foundbetween the maternally reportednumber of hours per day the childrenstayed by the fire and the incidence ofmoderate and severe ARI cases. Ifpossible confounding factors are dis-counted, extrapolation shows that bymoving all children into the lowestsmoke exposure group, as much as25% of moderate and severe ARI couldbe eliminated (Pandey et al., 1989).

In a study of 500 children in Gambia,girls under five carried on their moth-er’s back during cooking (in smokyhuts) were found to have six timeshigher risk of ARI: a substantially higherrisk factor than parental smoking. Therewas no significant risk, however, inyoung boys (Armstrong and Campbell,1991).

Most studies provide extremely sug-gestive indications that exposure towood smoke is an important risk factor

Don’t blame the photographer -it’s the smoke!


increased chance of developing cancerin later life.

In contrast to biomass, there have beenmany studies of the indoor air pollutionlevels and health impacts of cookingwith coal on open stoves, almost alldone and published in China, wherecoal use for cooking is quite common(Hong, 1991). A range of effects hasbeen found, including quite strong as-sociations with lung cancer.

Health Effects of Carrying WoodLoads

Domestic fuel-related work is done bywomen. In Nepal, rural women are sobusy with their daily chores that they areforced to give some local beer to theirchildren so as to keep them quiet whilethey get on with other domestic work.This fuel-related work of women hasone major effect in the incidence ofchronic lung disease and resultant heartdamage. But it has yet another, little-known, effect. All over the world, lungfunction is correlated to height. But inrural Nepal we found that for women, itis better correlated with arm-span. Thismay be because Nepalese women inhilly villages carry firewood in a bigbamboo basket carried on the back,held by a strap around the forehead.Probably the excessive weight lifting on

the back causes flattening of the in-tervertebral discs.

Another ongoing study on women’sreproductive health being conductedby us, among the Tamang women ofNepal, has shown a high incidence ofuterine prolapse. The Tamang womenstart working from the third day of deliv-ery onwards because of their tradition,culture and male domination. One oftheir main tasks is to collect and carryheavy wood loads, and it is felt that thiscarrying of heavy loads from the earlypost-partum period may be responsi-ble for the high incidence of prolapse.

In Conclusion

There is no international or nationalorganization addressing the issue ofindoor smoke pollution. It is only nowthat the issue of indoor air pollution isbeginning to be discussed in forumslike this one. The WHO held a consul-tation on this issue in 1991 and pub-lished the papers (WHO 1992). TheHousehold Energy Development Or-ganizations Network (HEDON), initi-ated by the WHO, has been meetingperiodically. The World Bank has de-clared indoor air pollution one of thefive major environmental problems fac-ing the world. It was only in the recentlyheld Seventh International Conferenceon Indoor Air Quality and Climate (Ja-

pan, July 1996) that the issue of indoorair pollution in developing countries wasdiscussed for the first time. The initia-tive taken by RWEDP in organizing thisworkshop on Gender and Health Issuesin Wood Energy is very commendableand I hope it will result in further initia-tives by FAO-RWEDP in the area ofeffects of smoke pollution on womenand children.

References:

Editorial, The Lancet, Vol 339: 15 Feb-ruary 1992, 396-397

M R Pandey, B Basnyat and R PNeupane, March 1988, “ChronicBronchitis and Cor Pulmonale inNepal”, (monograph), MrigendraMedical Trust

S K Malik, 1985, “Exposure to DomesticCooking Fuels and Chronic Bronchi-tis”, Indian Journal of Chest Diseaseand Allied Sciences, 27: 171-174

H R Anderson, 1979, “Chronic LungDisease in the Papua New GuineaHighlands”, Thorax 34: 647-653

D Kossove, 1982, “Smoke-filled Roomsand Respiratory Disease in Infants,South African Medical Journal 63:622-624

M R Pandey et al., 1989, “DomesticSmoke Pollution and Acute Respira-tory Infections in a Rural Communityof the Hill Region of Nepal”, Environ-ment International 15: 337-340

J R M Armstrong and H Campbell,1991, “Indoor Air Pollution Exposureand Lower Respiratory Infection inYoung Gambian Children”, Interna-tional Journal of Epidemiology 20(2): 424-428

J Sandoval, J Salas, M L Martinez-Guerra et al., 1993, “Pulmonary Ar-terial Hypertension and Cor Pulmo-nale Associated with Chronic Do-mestic Wood Smoke Inhalation”,Chest 103 (1): 12-20, 1993.

D V Mavalankar, C R Trivedi and R HGray, 1991, “Levels and Risk Fac-tors for perinatal Mortality inAhmedabad, India”, Bulletin of theWHO 69 (4): 435-442

T Sobue, 1990, Health Aspects of Do-mestic Use of Biomass and Coal inChina, WHO/PEP 92.3B

Woodfuel kitchens needn’t be unhealthy

Wood Energy News

Equally worrying are surveyors’ reportsstating that for transporting fuelwood,headloads of up to 20 kg are carried bywomen and children over long dis-tances, leading to severe fatigue andbackache. Furthermore, with traditionalpractices for domestic stoves and com-bustion, adverse ergonomic effects canresult in arthritis. This is commonlytaken for granted though, in fact, it is notacceptable at all. In an unknown butundoubtedly large number of cases, inci-dents caused by unsafe or unstablestoves are responsible for burns andfires.

All these health hazards come on top ofthe widespread unhealthy effects ofsmoke and other emissions fromstoves, but they have not yet beensystematically researched. Valid re-search should put the risks in perspec-tive, that is, compare the woodfuel cy-cle with accepted health and safetystandards and with alternative fuel cy-cles. At present, it is hard to say whetherkerosene and gas stoves cause morefire incidences than wood stoves andhence, where the priority should be forinterventions aimed at improving pub-lic health. Similarly, common work incoal mines definitely generates seri-

W S Hulscher

Present concerns about woodfuel andhealth focus primarily on the effects ofemissions from burning the fuel. How-ever, the whole cycle of activities fromproduction to harvesting or collection,processing, transportation and combus-tion of wood and other biomass fuelsinvolves a variety of health hazards.These are summarized in the table onthe back page of this issue.

The incidence of risk depends on thesafety of specific tools and equipmentused, for instance in harvesting andcutting fuelwood. Oversized tools andlack of protection in the form of bootsand gloves are commonly observed.Also, general working conditions mattera lot. Unfortunately, prevailing condi-tions and equipment are often quitepoor, not only for sawing and cuttingwood in forest areas and around wood-processing industries, but also in activi-ties such as charcoal production. Thissometimes takes place inside sheds ina very dark, smoky and disorganizedenvironment.

The right tool for the job?

ous health risks, but that does not justifysimply accepting the health hazards ofwoodfuel production and processing.

Industrial energy-related activities in theformal sector are at least subject togovernment laws regarding labour con-ditions and safety, which are increas-ingly being enforced. However, thenumerous women involved in informalwoodfuel businesses and domestic ac-tivities have to carry the burden them-selves, without any legal or institutionalprotection. When we learn that woodfueluse is generally unsafe and unhealthy,the solution is not to move away fromwood energy. We know that in mostcountries the use of wood and otherbiomass energy is still increasing inabsolute terms, and there is no possibil-ity of its being substituted in the foresee-able future. The answer to the chal-lenges can only be to introduce im-proved technologies and practices forwood energy, for the benefit of the nu-merous people who depend on it.

He needs some help too!

Health Hazards in the Woodfuel Cycle


• Level of indoor air pollution is signifi-cantly correlated to respiratory infec-tion in infants;

• Ambient air pollution levels may not bean adequate proxy for indoor air pollu-tion;

• Fuelwood and ventilation systems arethe main determinants of pollution;

• Smoke is not perceived by the motheras a risk factor for infants with respira-tory disease;

• Awareness of indoor air pollution andof the need for ventilation is low amongmothers;

• Cooking sources are often used forindoor heating at night, contributingsubstantially to indoor pollution.

Findings not within the original objec-tives of the study but noted were:

• Detection and primary treatment ofARI symptoms and of pneumonia ininfants can be satisfactorily handledby health workers with short training;

• Absence of breastfeeding is a signifi-cant risk factor for ARI in children.

One short-term option to address theimmediate problem of child mortalitydue to air pollution would be to try toreduce exposure times. This could bedone while working on longer-term so-lutions for pollution control. In view ofthe policy goals of this study, a pilotinitiative to estimate the cost-effective-ness of interventions aimed at reducinginfant exposure to cooking fumes wouldbe a necessary and practical follow upto it. The two intervention types sug-gested by the field experience are i) amaternal educational and awarenesscampaign, and ii) improving ventilationsystems.

Copies of the full draft final report can be obtainedfrom the author.

Professor Debarati Guha-Sapir, De-partment of Public Health, UniversiteCatholique de Louvain, 3034 ClosChapelle aux Champs, 1200 Bruxelles,Belgium

Debarati Guha-Sapir

The problem of pollution as a risk tohuman health remains of serious con-cern in most cities of Asia. Children, inparticular infants, are the most immedi-ate and most vulnerable victims of toxicpollutants of the type seen in manymetropolises in developing countries.While major environmental action toreduce levels of pollution is critical in thelong run, it remains expensive, rela-tively difficult to implement and frequentlyof low priority, especially in poorer coun-tries. However, with respiratory infec-tion being a principal cause of deathamong infants in developing countries,air pollution needs serious considera-tion as a risk factor in child survival.Unfortunately, there are few studies fromdeveloping countries that demonstratea link, and robust, quantitative environ-mental and epidemiological evidencefrom different samples is rare. Thus,policy makers remain unconvinced andunprepared to take major action on re-ducing household air pollution.

This study therefore attempted to main-tain high quality, accurate data collec-tion, from both environmental exposuremonitoring and medical examinationsof infant cohorts. In both Delhi andManila, the project followed some 600infants of less than a year old living inslum households where cooking wasdone using kerosene or wood as fuel.Medical teams followed these childrenfor four months, paying twice-weeklyhome visits to monitor respiratory ill-ness status. Appropriate treatment wasprovided.

Of the 1,200 homes, 60 in Manila and80 in Delhi were selected for environ-mental measurements. A team of envi-ronmental engineers measured respir-

able suspended particulate mattersmaller than 10 microns (PM10) over24 hours, using cyclone pumps andfilters placed at one metre distance fromthe cooking source. A social scientistcollected time-budget data on the pres-ence of the child in the cooking area andthe exact timing of cooking periods dur-ing a typical 24 hours. Total daily expo-sure of the infant to the pollutant wasthen calculated.

The average indoor pollution levels ofPM10 were lower in Manila than in Delhi(221 mg and 318 mg per m3 respec-tively), though both were three to fourtimes higher than the norm of 70 mg perm3 set by the WHO. In Manila, the levelsof particulate pollution were significantlycorrelated to housing volume and venti-lation area, indicating that smaller spacesand bad ventilation are major determi-nants of pollution. Fuel used and totaldaily cooking time showed no correla-tion. However, in Delhi, wood-burninghomes had pollution levels 50 per centhigher than those using kerosene. Theincidence densities of acute lower respi-ratory infections among infants at riskwere 17.2 episodes per 1,000 child-weeks in Manila and 34 episodes per1,000 child-weeks in Delhi.

The studies found non-significant cor-relation between ambient and indoorlevels of pollution. In both cities, me-dium ambient pollution level areas turnedout to have the highest indoor air pollu-tion. This indicates that the indiscrimi-nate use of outdoor pollution measuresfor policy decisions can be seriouslymisleading as an indicator of indoor airpollution and in the estimation of itsimpact on people who stay indoors.

Though detailed analyses are now inprogress to confirm the initial findingsand examine more thoroughly the impli-cations of indoor air pollution, especiallyfor child health, the main policy andprogramme implications of this studycan be summarized as follows:

Environmental Conditions of Urban Poor Communities in AsiaEffects of Indoor Air Pollution on Infants in Delhi and Manila

Wood Energy News

Christina Aristanti is manager of theAsia Regional Cookstove Programme,Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Gender, Biomass Energy and HealthChristina Aristanti

Biomass, which includes wood, cropresidues and animal dung, is used byapproximately half of the world’s popu-lation as cooking and/or heating fuel.These fuels are handled and combustedprimarily by women, who are largelyresponsible for reproductive choressuch as cooking and are often involvedin any household industries which in-volve cooking, such as food process-ing. Women and children generally havethe main responsibility for collecting fuel.In Asia, acquisition and use of biomassfuel may take up anywhere betweenthree and nine hours of a woman’s day,depending on the availability of biomassresources. In Lombok, Indonesia,women spend about three hours eachday cooking and four hours each weekcollecting dead wood or agriculturalresidues to be used as fuel. In areas ofKenya, women spend seven hours aday on the same tasks. Needless tosay, as biomass resources becomemore scarce, women’s workload in-creases. More time and energy must bespent in fuel collection, processing anduse. Besides the time and energy spent,this daily dependence on and use ofbiomass has a number of negativehealth effects.

