Hillary, Stoves Won’t Save the World (PERSPECTIVE)

By Jennifer Lentfer

(HN, Novermber 12, 2011) - "Hillary Clinton unveils initiative on clean cooking stoves," was among last year’s highlights at the Millennium Development Goals Summit. But what has become of The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves a year later? A system of cooking typical in many African villages. Credit: CETRUD

Climate change, deforestation, global health, and women’s empowerment remain extremely important issues to address. And I remain extremely wary of any products manufactured in the developed world that are touted, marketed, or delivered to “make life better” for poor people in the developing world.

I have worked for many years supporting a local, community-based organization operating in Kasese, Uganda, The Center for Environment Technology and Rural Development. They have been helping women build safer and more environmentally sound stoves with locally available materials in the Rwenzori region for years.

In their own words,

“Cooking with three stones has been common in rural areas of Uganda. But in the villages where our programs are located, CETRUD has helped women who cook the meals for their families through the building of appropriate and safer cooking stoves. This saves wood and provides relief to women, and often their small children, who suffer constant smoke inhalation. Cooking stoves improve general health, save time, and reduce the amount of wood used.”

The New Yorker featured the Aprovecho Research Center’s 10^th annual Stove Camp in Oregon, which they described as a “kind of hippie Manhattan Project” of the “small but fanatical world of stovemakers.” Despite recent publicity among policy wonks and donors, several designs for improved cook stoves have been developed and successfully utilized in the developing world using locally available materials such as clay, mud, concrete, sheet metal, or tile. Local efforts also have the flexibility and responsiveness to address environmental conditions and community needs more directly than any global alliance can.

This is why the United States’ $50 million commitment was met by me with a deep sigh, disappointment, and skepticism, Julia Roberts-endorsed or not. Taking exception to newly-hyped technological ideas that will “save the world” can be unpopular. In fact, a fellow international do-gooder once criticized my view as an “a priori xenophobic dismissal of the intentions and products of rich-world technological intelligence.”

Rather, my concerns are based on wanting to ensure that any efforts to improve people’s lives in the developing world are first based on the locally available resources, before creating additional dependency on outside “expertise,” supplies, or technology. My concerns also include wanting to avoid undermining local economies and local organizations, especially if products such as these are delivered through traditional funding mechanisms, with each layer of bureaucracy taking its share.

On this World Pneumonia Day and beyond, Clinton and other thought leaders in the international aid sector need to take a more responsible approach to throwing their support behind “solutions” such as these. The media must also stop portraying foreign assistance as a kind of ever-elusive, arrogant search for a single, magic "silver bullet” to solve poverty. Instead, let us all focus on putting real resources behind local initiatives and means of overcoming obstacles in the developing world.

Despite whatever trend comes next from the policymakers, development experts, and donors, skilled and experienced people working on the ground know that no technological initiative in and of itself can offer the full answer to complex problems in the developing world. As former Clinton crony, Al Gore, reminds us in his movement to stop global warning, “It’s not a silver bullet, it’s silver buckshot."

Lentfer is a blogger at how-matters.org, a blogsite aimed at raising the level of human dignity within development assistance and putting real resources behind local means of overcoming obstacles. Serving with various international organizations over the past decade, she has worked with over 300 grassroots groups in sub-Saharan Africa. This post was based on one that originally appeared at: http://www.how-matters.org/2010/09/21/hillary-stoves-won’t-save-the-world/   

Watch this video on cookstoves by the Global Aliance for Clean Cookstoves:

Shame on You: Drought, Famine & the Failure of International Aid! (PERSPECTIVE)

by Rachel Zedeck 

At a UNICEF-supported feeding centre in East Africa, a weary mother pauses after her baby received emergency therapeutic food. CREDT: M Bociurkiw(HN, August 31, 2011) During this weeks’ hash a Director at the German Red Cross said to me, “The drought was so inconvenient this year.  We were all on annual leave.  Do people expect me to give up my holiday.”  After swallowing some vomit, I started to reflect on exactly how this humanitarian disaster has been allowed to escalate to such an extreme.  More and more, my nausea has been induced by the world of international aid; in particular the inaction of the Red Cross coupled with the pandering of World Food Programme, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Oxfam and the list goes on.  These organizations (whether non-profit or UN agency) literally have every means available to understand impending drought and insidious threat of famine.   I focus on three. 

First, weather is predictable. That’s right. In Kenya and in many regions of Sub Saharan Africa we have historic and predictive weather mapping. Even in darkest Arica, rain isn’t magic.  Second, how long have NGOs been operating here?  What happened to common sense? Every year this region suffers through a drought of varying intensity and subsequent adversity.  2010 was the first break from drought in 7 years while Kenya experienced more than a billion dollars in economic loss in 2009.  So while this may be the worst drought in the last 60 years, this is not a new story! Finally, why was no one talking about preventative measures?  I was in Nairobi and can’t remember one campaign speaking publically about impending drought.   Mr. Abbas Gulet, the Head of Kenya’s Red Cross, head of the region’s only non-profit Superbrand should be most ashamed.  Not only responsible for one of the largest humanitarian missions in the world, he is ethnically Kenyan theoretically giving him even greater insight into how is organization’s $30+ million annual budget. Instead of answering what they should have been doing, I can tell you what the community as a whole isn’t doing.   It’s actually worse than the mismanagement following Katrina. 

First, neither the public, private, or NGO sectors are educating Kenyans about drought, better water management or irrigated crops. Ironic because irrigation is a key component in Kenya’s 2030 Vision for the country’s strategic development.  With the unprecedented use of mobile phones and content (ICT for Development) in Africa, educating and supporting millions of people in rural Kenyan isn’t just a fantasy. Considering the UN seeks $16.9 Billion USD for emergency relief let alone campaigns like Kenyans for Kenya, raising funds to purchase food that doesn’t exist.  Instead we could have sent a series of 10 sms’ to every Kenyan citizen for less than $6 million.   Another $100 million (or much more) could have been allocated to low interest loans to help farmers purchase drip (gravity fed) irrigation and trained them on how to install, maintenance and store excess crops for drought season.  Guess what, food aid is still food and needs to be grown which means farming.  

There isn’t a simple answer to food security and we can’t end drought.  Instead, Kenya and its neighbors need to grow and store more food while eliminating crop losses. This translates into a combination of hard work complimented by agriculture innovation, affordable agriculture finance, community outreach and expansion of existing road networks. NO overnight solutions but practical, sustainable and scalable.   It is time for an evolution; the UN and NGOs must recognize their chronic failures and share leadership with the commercial sector able to offer proactive and practical strategies for the future of humanitarian disaster.  

- Rachel Zedeck is Managing Director of the Backpack Farm Agriculture Program, an internationally recognized social enterprise in Nairobi, Kenya exclusively supporting smallholder farmers with access to ecologically friendly training and packages of green agri-tech believing “Africans can feed Africa”  thru the power of multi-functional farming impacting social, economic and ecological domains.