Unfortunately, precise correlation be-tween the use of biomass fuels andhealth consequences has rarely beenpinpointed. This is due to large num-bers of confounding factors and themodest resources available for suchresearch (Braakman, 1996).

When we first think of negative healtheffects connected to biomass fuel use,we invariably think of smoke. Indeed,smoke is a health problem, but this isnot only because biomass is being used,it is also due to the stoves used tocombust it and the often poorly venti-lated environment where the combus-tion takes place. However, we should

examine the entire fuel cycle to get amore complete picture of the healthrisks related to fuel. The table on theback page of this issue of Wood EnergyNews is an overview. Some of the healthand other issues are expounded below.

Collection

As biomass becomes more scarce,women collectors have several options.They can spend the extra energy andtime necessary to obtain the same qual-ity and quantity of biomass as before, orswitch to lower-quality fuels, changecooking practices, change hygienicpractices, sacrifice other functions ofthe stove such as space heating andhousehold industry, or buy fuel. Butwhat might these changes actuallymean?

Spending Extra Energy and Time

Obviously this first choice increaseswomen’s workload, but it also mightincrease others’ workloads. Frequently,time pressures force women to keeptheir children (read: daughters) awayfrom school, to help them with fuel col-lection.

Using Lower Quality Fuels

Using lower-quality fuels often meansusing softwood instead of hardwood, orswitching from wood to agriculturalresidues or animal dung. Softwoodburns faster, leaves less charcoal andproduces more soot and tar. Agricul-tural residues are bulky and thus meanmore inconvenience in collection andtransport of fuel. Use of animal dungbrings with it hygienic concerns. Fromthe point of view of combustion, cowdungcakes heat very slowly, taking a longtime to ignite. During this time theysmoke extensively. Also, the use ofcowdung as fuel rather than as fertilizermay mean decreased soil productivity.

Changing Cooking Practices

Cooking less often is an increasinglycommon strategy to minimize fuel use.

What this usually means is that whereonce a family could expect two or threehot meals a day, this is reduced to oneor two. Food cooked in the morningstored without refrigeration until theevening is susceptible to contaminationby bacteria and fungus. Ingestion ofbacterial and fungal growths can be thecause of severe gastrointestinal illness.(Braakman, 1996).

Another strategy is cooking for shorterperiods of time, which often leads tosubstantial declines in nutritional levels,as many of the staple foods consumedin poor households, such as rice, beansand cassava, cannot easily be digestedwithout prolonged cooking (ibid.).

Diets may be changed in order to savefuel. More and more raw foods can beintroduced into the menu. In Sri Lanka,where rice is the staple food, many poorlandless families are gradually replac-ing at least one of their rice meals withbread. In this case the bread is madefrom white flour with a lower nutritionalcontent than the traditional rice dish(ibid.). Or in other cases less water isboiled. Such changes lead to highersusceptibility to diseases and, in thecase of unboiled water, more and moreserious gastrointestinal diseases suchas diarrhoea and decreased personalhygiene.

Finally, where biomass is commonlygathered for livestock fodder, shortagesmean that domestic animals are givenup (such as has been reported in Africa)and a source of protein disappears fromthe subsistence economy (ibid.)

Sacrificing Other Functions of theStove

In cooler regions, less fuelwood will beused for space heating and heatingwater for bathing purposes. This meansnegative hygienic and health conse-quences, especially for the elderly andsick. Household industries such as foodprocessing represent one of the fewopportunities for women to earn cashincome for their families. Since cooking


In Thailand, most food vendors are women

meals takes precedence, in times ofbiomass scarcity such small-scale in-dustries are the first to be sacrificed.With this, women’s control over incomeis also sacrificed. Since women, morethan men, use their money to benefittheir family, this can also bring negativehealth effects.

Buying Fuel

A change from fuel collection to fuelpurchasing means an added living ex-pense and less control over fuel as aresource. Whereas biomass and otherforest products may have provided alimited source of cash, especially forlandless families, a switch to fuel pur-chasing means that other added in-come is also lost.

Transportation

While the International Labour Organi-zation (ILO) regards 20 kg as the maxi-mum permissible weight to be carried,women often carry loads of up to 35 kgover long distances.

Combustion

Combustion of biomass produces harm-ful emissions. Proximity to the source ofemissions, and frequency of starting afire (when emissions are highest) arethe most important factors governingthe concentrations inhaled (Smith,1996). The ventilation of the space wherecombustion takes place, often thekitchen, is also important. Those mostvulnerable to the health impacts of in-door smoke emissions are women –who are responsible for cooking and

are in the kitchen for the longest periodsof time – and their small children, whospend most of their time at their moth-ers’ sides.

Biomass smoke contains respirableparticulates, carbon monoxide (CO),nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde, andhundreds of other simple and complexorganic compounds. In many parts ofAsia, these pollutants are released fromstoves in fairly unventilated homes or inenclosed courtyards. As has beenshown in a growing number of air pollu-tion monitoring studies, the resultinghuman exposures to the pollutants of-ten exceed recommended World HealthOrganization (WHO) limits by factors of10, 20 or more (Smith, 1987; Pandey etal., 1989).

Because of these high concentrations,and the large population involved, thetotal human exposure to pollutants ismuch more substantial in the homes ofthe poor in developing countries than inthe outdoor air of the cities in the devel-oped world, which has received the vastmajority of attention in the form of airpollution research and control efforts.What health consequences does thispollution bring?

Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI)

ARI is one of the two top killers ofchildren in developing countries. At fivemillion deaths per year, in many devel-oping communities it is the primarycause of infant death. Some studieshave been conducted on the relation-ship between indoor air pollution andARI. One of the most interesting studies

was carried out in Nepal, where 250children under one year of age wereexamined each week for six months. Astrong relationship was found betweenthe maternally reported number of hoursper day the children stayed by the fireand the incidence of moderate and se-vere ARI cases.

Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes

Women are more biologically sensitiveto carbon monoxide (CO) emissions.During pregnancy, excessive or pro-longed exposure represents an evenmore significant hazard. CO interferencewith the oxygen-carrying capacity of theblood contributes to increased rates oflow birthweight or stillbirths. Foetusesare extremely sensitive to CO, as it re-mains longer in foetal blood than in ma-ternal blood. Depending on the frequencyof meal preparation or other stove-re-lated activities performed by women, COmay not have left the foetal blood beforeit starts accumulating again in the nextcooking session (Smith, 1996).

Low birthweight, a chronic problem indeveloping countries, is associated witha number of health problems in earlyinfancy, as well as other negative out-comes such as neonatal death. Severalrisks are associated with low birthweight,most notably poor nutrition. Since ac-tive smoking by the mother during preg-nancy is a known risk factor, there isalso cause to suspect biomass smoke,as it contains many of the same pollut-ants. Under particular suspicion is CO.Studies in India showed that womencooking with biomass had substantialamounts of carbon monoxide in theirblood and had almost 50 per cent greaterchance of stillbirth (Mvalankar, 1991).

Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease(COLD) and Cor Pulmonale

Chronic obstructive lung disease, forwhich tobacco smoking is now the ma-jor risk factor in the developed coun-tries, is known to result from excessiveair pollution exposure. It is difficult tofind conclusive evidence of a directcausal relationship, because the expo-sures which cause the illness occurmany years before the symptoms areseen.

Wood Energy News

Nevertheless, several studies haveshown that non-smoking women whohave cooked on biomass stoves formany years exhibit a higher prevalenceof this condition than women who havehad less contact with biomass stoves.Indeed, in an area of rural Nepal, nearly15 per cent of non-smoking women hadchronic bronchitis, a high rate fornon-smokers. Cor pulmonale (right-sideheart failure) has been found to beprevalent and to develop earlier thanaverage in non-smoking women whocook with biomass in India and Nepal(Pandey et al., 1988).

Cancer

Because cancer usually takes manyyears after exposure to develop, therelationship between the use of biomassand the risks of cancer is not yet clear.It is known that many chemicals inbiomass smoke are found in mixturesknown to cause cancer. On the otherhand, some of the lowest lung cancerrates in the world are found innon-smoking women in developingcountries. Nevertheless, a study in Ja-pan found that women cooking withstraw or woodfuel when they were 30years old had an 80 per cent greaterchance of having lung cancer in laterlife.

Many studies of air pollution levels andhealth impacts of cooking with coal onopen stoves are published in China. Arange of effects are found, includingstrong associations with lung cancer. Insummary, there is growing scientificevidence to support the numerous an-ecdotal accounts relating high biomasssmoke levels to important health ef-fects. More research is sorely needed,however, before meaningful quantita-tive estimates can be made of howmuch ill-health would be reduced bysmoke-reducing activities such as theintroduction of improved stoves.

Kitchen and Stove

Dependence on biomass is only onefactor which determines the severityand frequency of the health effects out-lined above; it can’t be said that biomassfuel is solely responsible. In reality, wecan’t stop at the fuel cycle, we must look

further into the stove used, and thekitchen where it is used.

The kitchen has been called the engineof the household. It is where most of ahousehold’s energy is consumed. Notonly that, but the kitchen is a multi-functional space, where cooking, din-ing, resting, sleeping, family gathering,small-scale industry, drying crops andfuel, storage of fuel and food and shel-tering domestic animals such as cows,goats or chickens, can all occur.

The use of biomass within the kitchenenvironment is also related to the fol-lowing health problems:

Movement and Ergonomic Problems

A poorly laid-out kitchen means addedstress and strain on the body, and fa-tigue. Poor positioning of furnishingssuch as the stove means ergonomicstress on the body, which often leads toarthritis and degenerative bone dis-eases.

Safety Problems

Poor lighting in the kitchen may lead tocuts and falls, in addition to eye irrita-tion.

Hygiene Problems

A damp kitchen environment encour-ages the growth of mould. For Asiancountries, where humidity can be veryhigh, moulds can be a big problem. Manymoulds are allergenic and a food supply

for house mites which are in themselvespotential allergens. Prolonged exposureto such allergens leads to respiratorydiseases such as bronchial asthma, skindiseases, gastrointestinal allergies andallergic conjunctivitis. Mycotoxins in-gested through eating food containingmoulds are highly toxic and should not beused in family housing (Smith, 1996).

As has been seen, various health haz-ards are related to biomass use. Womenare the first and most direct victims, buteventually this is followed by deteriorat-ing health for children and other mem-bers of the family.

References:

Lydia Braakman, 1996, “Health Aspectsof Woodfuel Use”, Module on Gen-der Issues in Wood Energy, RWEDP

D V Mavalankar, 1991 “Indoor Air Pollu-tion in Developing Countries, TheLancet 337: 358-359

M R Pandey et al., 1989, “Indoor AirPollution in Developing Countries andAcute Respiratory Infection in Chil-dren”, The Lancet, Feb 25: 427-428

M R Pandey et al., 1988, Chronic Bron-chitis and Cor Pulmonale in Nepal,Mrigendra Medical Trust, Nepal

J Smith, 1996, “ Food, Cooking andKitchen Improvements: The Role ofBehaviour and Beliefs”, paper pre-sented at the Asia Regional KitchenImprovement Workshop and Train-ing, Nepal

K R Smith, 1987, Biofuels , Air Pollutionand Health, a Global Review, NewYork and London

Fuel n Carbon Content % CO 2 CO CH4 TNMOC TSPLPGKeroseneCharcoalWood

2769

87868050

3190305025701620

253921099

0.010.907.809.00

314412

0.103.001.702.00

TNMOC = Total Non-methane Organic Compounds; TSP = Total suspended particles; n = Numberof data points Source: Smith et al., 1992

Fuel ηηηηst. CO CH4 TNMOC RSP HealthLPG stove 0.70 0.02 neg. 0.02 0.01 0.01Kerosene stove 0.50 0.05 0.01 0.13 0.17 0.16Charcoal stove 0.30 0.73 0.30 0.10 0.25 0.22Improved wood stove 0.25 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20 0.20Traditional wood stove 0.15 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00

ηst. = overall stove efficiency Source: ibid.

Table 1: Emissions from traditional stoves in grammes per kg dry fuel used

Table 2: Adverse health effects and emissions of stoves relative to traditionalwood stoves


Reducing Emissions from StovesAuke Koopmans

Over the last two decades, improvedstove designs have been introduced inseveral countries for a variety of reasons.While at the start most of the improveddesigns were introduced solely for theirfuel-saving capacities, this has changedover time and present stove programmesoften have many additional objectives,e.g. reducing smoke, saving money andtime, improving the status of women,generating jobs and income, and envi-ronmental considerations.

While all of these objectives are impor-tant, the reduction of smoke seems tostand out, as it has many positive sideeffects, such as improved living/work-ing conditions and improved health. Atthe same time, improving the combus-tion characteristics of the stove, whichreduces the smoke produced, also haspositive environmental effects. It is gen-erally believed that smoke pollution fromwood and other biomass fuels is only feltlocally, i.e. in the kitchen, and that thereare no global implications. This is basedon the fact that, if wood or other biomassfuels are managed sustainably, the sameamount of carbon being burnt is takenup by new growth, making the net con-tribution to the greenhouse effect zero.

However, in practice, the burning ofbiomass often releases other sub-stances besides CO

2: products of in-

complete combustion, or PICs. Meas-urements in homes around the worldhave shown that health-impairing con-centrations of PICs are often foundwhen people use wood or other biomassfor cooking or heating in poorly venti-lated spaces (Smith, 1987). And weshould remember that cooks, who aremainly women and children, are afterfarm workers the second largest occu-pational group in the world.

A small study carried out in Manila meas-ured emissions from stoves of morethan 80 greenhouse-related and health-related gases (mostly non-methane hy-drocarbons, NMHCs). The tests includedtraditional cookstoves burning wood,

charcoal, kerosene and liquefied petro-leum gas (LPG), which together ac-count for the majority of cooking in de-veloping countries. Although only a fewstove/fuel combinations were included,with the result that no statistically validconclusions can be drawn, the meas-urements shown in Table 1 (page 10)are quite suggestive.

The PICs have many negative effects.Most, in particular TNMOC, CO andCH

4, have a greater global warming

potential than CO2. There are also

negative health impacts. Add to thesethe fact that, as the name suggests, thepresence of PICs means that moreheat could have been produced fromthe same amount of fuel. Clearly, re-ducing PICs would have many benefi-cial effects.

Assuming eating habits do not changeand people are well versed in the op-eration of their stoves, there are basi-cally two ways to reduce PIC emissionsfrom biomass-fired cookstoves: changethe fuel or change the stove. The Ma-nila study indicates that a switch to LPGand kerosene could have a positiveeffect. This would mean encouragingpeople to move up the energy laddersooner than they otherwise might, whichcould be achieved via fuel and stovepricing or other means of making newstove/fuel combinations relatively moreattractive.

Based on the results of the Manila study,the effects on health and the globalenvironment of alternative fuels andstoves have been calculated relative totraditional wood stoves, as shown inTable 2. This indicates that fuel switch-ing has positive effects. From a healthstandpoint, a shift from wood to LPGreduces the overall health impact by afactor of 100. Likewise, a shift to kero-sene results in a reduction by a factor ofsix. A charcoal stove results in an im-provement by a factor of more than four.These fuels would also have positiveeffects on the global environment, judg-ing by the reduction in PICs relative towood.

The same table also shows that im-proved wood-burning stoves have a dis-tinct advantage over traditional woodburning stoves, both with regard to healthand to the global environment. Improvedstoves use 40 per cent less fuel (25 percent versus 15 per cent efficiency) andrelease fewer PICs. With regard to thelatter, it is important to recognize that theoverall stove efficiency, hst, is a functionof two internal efficiencies: the combus-tion efficiency, hcmb, which is the amountof chemical energy in the fuel that isconverted to heat; and the heat-transferefficiency, hhte, which is the amount ofheat that reaches the food cooked on astove. In general, emissions of PICs andCO

2 from a stove are an inverse function

of overall efficiency: all else being equal,the less fuel used for a given cookingtask, the less PICs will be released.

However, changes in stove operationand design can affect both internalefficiencies. In particular, heat transferefficiency can be increased at the ex-pense of combustion efficiency. For ex-ample, a popular way of reducing fuelconsumption of traditional cookstovesis to reduce the airflow by enclosing thefire. This increases the heat transferefficiency to the pot, but may lower com-bustion efficiency. Thus, improvementsin stove design and use can reduce fuelutilization, and so reduce CO

2 emis-

sions, but may at the same time rela-tively increase PIC emissions, and withthem, increase adverse health and en-vironmental impacts.

From the above it is thus clear that whileimproved stoves may have obvious ben-efits, the same improvements may alsoproduce hidden negative impacts due toincreased emissions. At the same time,it is also clear that much more work willbe required to validate the results of theManila study and to get a better under-standing of the interaction of the twointernal efficiency factors.

(references on next page)

Wood Energy News

plicit. Users make their own choices basedon their own perceptions with regard tofuels, stoves, kitchens and related is-sues.

A few examples from stove programmesmay illustrate the point. In urban SriLanka, an improved woodstove couldnot successfully diffuse until the stovewas modified in such a way that thebuyer could carry it home from the mar-ket with one hand only, leaving the otherhand free to carry other shopping. AtLombok, Indonesia, an improved stovehad two potholes located behind eachother, but the women would accept itonly when the two potholes were placednext to each other, as they were used to.In Cambodia, many households want ashallow structure attached to the stoveso as to contain the ashes from the firein order to keep the kitchen clean. Andin Bhutan, people prefer wet wood forspace heating during the night, because‘it burns longer’, which means the userdoes not need to wake up to tend thefire.

Fuel users generally do not perceivehealth effects as being related to cook-ing practices. For this reason, healthaspects are not naturally part of theirconsiderations in choosing, acceptingor simply sticking to a particular fuel orstove. In India, an essential componentof the improved chula programme is thechimney for healthier working condi-tions in the kitchen. However, users’acceptance has proven not to be asgood as the programme designerswould have wished. Probably, there aresimply too many factors influencing theusers. Some of these factors are noteven known or well understood, whileothers are beyond the range of inter-ventions as formulated in the pro-gramme.

Unfortunately, many of the factors whichdetermine the ability to climb up theladder are largely beyond the scope ofspecific energy development pro-grammes. Among these are householdincome and size, climate, settlement

W S Hulscher

A common concept in household en-ergy analysis is the ‘fuel ladder’. Theconcept implies that with socio-eco-nomic development, the fuel used by ahousehold will change. To the fuel-us-ers concerned, the top of the ladderlooks more attractive, which can meanmore convenient, more prestigious,more modern, more efficient, or more ofsome other preferred quality. For in-stance, in South Asia, climbing the fuelladder generally means stepping up fromdungcakes to crop residues, wood, kero-sene and gas, finally to electricity. Inmany parts of South-East Asia, char-coal has a place on the ladder, and thatvery high, even at the top. Climbing upthe fuel ladder also implies climbing upa health ladder, given present technolo-gies for stoves and combustion com-monly in use in Asia. Generally, wooddoes not cause as much smoke as cropresidues or dungcakes, and gas andelectricity do not cause smoke in thekitchen at all.

Various factors will determine whetheror not the household is able to move upits preferred ladder. The main factors(as were documented by Gerald Leachas long ago as 1987), are householdincome and size, availability and cost ofthe fuels, availability and cost of the re-quired appliances, climatic factors, set-tlement size, and culture and tradition.These factors may be easy to label, butthey hide a variety of user-specific valuesand judgements which often remain im-

size and – let’s be realistic – culture andtradition to a large extent. Traditionschange slowly, over much longer timeperiods than any development projecthas, and cultural aspects are functionswithin a much broader horizon. Whatare at least partly within the scope ofwood energy development are the avail-ability and cost of fuels and the introduc-tion, design and dissemination of im-proved appliances. Developing woodenergy resources can help people tomove away from inferior fuels, and theimproved appliances which could beintroduced include stoves which aremore convenient, more efficient andabove all more healthy.

However, in order to be more effectiveon the domestic health scene, woodenergy development should go alongwith programmes aimed at increasingappreciation amongst stove users ofthe adverse health effects of presentcombustion practices.

In the 1980s, it was still believed thatnationwide energy transitions away fromwood and biomass were an option indeveloping countries. We now knowthat that is not realistic for the larger partof Asia’s population. Even climbing upthe fuel ladder is feasible only for limitedparts of the population. In the domesticsector, every effort should be made toimprove health conditions. This will needpolicies and interventions which arecoordinated amongst at least the publichealth sector, extensionists, education-alists and energy technologists. Sev-eral experiences have shown that anisolated project, focusing on stoves orfuels only, can hardly be effective in thelonger term.

Reference:

G Leach, 1987, Household Energy inSouth Asia, Elesevier Applied Sci-ence

The Fuel Ladder, Stoves and Health

(from previous page)

References:

Kirk Smith, 1987, Biofuels, Air Pollutionand Health: A Global Review, Ple-num Press

K Smith and S Thorneloe, 1992, House-hold Fuels in Developing Countries:Global Warming, Health and EnergyImplications, US Environmental Pro-tection Agency, Washington, USA;Programme on Environment, EastWest Centre, Honolulu


Delegates Statement from theWorkshop

The delegates from the RWEDPmember countries in South-east Asia,meeting at Kanchanaburi, Thailandin October 1996, having consideredcurrent practices concerning woodand other biomass fuels in house-holds in the region, conclude thatmany of such practices have wide-spread adverse health impacts, par-ticularly for women and children. Thedelegates recommend that healthdepartments in their respective coun-tries bring these problems to the at-tention of the World Health Organi-zation and strengthen joint efforts toimprove the situation.

Overleaf: Country action plans drawnup by delegates at the KanchanaburiGender Training Workshop

Gender Training Workshop, Kanchanaburi, ThailandThe end of October last year saw a sub-regional training workshop on the topicof Wood Energy, Women and Health,the first regional forum to discuss theeffects of woodfuel use on women’shealth and the second sub-regional train-ing workshop on the issue of gender inwood energy organized by the RWEDP.The workshop, in Kanchanaburi, Thai-land, brought together government spe-cialists in the forestry, energy and healthsectors from nine countries, along withseveral NGO representatives and spe-cialist resource persons, in order toraise awareness and understanding ofthis important subject, which affectsmillions of women and children but isjust beginning to gain international at-tention. The countries represented were:China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand,Vietnam and Cambodia.

Women were well represented at theworkshop, making up 14 of the 24 par-ticipants. In order to get an idea of theparticipants’ pre-training knowledge andperceptions of the topic, a brief ques-tionnaire was filled out early on in theworkshop. All the delegations madepresentations about biomass fuel useand related health issues in their re-spective countries, from which it wasclear that biomass fuels are widely usedand that the health issues are not suffi-ciently well understood or researched inany of the countries represented.

The inaugural address of the workshopwas delivered by Mr P Tesha, Chief ofFAO-RAPR, who emphasized the eco-nomic, social and environmental impor-tance of woodfuels. Dr Hulscher of theRWEDP explained the rationale behindthe workshop and then outlined themajor health risks in different stages ofthe woodfuel cycle.

The keynote address was delivered byDr Pandey, a prominent cardiologistfrom Nepal who is one of the world’sleading researchers in the field of thehealth impacts of domestic biomassfuel use. He stressed the importance ofaddressing the problems of indoor

various gender analysis tools were ap-plied in a kitchen exercise, based on acase study from Indonesia conductedby Ms Aristanti. She highlighted the roleof cultural factors in the design of stovesand kitchens, showing that successfulinterventions need to take account ofthe cultural factors and involve womenin the design of both improved stovesand better kitchens. The papers led onto lively discussion, and stimulated thedelegates to prepare actions plans forfollow-ups in their own countries (seecentre pages). Many stressed that theywould like to organize national work-shops, and sought the RWEDP’s helpin providing materials for conductingsuch workshops. Participants were in-vited to review the draft of a module onGender Issues in Wood Energy, whichthe RWEDP is preparing. They sug-gested that it should contain more ma-terial on women’s health issues relatedto woodfuel use, a good indication of theworkshop’s success. Finally, the par-ticipants unanimously adopted a state-ment particularly addressing the healthsector (see box, above left).

Special credit is due to the advisorygroup which assisted the RWEDP indeveloping the concepts of the work-shop, comprising of Dr Pandey; DrGovind Kelkar of the Asian Institute ofTechnology, Thailand; Dr Choo YuenMay of the Palm Oil Research Institute,Malaysia; and Dr Revathi Balakrishnan,WID Officer at FAO-RAPA.

A report on the workshop will be avail-able from the RWEDP.

smoke pollution, and presented evi-dence that women and children are themain victims of health problems causedby smoke, asking whether it was due tothe low political and economic status ofwomen that this widespread problemreceives so little attention. Dr Pandeystressed the importance of adequateinterventions to secure better workingconditions for cooks and better space-heating practices; and pointed out thatimproved stoves and better-designedkitchens, not just fuel-switching, couldsubstantially reduce the adverse healthimpacts of smoke emissions fromwoodfuel use.

Christina Aristanti discussed the natureof kitchens and their design in the re-gion, and pointed out that they are gen-erally poorly ventilated and dingy. In asecond paper, Dr Pandey discussed indetail the main health effects of woodfueluse. Dr Dev Nathan set out the con-cepts of gender analysis and the maingender analysis tools. He also discussedthe nature of the household, variationsin household decision-making structuresand the importance of decision-makingby women. He pointed out that the lowvalue given to women’s labour meantthat household cash was generally notspent on reducing it, and argued thatthis was an important factor retardingthe spread of improved stoves. The

Wood Energy News

Country

Cambodia

China

Indonesia

Laos

Myanmar

Malaysia

Philippines

Thailand

Vietnam

Objective

To raise awareness among the people of theimpact of kitchen pollution on health; and topersuade women to use new stoves: less biomass,less smoke.

To identify the impacts of fuelwood afforestation,stove improvements, women’s participation inexisting projects and health; to formulate promotionmeasures to encourage women’s participation inwood energy projects; and to integrate the resultsof case studies in an ongoing wood energy project.

To identify rural household energy consumptionpatterns; identify and analyze role of women inrelation to wood energy activities; and identify andanalyze the impacts of energy use on health andenvironment.

To decrease mortality in children and women, andwomen’s drudgery.

To improve health conditions of women andchildren; to take measures on medical problems inthe woodfuel cycle; and to educate women andchildren in the rural grass-roots.

R&D/awareness: to investigate and raise aware-ness of impacts on women’s and children’s healthfrom biomass-based industries. Dissemination: toimprove women’s and children’s health throughtraining, workshops, publications, publicity etc.

To raise awareness and promote appreciation ofthe importance of gender and health considerationsin the national wood and biomass energy pro-gramme.

To manage natural resources in CF sustainably; togenerate income for the communities; and toenhance organization of the people.

Helping the people to understand the interrelation-ships between: fuelwood development and wom-en’s health; the important role and responsibilitiesof women in sustainable woodfuel development;and the impacts on women’s health from usingfuelwood and other biomass resources.

Actors to be involved

MoH, MoAFF, MoR, MoWA, NGOs, InternationalOrganizations.

International: FAO/RWEDP, for technicalbackstopping. National: MoF, MoA, MoH andNational Women’s Federation, for coordinationand supervision; CAAERP and CAF for imple-mentation. Local: farmers, rural energy office ofthe country, forest bureaus, women’s unions andhealth bureaus.

Directorate General of Electricity and EnergyDevelopment, Ministry of Forestry, Ministry ofHome Affairs, local government and the localcommunity.

Dept. of Hygiene and Prevention, MoPH; Dept. ofAgriculture and Forestry, MAF; Lao Women’sUnion; and foreign agencies through cooperation.

DoH personnel; village administrative organs;elders; VLORC; monks; NGOs: Red Cross,Solidarity and Development Association, andMaternity and Child Welfare Association; anddepartments concerned with training and work-shops, e.g. Forestry Dept; Education Dept.

Forestry, Energy, Health, Education and HumanResources departments; rural developmentagencies; NGOs; etc.

National Wood Energy Committee (DOE, DENR,DA, DAR, DOST); DECS and ACADEME; DOE;GAD; focal points/NCRFW; DOH; and media.

Gos: RFD, DEDP, DoH, RECOFTC; NGOs: PDA,WFT; and NEPO.

Institute of Energy; Ministry of Agriculture andRural Development; Ministry of Health; Women’sAssociation; Hanoi Architectural Inst.; andMinistry of Science, Technology and Environment.

Country Action Plans Drawn up by Delegates at the Kanchanaburi


Strategy

Assessment; extension; and training.

Improving coordination between andseeking support from different sectors;pay information suppliers, especiallywomen, in order to encourage theirparticipation; increasing opportunitiesfor women to gain access to trainingand community activities; and involvingmore women in wood energy projectplanning and decision making.

Approaches to relevant institutions;gathering of primary data; and gather-ing of secondary data

.

Committee to support network projectat various levels; training on concept,planning and management for staffresponsible; sampling survey ofhouseholds; and organizing trainingand meetings for the people.

1. Meeting with authorities concerned.2. Village-level workshops (stovehandling, placement, use and storageof biomass, healthy kitchen etc.). 3.Meetings with women and children (askabout diseases, sickness, difficulties,problems to solve and overcome).

Dissemination of avilable informationthrough the media, Information Ministryworkshops and training seminars;initiating R&D efforts; and awarenesscompaigns.

Dissemination of information at na-tional, regional and provincial levels,through: meetings, seminars/work-shops, and consultations/dialogues.

Integrating gender in all activities underthe project.

Involving the entire community; andencouraging women to participate inwood energy development (planning,dissemination, improved stoves).

Action to be taken

Assessment: survey, PRA; extension: introducenew stoves, discussion meetings, broadcasts,posters, and pamphlets; and training: stoveenterprise and health workers.

1. General review of country situation: social,economic, culture and natural resources. 2.Identification of villages for case study. 3. Ques-tionnaires to each household: cultivated land,income, division of labour etc. 4. Sampling surveyof households: fuel, stove, role of women, health.5. Analysis and modelling. 6. Report. 7. Introduceresults of study to existing wood energy project asa follow-up.

1. Determination of methodology: training, ques-tionnaire etc.. 2. Selection and determination ofsamples. 3. Approach to local government. 4.Field observations. 5. Data collection. 6. Dataprocessing and analysis. 7. Reporting.

First year: project implemented in two pilot districtsin two provinces; Second year: expand to otherprovinces.

Disseminate and distribute improved stoves andmethods; distribute medicine and first aid boxes;women need breathing exercises for respiratorytract infection; meetings according to situation;five-day workshops every two months; and first aidtraining for trauma, burns, scalds, snake-bite etc.

Survey; collection of data; data analysis; dissemi-nation of results; raise awareness and maybeadopt a village as model; dissemination of infor-mation through training seminars, workshops(technical and non-technical). Time: two to threeyears.

1. Convene NWEC/NWEG and DOH to discussproceedings of sub-regional workshop on woodenergy, women and health. 2. Issue policystatement at NWEC level on need for informationdissemination. 3. Encourage NGOs to join ininformation dissemination. Time: 1997

1. Select target area. 2. Meetings and trainingcourses on gender in project cycle, sustainablenatural resource management, wood energy,women and health, marketing of NTTFP, etc.. 3.Monitoring and evaluation. 4. Reports.

Distribution information to all actors; nationaltraining workshops on Gender and WoodfuelDevelopment; surveys; data collection andprocessing; gender analysis; developing improvedstoves; social, economic and environment studies;projects; dissemination of improved cookstoves ina few rural villages; sample rural energy planningfor a few districts with large household biomassenergy use; and small plantation project.

Means and Resources

Extension workers in health, agricul-ture, community development;community clinics; local stoveenterprise (clay); and internationalagencies.

Human resources: project officials,technical experts, consultants (inter-national, and national), and farmers.Financial resources: FAO/RWEDP,other donors, and national counter-part fund.

Regional data and statistics; govern-ment funds; and the Local Govern-ment Development Programme

Finance from government; coopera-tion with foreign projects; popularparticipation; technical: from govern-ment; raised awareness in ruralareas; and extension staff.

Popular participation; medicine, aidfirst aid boxes; training materials;incentives – subsidies if possible;extension facilities; finance; andsupport from organizations like WHO,FAO, RWEDP and UNICEF.

Govt: Finance, logistics, access,dissemination of information; NGOs:publicity, awareness; and RWEDP/international agencies: information,finance, training etc.. Financialrequirement: US$ 250,000 per year.

Budget requirements by implementingagencies/NGOs; Gender and Devel-opment focal point allocations may betapped; government and NGOpersonnel to be involved; informationmaterials from the media.

For budget: FAO and NEPO; forbudget, personnel, equipment etc.:RFD, DEDP, DOH, RECOFTC.

Human resources: institutional staff,technicians, local committees.Finance: Gos, NGOs, FAO, ACCTand SIDA.

Gender Training Workshop, 28 October to 1 November 1996

Wood Energy News

Dev Nathan

Indoor air pollution due to the burning ofbiomass fuels has been shown to be animportant factor increasing the preva-lence of acute respiratory infections ininfants and children, and chronic ob-structive lung disease (COLD), oftenleading to heart damage (cor pulmo-nale), in adult women. Studies under-taken by Dr M R Pandey and his col-leagues (1996) also show that expo-sure to harmful indoor air pollutants,and thus the morbidity and mortality itcan cause, could be significantly re-duced by installation and use of im-proved stoves.

Improved stove programmes have rarelyhad an explicit health focus. The excep-tion is, perhaps, the early Indian smoke-less chula programme. Improved stoveprogrammes have almost all been pro-moted in order to reduce the use ofwood for fuel and thus reduce defor-estation. But these programmes havemet with varied success. China is themain success story. By 1991, some 150million, or 70 per cent, of farm house-holds in China had adopted improvedstoves sold to them at commercialprices. In India, on the other hand, onlyabout 15 per cent of farm householdshad adopted improved stoves by 1992,even though the improved stoves wereoffered at highly subsidized prices.

Why is there such a marked difference inthe performances of China and India inthe dissemination of improved stoves?In examining this question, we will look atthe role of economic factors, in particularthe lack of value generally placed onwomen’s labour, in affecting the rate ofdissemination of a technology that wouldbenefit women by reducing the labourtime they spend in gathering and usingwood as fuel, and have significant healthbenefits both for women and for infants

Dr Dev Nathan is a social scientist, andhas worked for the RWEDP as an inde-pendent consultant on gender and woodenergy.

lection of wood for self-use. Conse-quently, in urban areas, woodfuel iscompared with all other fuels, and itssale and purchase are subject to thesame forces as the supply and de-mand of other fuels.

In the rural situation, on the other hand,woodfuel is not produced as a com-modity (i.e. it is not produced for sale).It is largely collected by farm house-holds for self-consumption. A study inPakistan (Ouerghi, 1993, 71) showedthat 69 per cent of woodfuel was col-lected and therefore considered fi-nancially free.

What the rural household expends islabour time in collecting the woodfuel.Thus it is through the labour necessaryfor appropriation and processing thatwood as energy relates to the rest of thefarm economy. But not all labour time isvalued in the same way. There is first ofall a distinction between the technicalconcept of effort (or energy expended)and the economic concept of work. Forinstance, the effort involved in childcareor healthcare is not regarded as work,but as a service: a service performed bya woman for her family.

But a distinction does exist betweenwork that provides or brings in cashincome and work which does not. Anotion also exists of the other earningspossible with the available labour time:the opportunity cost of labour in terms ofalternatives forgone.

What empirical studies do show is thatthe collection, processing and use ofwoodfuel are largely activities under-taken by women and, to an extent, bychildren. Men, on the other hand, tendto dominate in waged and other mon-etary income-earning work. There aresome differences in this pattern, as willbe discussed later, but even in matrilin-eal communities like the Khasi in North-east India or the Mosuo in Yunnan,China, men dominate the external eco-nomic sector, the sector involving cashrelations. It is women’s unwaged labourthat is the main factor in the collection

and children who spend a lot of timearound their mothers.

In considering the various factors inhousehold energy use (as, for instance,in Kirk Smith et al., 1992), the mostimportant is held to be the level of house-hold income. This, according to theabove-mentioned article, explains Chi-na’s relative success in disseminatingthe 150 million improved stoves, whileIndia has managed little more than atenth of that number. From such ananalysis would follow the policy prescrip-tion that a key factor in the adoption ofimproved stoves or in moving up the“energy ladder” (i.e. moving from thenon-commercial to commercial fuels)would be an increase in household in-comes.

"The transition away from reliance oncollected wood as a fuel and towardincreased purchase of commercial (of-ten fossil) fuels tends to occur as peo-ple’s standards of living improve." (Smithet al., 1992)

The question we need to ask is whetherthe model of the household as a unitpossessing a certain aggregate amountof resources, land, labour and capital issufficient to explain the nature ofwoodfuel demand and supply. Or do weneed to carry out a gender analysis oflabour availability in the farm householdin order to understand the woodfuelmarket? The point is not to introducegender for the sake of complexity –complexity is not a virtue if it does notincrease explanatory power – let us justsee what difference is made by a gen-der disaggregation of the farm family’slabour availability. Table 3 highlights theimbalance in domestic labour time be-tween the genders in four developingcountries.

Significance of Differences inUrban and Rural Patterns

Rural use of woodfuel differs signifi-cantly from urban use. In urban areas,it is a commodity, sold and purchasedon the market. There is very little col-

Economic Factors in the Adoption of Improved Stoves


and use of woodfuel. Thus, the extent towhich an attempt is made to economizeon women’s labour in woodfuel collec-tion depends on the alternatives avail-able for its use.

Opportunity Costs of Women’sUnvalued Labour

The use of improved stoves is oneexample of a way of economizing on thelabour of fuel collection, since less fuelis needed for their operation. For thefarm household, it is not the fuel com-parison that is important, but the labourcomparison, and that the comparison ofwomen’s labour time. Will money reallybe spent in acquiring (or maintainingand subsequently replacing) an im-proved stove in order to economize onlabour that does not produce monetaryincome (i.e. does not produce market-able goods and services), or where thesaved labour cannot be used to pro-duce such marketable goods and serv-ices? What would be the opportunityvalue of the improved stove, in terms ofother income that could be earned orproduction that could be increased, ifmore commercial uses for that labourwere available?

Regarding the role of women’s income-earning opportunities in determiningthe adoption of labour-saving innova-tions like improved stoves, we can

make an inter-country comparison:China’s “best” rural areas, where theimproved stove programme has beensuccessful, have a high level of village-level industry and commercial produc-tion of livestock and vegetables. Inthese income-earning activities, thereis substantial participation by women,which does not even fall during thechild-bearing years. This high degreeof participation by women in the in-come-earning labour force must bereflected in a strong drive to econo-mize on their labour in fuel collectionand use, resulting in the high rate ofadoption of unsubsidized improvedstoves.

In contrast, rural areas in India show lowparticipation in money-earning activi-ties by the women of farm households:“If women are involved in income-gen-erating activities which will value theirtime and make it more profitable topurchase firewood than collect it, im-proved stoves will have higher chancesof success. Households will be moti-vated to use more efficient stoves be-cause of the direct financial impact.”(Ouerghi, 1993).

Whether a farm household seeksgreater efficiency in fuel use (an im-provement which will cost some money)depends on the opportunity cost of la-bour in woodfuel collection and cook-

ing. The lower the income or productionlost by women spending more time incollecting, the less will be the incentiveto adopt improved stoves, or to switch tomore efficient commercial fuels.

The labour time we need to consider isnot only that spent in collecting, but alsothat spent in cooking, including fuelpreparation. As shown in Gerald Leachand Marcia Gowen (1987), rate of fuelcollection can be converted into a mon-etary value, using the existing price ofwoodfuel, in order to give a cash meas-ure of the opportunity cost of woodfuelcollection. In a Mexican example citedby the authors, the rate of wood collec-tion was 6.2 kg/hour, while the localmarket price of wood was Mn$3.00 perkg. This gives a “value” to woodfuelcollection of Mn$18.60 per hour. Theminimum labour wage was at that timeMn$27.50 per hour.

Obviously, if employment were avail-able, it would be preferable to earncash as a labourer and buy wood,rather than collect it. But the absenceof adequate employment or other in-come-earning opportunities wouldmean that the above substitution wouldnot take place. There would be noincentive to save labour time in collect-ing woodfuel or in cooking with it. Thislack of incentive would almost certainlyaffect the farm household’s decisionsregarding use of improved stoves, re-gardless of the gender of the house-hold’s decision maker. If women haveno alternative income-earning oppor-tunities for the potential labour timesaved by improved stoves, then even ifthey are the household decision mak-ers (as they are in a number of matrilin-eal societies), they will not decide infavour of spending cash to acquire theimproved stoves. This might explainwhy, even in matrilineal communitieslike those in eastern Bhutan, stoveprogrammes have failed.

The above analysis of the effect of thelack of value placed on women’s labourtime holds good even for the labour ofchildren, girls in particular. To the extentthat the education of girls is not valued(which is at least somewhat, becausethey would leave the community and theinvestment in their education would be

* For Nepal, firewood collection includes grass and leaf fodder collection; forIndonesia, cooking is included in food processingSource: E W Cecelski, From Rio to Beijing

Activity Number of hours spent in activity per day

Indonesia BurkinaFaso

India Nepal

��

��

��

Firewoodcollection

Women

Men

0.09

0.21

0.10

0.03

0.65

0.65

2.37*

0.83*

��

��

��

Water hauling Women

Men

0

0

0.63

0

1.23

0.04

0.67

0.07

��

��

��

Foodprocessing

Women

Men

2.72

0.10

2.02

0.17

1.42

0.27

0.70

0.20

��

��

��

��

��

��

Cooking Women

Men

-*

-*

2.35

0.01

3.65

0.03

2.10

0.38

��

��

��

Average totalwork per day

Women

Men

11.02

8.07

9.08

7.05

9.07

5.07

11.88

6.53

��

��

��

Table 3: Women’s greater workload

Wood Energy News

lost to their own parental families), therewould again be no pressure to econo-mize on their labour, which also contrib-utes to woodfuel collection.

From the above, it also follows that pres-sure to economize on woodfuel use wouldincrease if women were to become moreinvolved in money-earning activities, par-ticularly those outside the homestead.Most of the activities reserved for women,either socially or in projects, tend to bephysically located in and around thehome. This results in a simple increasein the workload of women. The intensityof work increases, with more tasks hav-ing to be performed at the same time. Onthe other hand, if work taken up by womenwere of a type that took them outside thehomestead, it is likely there would begreater pressure for economizing on theirlabour time.

This could be through the adoption oflabour-saving innovations, or throughmen taking on some of the responsibilityfor child care (as is seen among someswiddening communities, where womenand older children go to the swiddenfields, leaving men and younger childrenat home), or even through more socialprovision of these necessary functions(as through childcare centres at Food forWork sites). And there would be a defi-nite increase in the demand for labour-saving food-processing methods, to re-duce time spent in collecting fuel and incooking itself.

The above analysis holds for farmhouseholds that collect their own fuel. Itdoes not hold for farm households thatbuy fuel or engage paid labour to collectit for them. These would also be house-holds which attach considerations ofprestige to not having “their women”working outside the homestead. At thesame time, these are also the house-holds that would have considerable cropresidues and animal dung for use asfuel, more than would be needed asorganic manure for the fields. The avail-ability of other "free" – that is, unpriced– fuel sources would reduce the pres-sures for reducing fuel use, and therewould be little pressure to reduce wom-en’s cooking time.

Discrimination in Provision ofLeisure

But is the non-adoption of devices thatsave women’s labour time only a reac-tion to its low opportunity cost? Even inthe absence of increased income-earn-ing opportunities, the possibility of in-creasing leisure still exists.

Given the fact that women routinelywork a few hours more per day thanmen in most regions of the world, itseems clear that increasing women’sleisure time is important. But then thefactor of the gendered control of house-hold income comes into the picture. Ifit is possible for some income to bespent on leisure, rather than in theexpectation of a monetary return, thenit is men’s leisure time and relatedactivities that are likely to be givenpriority. For instance, in a village of theHani people in Yunnan, we observedthat money was spent on acquiringcassette players, with which men couldlisten to music in their substantial lei-sure time, rather than in getting pipedwater or improved stoves, both of whichwould have reduced women’s workinghours.

What this means is that the sustainedunder-investment in devices that savewomen’s labour time, which would alsosave fuel, is not only a function of therelatively low opportunity cost of wom-en’s labour time compared to that ofmen, but also of the systematic malebias in favour of their own leisure timeover that of females.

References:

K Smith, R Van Der Plas, D F Barnesand K Openshaw, 1992, What MakesPeople Cook with Improved Stoves?A Comparative Review, joint ESMAP/UNDP report

A Ouerghi, 1993, Woodfuel Use in Pa-kistan: Sustainability of Supply andSocio-economic and EnvironmentalImplications, Pakistan HouseholdEnergy Strategy Study, HESS, Paki-stan

Gerald Leach and Marcia Gowen, 1987,Household Energy Handbook, WorldBank, Washington

Even in households that collect theirown fuel, a reduction in wood avail-ability is not likely to trigger fuel sub-stitution in favour of commercial fu-els. Rather, as has been observed,the same free labour would be usedto collect other “free” fuel sources,like shrubs, dung cakes and cropresidues. “This [the availability of un-valued women’s labour time] explainswhy fuelwood transition [to more effi-cient, modern fuels] is not linked toincome level and is not happening inrural areas [in Pakistan]” (Ouerghi,1993, p. 77).

The experience of improved stoveprogrammes has repeatedly shownthat subsidies lead to the adoption ofthe improvements only so long asthe subsidies are in place. A sus-tained change in patterns of fuel usecannot depend on continuous subsi-dies. The expenditure pattern result-ing from women’s unpaid labour can-not be successfully changed by sub-sidies. What is required is change inthe role of women’s labour.

Thus, the primary emphasis in attempt-ing to bring about an increase in fuelefficiency or in fuel switching should beon increasing the possibility of women’sincome-earning opportunities, and thoseoutside the homestead. The experi-ences of both South Korea and Chinashow that this is the main factor ininducing greater fuel efficiency or fuelsubstitution. This is not an interventionin what is regarded as “energy policy”.But there in no a priori reason why animportant effect on energy use shouldcome from within what is consideredthe field of energy policy, which dealswith the availability and price of differentfuels. The availability and opportunitycosts of different kinds of labour, ofwomen and men, can be seen to havea major effect on the pattern of fuel use.Increasing women’s income-earninglabour relative to the amount of unpaidlabour itself means a change in wom-en’s role in the household. This is achange in gender relations, and hasfurther implications for other aspects ofgender relations.


moving to other fuels. Gender analysishas also shown that sustained under-investment in devices that save wom-en’s labour time is also partly a functionof the systematic bias of male house-hold heads in favour of their own leisuretime over that of the women in the house-hold.

Thus, the primary emphasis in policy tobring about an increase in fuel effi-ciency or in fuel switching should be onincreasing opportunities for women toearn income, and those should be out-side the household. Economic policythen needs to be directed towards in-creasing these opportunities.

Empirical evidence from many coun-tries shows that income-generating ac-tivities controlled by women have a fur-ther desirable effect: they increase theproportion of income spent on bothwomen and children, and thus have agreater impact on total household wel-fare than where additional income goesto the men. Thus, both in order to inducethe adoption of more fuel-efficient stovesand to make a greater impact in povertyalleviation, the design and implementa-tion of projects in the woodfuel sectorneed to target women as the main re-cipients of extra household income.

As well as being an essential householdcommodity, woodfuel is also a sourceon income for the rural poor, with women,as head-loaders, being the main work-ers in this sector. But the open-accessstate of forests means that the price ofwoodfuel is regulated only by the costsof extraction. This in turn leads to a verylow income for the producers and en-courages the over-exploitation of theresource. Secure property rights for thecommunities of the woodfuel producerswould both encourage sustainable useof the forests and increase the incomesof forest-dwellers.

While securing the communities’ rights, itis also necessary to see that womenwithin them are represented on commu-nity committees and have relevant prop-erty rights. Given the general gender

division of household responsibilities,where women have the primary respon-sibility of provisioning the household, theabsence of women in decision-making atboth community and household levelsleads to a one-sided emphasis on certaintypes of wood investments, like timber inwood lots. In order to get a sustainablemix of activities that will increase produc-tivity, it is necessary to take account ofwomen’s specific concern with quick andregular returns, and to enable women toparticipate in decision-making on thesematters. This involves ownership of landand participation in village or user coun-cils by women.

The move away from woodlots towardsagro-forestry has brought a renewed in-ternational interest in home gardens,which are a repository of much knowl-edge in agro-forestry, and which are aspecial ecological niche of women. Alongwith the home garden, swidden is an-other area of multi-tier, multi-crop cultiva-tion that is a “female farming system”.Rather than start from the false positionthat men are the “farmers” and thus thatthey alone need to be consulted in anyscientist-farmer interaction, it is neces-sary to investigate in each location thespecific tasks that women and men per-form, and thus give full scope to theknowledge that women and men have ofthe specific processes.

Micro-enterprises that use wood as fuelare largely operated by women. Littleattention has been paid to their techno-logical advancement, and this couldform the basis of a set of interventions,specifically, the development of ad-equately scaled improved burners wouldprobably reduce the labour time involvedin processing many foods, such as fish,and could substantially increase pro-ductivity in these enterprises.

In addition, the provision of cleaner fuelsneeds to be adopted as a goal of energypolicy so that women’s and children’shealth will not be adversely affected bythe various dirty fuels now widely usedfor domestic energy purposes, particu-larly in the rural areas of Asia.

Dev Nathan

It is now well established that, in much ofthe developing world, wood energy is setto remain one of the prime energysources, especially in poor rural commu-nities. It is also well known that there areseveral problems associated with itscollection and use as a household fuel. Anumber of options exist for interventionsaimed at offsetting these problems, andas women are most often at risk from theadverse effects of woodfuel use, it makessense that considerations of gendershould be a major factor in the design ofthese interventions. This paper attemptsto examine some of the options for inter-ventions with a gender base.

One of the major concerns of woodenergy policy has been to induce theadoption of more fuel-efficient stoves.These improved stoves, as the studiesof Dr M R Pandey and his colleaguesshow [see Dr Pandey’s article, p. 3),can also reduce indoor air pollution.Reducing this would have an impact onthe incidence of acute respiratory in-fections in infants and children, and ofchronic obstructive lung disease(COLD), which often leads to heartdamage, in adult women. But how canwe ensure that households actuallyadopt these fuel-saving and health-improving stoves?

Gender analysis has shown that econo-mizing on woodfuel, which is largely acollected fuel, is a question of reducingthe availability of the labour required forits collection. This labour is largely doneby women and children, particularly girls.A gender-disaggregated analysis ofhousehold labour time leads to the con-clusion that it is the availability or other-wise of women’s unpaid labour time thatis the crucial factor determining the ex-tent to which a household economizeson woodfuel use. Rural patterns showthat even where household income in-creases, without any reduction in theavailability of women’s unpaid labourthere is unlikely to be a reduction in theuse of woodfuel, either through the useof more fuel-efficient stoves or through

Woodfuel Interventions with a Gender Base

Wood Energy News

Bedugul men Bedugul womenTending animals

Preparing fields for planting, ploughing

Buying seeds

Building fences

Fertilizing fields

Planting

Harvesting rice

Constructing/maintaining the house

Processing of crops after harvest

Cooking twice a day (two hours a time)

Washing clothes

Drawing water from the well

Care of children

Gathering fuel

Shopping

Planting

Weeding

Harvesting rice and dry crops

Processing of crops after harvest

might be collected as often as every twodays or every two weeks (after the to-bacco, chilli or soybean harvests forexample). There is also a person whosells fuelwood in Bedugul. A bunch offirewood of about 0.10 m3 costs Rp1,500 and can be used for two or threedays There does not seem to be ascarcity of biomass fuel and collectingfuelwood takes from one to two hoursfor one bundle carried on the head.

Problems arise during the rainy season,when most biomass fuel is wet. Atthese times, some women turn to kero-sene stoves, while most dry wood asbest they can on racks above the stove.Women here like to use biomass if theyneed to cook quickly. They also enjoythe taste it imparts to the food.

Cooking meals—which is most com-monly done twice a day for two hours atime—and chopping fuelwood are pri-marily done by women. Other dailychores, such as washing clothes at thewell or river and caring for children, arealso the work of women. General gen-der divisions of economic and repro-ductive responsibilities are included inTable 4.

There is a government primary schoolwithin walking distance and most chil-dren do attend, although they may not

these activities, labour is paid a dailywage or 1/11 of the crop they harvested.Tenants are paid with a third of the riceharvest and all of the dry crop harvest.Wages or money from selling surplusrice or dry crops are used to buy foodand snacks, pay for schooling, medi-cine, household needs and clothing.

In general, daily household purchasesare decided upon by women. Livestockand fowl are also important assets inthis community, including cows, goats,chickens and ducks, which are raised athome. Men look after (i.e. collect fod-der), and decide on the purchase andsale of, livestock. Both women andmen tend fowl. Livestock and fowl pro-vide fertilizer, cash income and food.

A few men and women run small shops.Collecting sand from the nearby river-bed is an available source of wages formen and women. A few men are woodworkers, horse cart drivers or find la-bour work outside of the village.

Women are responsible for drawingwater, most often from a well, and col-lecting biomass fuel. The biomasscomes in the form of coconut leaves,dead soybean, tobacco, beans or chilliplants and dead wood, twigs and leavesgathered from the fields or yards. De-pending on the time of year, biomass

Christina Aristanti

The village of Bedugul is located about10 km from the provincial capital city ofMataram on Lombok Island. It is lessthan five km from Swete, the largestmarket on Lombok. The village has 130households. The entire population is ofSasak ethnicity and Islamic in religion.Houses are made of bamboo or brickswith thatched roofs. Floors are dirt orcement.

As with many volcano islands, Lombokhas a wet and a dry side. Bedugul is onthe wet side, and this part of Lombok isknown for its abundance of water. Riv-ers, streams, irrigation canals, wellsand springs abound. The rainy seasonis five months of the year. Due to thisfavorable condition and the rich blacksoil, it would be possible to harvestthree rice crops each year; however,the government regulates farming ac-tivities, so that each year there are tworice crops and one dry crop. Dry cropsin Bedugul include chilli pepper, corn,tobacco, soybean, cassava and otherbeans.

Over 75 per cent of the working popula-tion is involved in farming activities. Amajority of families have a small amountof land, about a quarter of a hectare,and it is usually owned by the men.Many men and women work as farmlabourers or tenants for those who ownbigger plots of land. Although this workcan be termed seasonal, because thereare three crops a year, the off-season isvery short.

Men commonly take care of ploughing,buying seeds, building fences and ferti-lizing. Women are responsible for har-vesting dry crops and weeding. Bothmen and women are involved in plant-ing, harvesting rice and processing theharvested crops. These roles areslightly flexible, as is the case whenan older man harvests dry crops or awoman prepares land for planting. For

Table 4: Responsibilities of the Bedugul men and women

A Stove Project with a Gender and Health Orientation:Bedugul, Indonesia


Time Activity

05.00–06.00 Wake up, bathe, bathe and dress children

06.00–08.00 Cook breakfast

08.00–08.30 Take breakfast to those already working in the fields, eat

08:30–13.00 Harvest chilli peppers

13.00–13:30 Eat lunch brought to field by mother

13:30–16.00 Harvest chilli peppers

16.00–17.00 Return home, bathe, bathe the children, rest and visit

17.00–19.00 Cook dinner

19.00–20.00 Eat dinner

20.00–22.00 Wash dishes, wash clothes

22.00 Go to bed

in Bedugul are made by older women.The small stoves usually have two holes,with the fuel opening in between theholes, but there are also one-hole andthree-hole models. The stoves can bemade of mud or of bricks, also locallyavailable, layered with mud. Stoves likethis can also be ordered for around Rp1,500. They last for a long time, asrepairs are easily made by the localwomen themselves

Improved ceramic two-potholecookstoves have been introduced tosome families through a communitymember that works for an NGO inMataram. The women complain that itis more difficult to control heat to one orthe other hole, the stove burns rice veryquickly and ash builds up in the com-bustion chamber. But they like the factthat it can be taken to the fields ormoved around.

A Case Family

Ibu Lia and her husband have two chil-dren. They live next door to Lia’s mother.Outside of the home, Lia works as afarm labourer. For example, when it isdry crop harvest time, she may work sixhours picking chilli peppers. During oneday she can pick 20 kg, bringing homeRp 100 for each kg, or Rp 2,000 for oneday’s work (less than US $1.00). She ispaid by the land owner, who will then sellthe same chilli peppers for Rp 700 perkilogram. While she is working in thefields, her mother watches the children.The usual structure of one of Lia’s days

during harvest time is given below inTable 5.

Ibu Lia and her mother collect firewoodfrom their local environment and fieldstwo times a week. Fuel is stored underthe eaves at the back of the mother’shouse. They do not have kerosenestoves and during the wet season IbuLia or her mother chop up biomass/wood into smaller pieces to afford fasterdrying on the racks above the stove. Ifthey buy fuelwood, for example duringthe rainy season, they spend about Rp500 a day.

Kitchen and Stove

Lia uses a small side room with verylittle lighting and ventilation as a kitchen.The walls are covered with soot. Lia’smother’s kitchen is on a raised dirt porchin front of the two bedroom home. Thehome has a thatched roof and brickwalls with a dirt floor. The kitchen isblocked off on two sides by gunny sacksand bamboo. The roof over the porch ofthe house acts as the kitchen roof. Insome ways this is a more ideal situationthan that of Lia. At least in her mother’scase, smoke easily leaves the cook’sworking space and the lighting is good.

The space in each kitchen is just enoughfor one of the women to cook. Prepara-tion of food for cooking takes placeoutside on the porch, with water from abucket. Waste water is thrown into theyard. Drying of dishes is done on abamboo table placed out in the yard.Ibu Lia and her mother use a two-pot-hole mud stove made by her mother.

Actually, they have tried using the im-proved ceramic cookstove experimen-tally introduced. They complain that it ishard to control heat between the pot-holes, that the stove burns rice very quicklyand ash builds up very quickly in thecombustion chamber. However, they doadmit that the improved ceramic stoveproduces less smoke and heats faster.

When asked about beliefs connected tothe kitchen, Pak Kamil tells of earliertimes when his grandmother’s stove facedeast. Although no longer a very commonpractice, sirih is still used by some toconsecrate the stove upon its first use.

finish all six years. Horse carts providetransportation from the village to a mainroad where minibuses are available.Health provisions include a local healertrained by the government and a localhealth clinic about one km from thevillage. Common health conditions in-clude diarrhoea and vomiting, fevers,colds and coughs. Radios and televi-sions are common in households. Awater and sanitation project is currentlybeing implemented.

Kitchen and Stove

Kitchens are often small side rooms,with no windows and hardly any ventila-tion. Walls are black with soot. Anothercommon kitchen is actually a temporaryshelter set up against the wall of thehome, made from gunny sacks or bam-boo. This second type of kitchen isactually better in terms of ventilationand lighting. If a new, more modernhome is built, it will often not have akitchen, but the kitchen will remain inthe old dwelling. Women of Bedugulmost often cook for between four andeight people, spending around fourhours in their kitchens each day, mostcommonly cooking rice and vegetableside dishes. They cook in a crouchingposition or sitting on a small woodenstool.

The kitchen is also a place for storage offood stuffs (often hung from above). Arack above the stove takes advantageof the smoke to dry fuel, fish paste, salt,red chillis, corn etc. Most stoves in use

Table 5: A typical day for Lia during harvest time

Wood Energy News

Readers will have noticed that recent issues of Wood Energy News have focused on specific themes. So far, these havebeen: gender and wood energy; modern wood energy; wood energy planning; wood energy resources; wood energy data;and wood energy and environment. The next issue is to focus on the largest of our new member countries, China. Wewelcome suggestions, contributions and reactions from our readers, on this or any other subject related to wood energy.

On page 15 of the last issue of WoodEnergy News (Vol. 11, No. 3), whichfocused on ‘Wood Energy and Environ-ment’, RWEDP made some critical com-ments on Forests For Life, a WWF/IUCN forest policy book published in1996. RWEDP’s comments implied that(i) worldwide, woodfuel collection can-not be looked at as a major cause ofdeforestation, (ii) since 1990, substan-tial and relevant evidence has beencollected on this matter in Asia, and (iii)information from Africa does not neces-sarily apply to Asia, which is home tosome two billion woodfuel users, by farthe largest number in the world.

RWEDP was grateful to receive a reac-tion from Nigel Dudley, on behalf ofWWF, of which the following is an ex-cerpt:

“Thanks for taking the trouble to com-ment in such depth. It was certainly notour intention to suggest that fuelwoodcollection was a major cause of defor-estation – and indeed we stress withreference to the work of Leach andMearns that its importance has oftenbeen exaggerated in the past. How-ever, we believe that it is an importantcause of forest degradation in someareas (and deforestation in selectedplaces where a significant trade in tim-ber fuel exists as the UNRISD workpoints out for parts of Central America).One of the underlying points of thebook was that forest quality can be asimportant as quantity from an environ-mental perspective, and this may beparticularly relevant to the Asian region.If you received a contrary impressionfrom the text then I apologize.

“I would agree that logging is of greaterimportance overall. This is examined inmore detail in a recent book from WWF– Bad Harvest? – which argues that ona global scale, the greatest threat tothose forests which are richest inbiodiversity now comes from logging.”

Mr Dudley appends the following ex-tract from the 1992 book Forests inTrouble, published by WWF:

“Woodfuel shortages have long been acontroversial environmental issue andhave been the cause of many aid pro-grammes and funding. However, therehave been serious mistakes made inboth estimations of the scale of theproblem and in proposals for solutions.Shortage of woodfuel was identified asa major global crisis by several develop-ment agencies and international organi-zations in the early 1980s, and consid-erable efforts were made to find ways totackle these problems. However, someof the early pronouncements aboutwoodfuel use are now acknowledged tohave been overly pessimistic. Indeedthere would be no forests left at all in theHimalayas if some of the predictionsmade fifteen years ago had been strictlyaccurate. There is now ample evidence(e.g. Leach and Mearns, 1988) thatmany of the early predictions of shortfallwere exaggerated, or that local prob-lems were used to suggest national orinternational disasters in the making.

“This does not mean that the ‘woodfuelcrisis’ is purely a figment of the imagina-tion. Shortage of firewood continues tocause practical problems for the manyof the world’s poorest people who are

reliant mainly or solely on firewood.Overcollection of wood for burning orfor conversion into charcoal is also caus-ing a range of environmental problems.Whereas in the past dead wood wasused for burning (if only because this islikely to produce more heat), increas-ingly living trees are felled or mutilatedfor firewood. World shortage of fuelwoodis estimated (by the UN) at reaching adeficit of 960 million m3/year by the endof the century. Far from wood being thefuel of the landless and poor, it hasincreasingly become a marketable com-modity that is only available to moreaffluent people in the South. In someregions the poor are increasingly relianton twigs, non-woody vegetation anddried dung.

“However, these very real problems areoften more complex than simple re-source scarcity. There is evidence thattime spent gathering fuel varies greatlywith labour availability, and the scarcityshown up by some studies may be moreto do with scarcity of labour than realfuel scarcity (Leach and Mearns, 1988).It is important to stress regional varia-tions here; problems may be acute inone region but far less serious a fewmiles away. The real shortages offuelwood are compounded by manyother social and political issues, andany solution have to be tailor-made forparticular situations.

RWEDP thanks Mr Dudley and WWFfor these useful clarifications.

WH

Forests for Life - A Reaction from WWF

Readers’ Contributions


of forests. The author notes that, in thepast, estimates of biomass density havebeen made for many of the world’sforests based on ecological studies, aswell as by the FAO for tropical forests.But she also cautions that such studiesare either designed to characterize thelocal forest structure and so pose sev-eral problems for their global-scaleanalyses, or are based on very fewnational or sub-national inventories ofthe tropical countries. Therefore, a neweffort to estimate biomass density di-rectly from forest inventory data, fornational and global assessments of thequality of forest resources, is needed.

Section 2, “Purpose and Scope of Primeron Estimating Biomass”, presents theneed for a long-term biomass estima-tion for forests of tropical countries,given the rapid rate of change occurringin those places in recent years, theforests’ high biomass and carbon con-tents (which influence their role in theglobal carbon cycle), and their greatpotential for mitigating the problems ofexcessive CO

2 production through con-

servation and management. This sec-tion also explains what tree formationsare to be included, and defines the termbiomass.

In Section 3, the author gives methodsfor estimating biomass density fromexisting data found in volume tablesand stand tables; and describes themethods for estimating biomass fromindividual trees, plantations and otherforest components.

Estimating Biomass and BiomassChange of Tropical Forests: APrimer

This primer, which is FAO ForestryPaper 134, is published this year byForest Resources Assessment, FAO,Rome. The author, Sandra Brown, is inthe Department of Natural Resourcesand Environmental Sciences, Univer-sity of Illinois, USA.

The book is intended for use by plan-ners and trainers in forest inventories,for estimating biomass density, condi-tion and change in tropical forests. Asforests act as both a source and a sinkof carbon dioxide, which is exchangedwith the biosphere, they play an impor-tant role in global climate change.Changes in area, condition and biomasscould be due to the current use andmanagement of the forest.

In order to assess the state and changein the forest with regard to biomass, it isnecessary to observe the change inarea and of biomass density over time.This is where the publishers hope theprimer will be of use.

Estimating Biomass has seven descrip-tive sections and one reference sec-tion. In the introduction, the paper high-lights three important issues that havebeen gaining wider attention in recentyears: the global carbon cycle, biogeo-chemical cycles, and biodiversity, all ofwhich can have a direct bearing onbiomass density and forest conditions,in addition to the traditional timber value

Section 4 deals with the primary dataand field measurements for biomassestimation, and talks about much-needed improvements in forest inven-tories and field measurements for de-veloping biomass regression equations.Section 5 deals exclusively with biomassdensity estimates for developing coun-tries based on existing inventories.Cases of tropical developing countriesfrom Africa, America and Asia are dealtwith separately.

Section 6, “Biomass Estimates fromGIS Modelling”, presents both a gen-eral approach and examples. The lastdescriptive section, Section 7, entitled“Future Directions to Estimate BiomassChange”, covers the application of fieldstudies as well as a combined approachusing remote sensing/field studies andGIS modelling. Of two appendices inthe paper, the first provides a list oftrees species from tropical America,Africa and Asia, and the second givesthe original biomass data used to de-velop the biomass regressions equa-tions. Five different figures show therelationship between various param-eters or highlight biomass degradationin different areas.

As biomass, especially woodfuel, is likelyto remain the most commonly useddomestic energy source in the RWEDPregion, Estimating Biomass should beof great use in rural energy planning,particularly for woodfuel, in RWEDPmember countries.

TB

Publications

News and NotesNational Training Workshop onWoodfuel Trade in Myanmar

RWEDP assisted the Forest Depart-ment of Myanmar to organize this train-ing workshop, which took place at itsForest Research Institute (FRI) in Yenzinfrom 27 to 30 November 1996. Theworkshop was attended by 42 partici-

pants and 68 observers, representingdifferent agencies related to forestrydevelopment in the country: the Ministryof Forestry, the Forest Department, theMyanmar Science and Technical Re-search Institute, the Institute of Forestry,the Forestry Research Institute, and otherforestry development projects. Only twoNGOs were represented: the Forest

Resources and Environmental Develop-ment Association (FREDA) and the SanSan Industrial Co-op Ltd. The workshopwas inaugurated by the Director Generalof the Planning and Statistics Depart-ment of the Ministry of Forestry.

The main objectives of the trainingworkshop were (a) to network the key

Wood Energy News

institutions and individuals who arethe main actors in woodfuel produc-tion and trade; (b) to disseminate in-formation regarding ongoing practicesin woodfuel production, distribution,marketing and utilization, and to re-view them; (c) to enhance the knowl-edge and understanding of partici-pants about the complexity, intricacyand linkages of the various elementsof woodfuel flow systems, and to en-able them to design appropriate poli-cies, plans and programmes forwoodfuel development; and (d) to iden-tify and design the area-specific fol-low-up training programmes requiredfor supporting its development.

Eight case studies were presented bydifferent resource persons, which in-cluded a general position paper onwood energy in Myanmar; an area-specific case of woodfuel marketingfrom Pyinmana township; a report oncookstove dissemination; a positionpaper on woodfuel in mangrove ar-eas; presentation of research findingson species and woodfuel productionand on the role of non-forest areas inwoodfuel production; an area-specificcase from Yamethin District onwoodfuel use in cottage industries;and the presentation of the 1993 re-port on woodfuel flow in the Dry Zoneof Myanmar, also funded by RWEDP.

The training workshop assigned onefull day specifically for field observa-tion. The townships of Payawbwe,Yamethin and Pyinmana were visitedto observe the prevailing practices ofwoodfuel production, supply and end-use in their neighborhoods. Duringthe workshop sessions, participantswere divided into three groups, oneeach for: analysis of the supply, de-mand and trade of woodfuel; identify-ing the policies and strategies for sus-tainable supply of woodfuel; and iden-tifying technological improvementsrequired for saving woodfuel duringuse, and for its substitution.

The training workshop concluded af-ter a closing address by the DirectorGeneral of the Forest Department.

National Training Courses onIntegration of WoodfuelProduction and Marketing

Between October and December of1996, RWEDP collaborated with four ofits member countries – Thailand inSoutheast Asia and Bangladesh, Indiaand Sri Lanka in South Asia – to organ-ize national training courses on Integra-tion of Woodfuel Production and Mar-keting in Forest, Agriculture and TreeProduction Systems.

Thailand

The Royal Forest Department (RFD)organized the national training coursein Phrae Province from 14–17 October.The course was attended by 27 middle-level professionals, mostly represent-ing the Northern and Northeastern pro-vincial forestry offices of Thailand. Totake advantage of the commonality be-tween Thai and Lao languages, RWEDPalso sponsored one observer from theScience, Technology and EnvironmentOrganization (STENO) of Lao PDR toassist in preparations for that country’snational training course in 1997.

The issues of woodfuel production andmarketing were addressed throughclassroom sessions, case study pres-entations and field observations. Seniorofficials of the RFD, Department of En-ergy Development and Promotion(DEDP) and an NGO, as resource per-sons, made invaluable presentations.Specific areas covered by them in-cluded: an overview of the energy sup-ply and demand situation in Thailand,and wood and biomass fuels’ share in it;the issues and constraints of produc-tion and marketing of woodfuel fromnon-forest areas; important fuelwood-based and biomass based industrial/commercial activities in Thailand; thecontribution made by the NGO inwoodfuel production through its partici-patory tree planting programme; and anarea-specific case study, of a ceramicindustry, to present the economic feasi-bility of raising woodfuel plantations offast growing tree species (e.g. euca-lyptus) for meeting an industry’swoodfuel demand. Additional issuesaddressed were the factors that couldinfluence decisions in the farm house-

hold, and gender and wood energy. Avisit was paid by the participants to amajor producer of woodfuel, the ForestIndustry Organization (FIO), inLampang. A summary report on thetraining course has been compiled bythe RFD.

Sri Lanka

RWEDP also organized a national train-ing course on the same subject in Kandy,Sri Lanka, from 21-23 November 1996.It was inaugurated by the Conservator ofForests, and the FAO representative forSri Lanka and Maldives attended aschief guest. All together, 17 participantsand eight resource persons attended thetraining course, from the forest, energy,education and plantation sectors, repre-senting the NGO, public and private sec-tors and the University of Peradeniya.Eight different papers were presented,covering the issues of woodfuel produc-tion, marketing and utilization in Sri Lanka.The training was successful in terms ofnetworking the participants and resourcepersons from different organizations,many of whom are in a position to influ-ence policies and programmes in theirrespective sectors.

During field visits, participants observeda number of woodfuel-based industrialand commercial activities, such as afuelwood sales depot, a tea processingfactory, a small vertical brick kiln, a limekiln, a pottery, a bakery and a mixed treespecies plantation established by theadoption of SALT (sloping agriculturalland technology) in formerly degradedforest land. This is a model of sustain-able land-use in state-owned degradedforest (or wasteland) which allows farm-ers to practise agroforestry on a long-term lease arrangement with the ForestDepartment. A summary report of thetraining course is expected to be madeavailable in the near future.

India

The national training course in Indiawas organized in collaboration with theNational Botanical Research Institute(NBRI) in Lucknow, UP, a botanicalresearch laboratory for North India un-der the Council of Scientific and Indus-


development activity with regard to en-ergy conservation had been undertaken.

The objectives of the workshop were:

1.To present the general wood energydemand situation and experiencesgained in Cambodia;

2.To analyze wood energy use athousehold and small industrial lev-els, and in village activities (such asfish smoking and brick firing);

3.To analyze institutional and legalaspects of wood energy demand andsupply; and

4.To identify the way forward.

Some of the issues were raised duringthe inaugural ceremony, presided overby H E Chun Sareth, Under-secretary ofState, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestryand Fisheries. It was reiterated thateven though Cambodia’s forest re-sources can be considered plentiful,this does not mean that no problemsexist. For instance, more agriculturalland will be needed in order to feed thegrowing population. Good use shouldtherefore be made of the existing re-sources and this will require the involve-ment of the local people.

During the three-day meeting, 15 pres-entations were made on various issues,including overviews of available data onenergy, which must cover wood andother biomass energy. Participants werealso familiarized with stove-related is-sues, including setting up a (national)stove programme. On the last day, therewere extensive discussions. Critical is-sues in the field of data needs, legisla-tive issues with regard to fuelwood, op-tions for increased supplies, and con-servation activities in the small-scaleindustrial and domestic sectors (stoves,stove programmes) were discussed atlength. This resulted in the drafting of aconcise set of conclusions and recom-mendations.

Possible follow-up action was identifiedin the form of setting up a coordinatingbody on wood and biomass energy con-sumption and supply issues (data col-lection, analysis etc.), and training at

tutes; and from a number of NGOs,among them BRAC (Bangladesh RuralAdvancement Committee) andProshika.

Seven lecturers and five resource per-sons discussed both general and spe-cific aspects of woodfuel productionand marketing. Their presentations cov-ered forestry, agriculture, technologyand research-related subjects, includ-ing general information about woodenergy in Bangladesh; woodfuel utiliza-tion in rural industries; marketing ofwoodfuel; technologies for efficient useof woodfuel; the contribution of wood-based industrial activities in nationaleconomy/rural socio-economy; the roleof non-forest areas in woodfuel produc-tion; the role of rural extension inwoodfuel production and marketing;constraints in woodfuel production andmarketing; the comparative advantagesof woodfuel production over other sys-tems of resource management; andprogrammes and strategies of the For-est Department for enhancing woodfuelproduction. A summary report of thetraining course is expected from theBFD soon.

Towards a Sustainable Local WoodEnergy System - NationalWorkshop on Household Energy

The FAO project on Participatory Natu-ral Resources Management in the TonleSap Region (FAO-GCP/CMB/002/BEL),in cooperation with the RWEDP, organ-ized a national workshop on householdenergy in Siem Reap, Cambodia, whichtook place on 12–14 November 1996.The meeting was attended by 48 per-sons from various governmental organi-zations, national and international insti-tutions, NGOs and the two FAO projects.

The workshop was held in response toevidence that traditional sources of en-ergy, and in particular fuelwood, are stilland will remain an important source ofenergy in Cambodia; while in some ar-eas, in particular around the capital,Phnom Penh, and the Tonle Sap lake,the imbalance between fuelwood sup-ply and demand appears critical. At thesame time, it was clear that very littledata and information were available onthis supply and demand, and very little

trial Research, Ministry of Science andTechnology, from 2-5 December 1996.

The training was attended by 40 partici-pants and seven resource persons. Theyrepresented both central and state -level organizations of the Governmentof India concerned with forestry andenergy development, including institu-tions responsible for forest survey andforestry training. One Lucknow-basedNGO, Hariyali, was also represented inthe training, and NBRI Lucknow wasrepresented by an additional nine ob-servers. Also in attendance were seniorofficials from the Ministry of Non-con-ventional Energy Sources (MNES), andthe FAO and UNDP representatives inNew Delhi. The course was inaugu-rated by Dr P V Sane, Director of NBRI.

Presentations by the seven resourcepersons covered different aspects ofwoodfuel production and marketing inIndia. Another presentation was fromthe UNDP representative in New Delhi,who explained the current global thrustfor sustainable forest management. Healso discussed the mechanism for ap-proaching the Global EnvironmentalFacility (GEF) to seek assistance indevelopment projects, primarily focus-ing on promotion of the use of renew-able energy sources. The field trip seg-ment of the course included a visit to thetraining centre of the Non-conventionalEnergy Development Agency at Chinhat,a fuelwood sales depot and a brick kiln,all near the city of Lucknow. A summaryreport of the training course is expectedfrom the NBRI soon.

Bangladesh

The national training course in Bangla-desh was organized jointly with the Bang-ladesh Forest Department (BFD) andthe Rural Development Academy (RDA)of the Government of Bangladesh, andtook place from 7-11 December 1996 inBogra. The course was inaugurated byDr S Rahman, Chief Conservator ofForests, and Dr M Solaiman, DirectorGeneral of the RDA, was the chief guest.

The course was attended by 25 partici-pants: from departments related to for-estry, energy and rural community de-velopment; from forestry training insti-

Wood Energy News

various levels, e.g. on data collection,data analysis, energy conservation bymeans such as developing and intro-ducing improved domestic stoves andimproved kilns and furnaces for small-scale industries, and setting up pro-grammes to introduce improved stoves.The proceedings of the workshop arebeing prepared and will be availablesoon.

National Workshop on CookstoveDevelopment

The first of five national workshops oncookstove development to be organizedjointly by RWEDP and the Asian Re-gional Cookstove Programme,ARECOP, took place in Mataram, Indo-nesia from 27 November to 5 December1996.

The success of an improved stove pro-gramme depends largely on the capabili-ties and commitment of the stove promot-ers. However, information on the stovedesign, particularly the rationale behindcertain parts of it, can be lost over time orin passing it on between the various ac-tors in the programme, and with it some ofthe potential benefits are also lost.

The workshop included a variety of ac-tivities: lectures, role play, hands-onexercises, practical work (on stove con-struction), field surveys, etc. Twentypeople from both the Indonesian gov-ernment and NGOs participated. Thismix of participants resulted in a produc-tive interaction, generating a much bet-ter understanding between the govern-mental and non-governmental sectors.

Although the participants in the work-shop considered the overall impact ofthe workshop as being very positive, theorganizers feel that before the otherworkshops (expected to be held in thelocal language using local trainers), atraining-for-trainers workshop would bevery useful, if not imperative, in order toachieve the best possible outcome.

National Training Workshop onRural Energy Planning andDevelopment, Sri Lanka

RWEDP cooperated with the EnergyConservation Fund in organizing the

National Training Workshop on RuralEnergy Planning, with Special Empha-sis on Wood Energy, which took placein Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 8-14 Decem-ber 1996. Most of the participants werelocal provincial officials involved in prov-ince-level socio-economic planning orimplementation of local projects. Na-tional energy, forestry and economicagencies were also represented, alongwith several NGOs.

This was the first training forum most ofthe participants had been to which dis-cussed wood energy in depth. It wasalso the first aimed at local officials, andwas thus welcomed. An important out-come was that the participants realizedthe importance of planning in policiesand programmes for sustainable use ofwood energy. Although there was livelydiscussion, the participants agreed thatthe workshop was only long enough toprovide an introduction to the conceptsof wood energy data and planning, socase studies were needed for them tolearn more. Almost all volunteered toconduct case studies in their respectiveprovinces, and studies are now to takeplace in three provinces.

Gender Training Workshop,Thailand

See page 13.

HEDON 7

HEDON, the Household Energy Devel-opment Organizations Network initiatedby the World Health Organization, heldits seventh meeting in July 1996 in Ge-neva. The meeting, HEDON 7, was onthe topic ‘Health Aspects of HouseholdEnergy and Indoor Air Pollution, andpooled the resources of 15 experts in thefields of energy, environment and health.

Two working groups were formed in themeeting to discuss methods and inter-ventions for the proposed HEDON jointproject on Health and Smoke. The firstgroup, on methods, identified four short-falls that could be the project’s rationale toaddress in its methods and policy work:lack of commitment, lack of resources,lack of data and lack of methods. Thesewere then transformed into objectivesand tasks for the project. The second

group discussed four levels of interven-tions in the field of household energyand health: technical, behavioural,health and political (or miscellaneous).Turning these into solutions is to be anoutput of research work done in otherareas of the proposed joint work.

Details of the tasks assigned to thevarious agencies, and the people re-sponsible, are given in the publishedmeeting report.

Welcome to ENERGIA

The RWEDP offers a warm welcome toa new, and hopefully significant, playerin sustainable energy: ENERGIA, theInternational Network on Women andSustainable Energy.

ENERGIA is an international networkon women and sustainable energy,founded in 1995 by a group of womeninvolved in gender and energy work indeveloping countries. ENERGIA definesits objectives as to “engender” energyand to empower women, through thepromotion of information exchange,training, research, advocacy and actionaimed at strengthening the role ofwomen in sustainable energy develop-ment. ENERGIA’s approach (since it isa loose network rather than a formalinstitution) is to seek to identify neededactivities and actions through its mem-bership, and then to encourage, and ifpossible assist, members and their in-stitutions to undertake decentralizedinitiatives. ENERGIA’s new quarterlyjournal, ENERGIA News, is the princi-pal vehicle for this approach.

ENERGIA published issue one ofENERGIA News in December last year.Four issues are planned for 1997, thethis month. The editorial team invitescontributions in the form of case studiesand articles of around 1,500–2,000words each, with relevant photos if pos-sible.

For further information or to joinENERGIA (free of charge), contact theENERGIA News Secretariat c/oTOOLConsult, Sarphatistraat 650, 1018AV Amsterdam, Netherlands; tel. (+31)20 626 4409; fax (+31) 20 4211202;Email [email protected].


EventsEventsEventsEventsEvents

IAC: The Director, International Agricultural Centre, P O Box 88, 6700 AB Wageningen, Netherlands. Phone: (31) 317 490111;fax: (31) 317 418552; e-mail: [email protected]; telex: 45888-INTAS NL

UNE: University of New England in Armidale, Programme Director, Development Studies Program, University of New England,Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia. Phone: (61) 67 733248; fax: (61) 67 733799; e-mail: [email protected]

ANU: Australian National University, Canberra, Course Administrator, ANUTECH Pty Ltd, GPO Box 4, Canberra ACT 2601,Australia. Phone: (61) 6 249 4713 or 249 5881; fax: (61) 6 249 5875 or 257 1433; e-mail:[email protected]

UT: Course Administration, Technology and Development Group, University of Twente, P O Box 217, 7500 Enschede, Nether-lands. Fax: (31) 53 489 3087

Event, Description (Info)

Local Level Management of Trees and Forests for Sustainable Land UseOffered to senior personnel in charge of policy, design, planning, management andevaluation of rural forestry programmes or rural development programmes withforestry components. The present course is a revised version of IAC’s older Interna-tional Course on the Design of Community Forestry. (IAC)

Planning for Sustainable Rural DevelopmentAppeals to participants from a wide range of GOs and NGOs, and covers a broadrange of issues in development, including: defining growth and development, planninglevels and strategies, with particular emphasis on community participation; financial,economic, social, environmental and gender aspects in project appraisal; NGOs indevelopment; women in development; and rural credit and train-the-trainer sessionsto help the participants diffuse their knowledge to colleagues on their return to theirhome countries. (UNE)

Environmental Management in DevelopmentWill equip planners, project managers and policy makers from GOs, NGOs andparastatal organizations to integrate environmental issues into development plans andpolicies. The course outline includes: ecosystems; agricultural development andecologically sustainable development; environmental impact assessment; the projectapproach to environmental management—problem/solution and logical frameworkanalysis; gender and social appraisal; evaluation and management of land and waterresources; retention of biodiversity from a global/national view; and GIS. (UNE)

Integrated Forestry Planning—Community Needs and Sustainable ManagementCore topics include project identification and design; issues in sustainable forestmanagement and land restoration; computers in forestry planning and management;and community forestry, participatory development and extension techniques. Thecourse should appeal to middle to senior-level forestry planners, foresters, othermanagers and rural development workers or NGO representatives involved in com-munity forestry or land rehabilitation programmes. The course starts at the campus ofthe Australian National University in Canberra, and then moves up to subtropicalQueensland for a series of study tours (ANU)

Energy and Environment for Sustainable DevelopmentThe programme consists of a workshop on Planning for Energy and Environment:Issues and Methods at National and Regional Scale. Aimed at policy advisers, gov-ernment energy or environment officers, staff of utilities and sectoral activities linkedto energy, staff of programmes for environmental management and rural develop-ment, academics and staff of NGOs. (UT)

Date, venue

7 Sept–12 Dec. 1997International AgriculturalCentre (IAC), Wageningen,Netherlands

6 Oct–21 Nov 1997University of New England(UNE), Armidale, New SouthWales, Australia

6 Oct–7 Nov 1997UNE

10 Nov–19 Dec 1997Australian National University(ANU), Canberra

20 May–21 June 1997University of Twente,Enschede, Netherlands

Health Hazards in the Woodfuel Cycle

Source: World Health Organization, adapted by W Hulscher, Christina Aristanti and Lydia Braakman

Fuel Cycle Activity Possibble Health Effects

Production Processing/preparing dung cakes Faecal/oral/enteric infections

Charcoal production CO/smoke poisoning

Burns/trauma

Cataracts

Collection Gathering fuel Trauma

Reduced infant/child care

Bites from snakes etc.

Allergic reactions

Fungus infections

Transportation Transportation of biomass fuel Backache

Severe fatigue

Damaged reproductive organs over time(prolapsed uterus)

Processing Cutting up fuel Trauma

Cuts

Abrasions

Combustion Smoke Conjunctivitis

Acute respiratory infection (ARI), includingpneumonia

Cor pulmonale

Adverse reproductive outcomes

Lung cancer

Higher rate of infant morbidity/mortality

Depressed immune response

Chronic obstructive lung diseases (COLD):Chronic bronchitisEmphysemaAsthma

Toxic gases (CO) Acute poisoning

Low birthweight

Higher rate of stillbirths

Heat Burns and scalds

Cataracts

Cooking position Arthritis and related bone disease

Back pain

wood energy, women and health -...

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