Appropriate-Scale Alcohol Fuel Production Forum for IAP reduction

The International Institute for Ecological Agriculture (IIEA) and Project Gaia, an international forum focused on the localized production and use of appropriate-scale alcohol fuel for clean indoor cooking and energy needs is taking place in Atlanta from November 29 to December 1, says a Businesswire press release.

Nigerian, Haitian, Mexican and US Representatives are participating in the program.

David Blume, an alcohol fuel expert and author of the book ‘Alcohol can be a gas!’ said, “Locally produced Alcohol fuel is an ideal source of energy for cooking, heating, refrigeration, electrical generation and transportation needs. Developing this fuel provides communities with abundant food, energy and job opportunities and can immediately help stop global deforestation, the number 1 contributor to climate change.”

“Worldwide, more than three billion people lack access to modern forms of energy and cook with traditional stoves that burn polluting fossil-based fuels,” said Harry Stokes, Executive Director for Project Gaia.

“Illnesses resulting from indoor air pollution claim an estimated 2 million lives worldwide each year. In many parts of the world pneumonia in infants and small children is the primary cause of death, and evidence links wood-fire cooking smoke to chronic bronchitis in women, low birth-weight in children, active TB, and many other ailments. Clean-burning stoves and alcohol fuels can dramatically change these statistics and that is why we have Forum participants coming from around the world to learn more about these practical and affordable solutions.”

The participants will be taught various ways of providing pollution free energy for safe indoor cooking and other uses.

As per PR inside.com, the participants will be taught ways to: Stabilize domestic fuel production costs at less than 30 cents/liter (USD), curb deforestation, black carbon emissions and global warming and earn carbon credits, integrate domestic food and energy production, identify high-value, high-yield crops for all climates to produce sustainable energy and increase soil fertility and create and encourage permanent local jobs.

Read the full story on: International Delegates Arrive in Atlanta for IIEA and Project Gaia: Clean Indoor Air and Appropriate-Scale Alcohol Fuel Production Forum

World Pneumonia Day: Focussing Attention On Preventable Deaths

The World Pneumonia Day was observed on November 12, 2010 globally to help bring the pneumonia health crisis to the public’s attention and to encourage policy makers and organizers at the grass roots level to combat this deadly disease.

The “World Pneumonia Day" was first observed on November 2, 2009 after the Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund reported that one million children's lives could be saved every year if prevention and interventions for pneumonia, such as cheap but effective vaccines, were widely introduced in developing nations.

According to the first-ever Acute Respiratory Infections Atlas, published by the World Lung Foundation in November 2010, pneumonia accounts for 20 per cent of all child deaths globally, or 1.6 million deaths in 2008, compared to 732,000 children who died from malaria and 200,000 who died from the AIDS virus. There are 156 million new cases of pneumonia each year, 97 per cent of them in developing countries.

As per the Acute Respiratory Infections Atlas, indoor air pollution from cooking stoves, fires and secondhand cigarette smoke are the major causes for respiratory deaths. It said 1.96 million die every year from infections caused by these sources, with another 121,000 deaths due to outdoor pollution.

Dr Dorothy Esangbedo, President, Paediatric Association of Nigeria says that, “Within an hour, 20 children across Nigeria die from pneumonia. This number is the highest in Africa and second highest overall in the world.”

As reported by the Times of India, in India, the casualty is as high as 4,00,000  children each year.

Dr. Tabish Hazir, Professor of Pediatrics at The Children’s Hospital, PIMS, Islamabad said, “An estimated 154 million childhood pneumonia cases occur every year in the developing areas and more than half are reported from 6 countries with Pakistan having an estimated 10 million cases every year.”

Professor Shabir Madhi, of Wits University, enumerated the predisposing factors that can cause a child to develop pneumonia in developing countries, "Pneumococcal disease is much more common in developing countries like Africa. The reason why children in Africa die and the reason why they are more susceptible to developing it is them living in overcrowded settings, them having limited access to getting treatment or antibiotics at the correct time, them being exposed to pollution such as indoor pollution or even parents smoking."

Visit the site: World Pneumonia Day

Read the full story on ‘Nigeria has highest pneumonia burden in Africa’ – Second highest worldwide in the Daily Sun

Read the full story on Pakistan’s fight against combating childhood Pneumonia on World Pneumonia Day in an AP report

Read the full story on Pneumonia Among Leading Causes of Death in Children in allAfrica

Creating An African Briquette Network

Energy experts from across the globe met at the Briquettes Producers Workshop in Arusha, Tanzania, from November 10 to November 14, 2010 to discuss ways to promote charcoal and fuelwood alternatives in the form of briquettes, says Vuthisa which participated in the workshop. The conference was part of a three-year project to support environmental conservation in East Africa through the start and long-term establishment of biomass briquette small businesses.

Countries like Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Chad, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa and Botswana attended the conference with the intent to create an African Briquette Producers Network so that new knowledge and improved recipes can be passed on to producers even if they are working in different regions.

The conference was sponsored by the Legacy Foundation through a grant from the McKnight Foundation.

During the conference, there were demonstrations of various local techniques of biomass briquette production and biomass briquette technologies being used in Africa.

The combustion issues and eliminating smoke was high on the agenda of the conference. It was reiterated that to sell briquettes, the quality of the briquettes needs to be improved and the use of better quality insulated stoves should be advocated.



Photo Courtesy: Vuthisa
Read the full story  "Briquette Producers Workshop – Arusha (Tanzania) 2010"

Improved Cookstoves And The Price Barrier

The Indian cookstove industry is looking keenly at two developments that have the promise to change the landscape for propagation of improved cookstoves: The National Biomass Cookstove Initiative announced last December and the recently launched Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

In a report in the Indian newspaper, Mint, cookstove manufacturers make the point that the challenge of price and an effective route to market remain the toughest issues, given the competition from the traditional chulha. Mouhsine Serrar, founder of Prakti Design Lab says, “We’re competing with chulhas that cost next to nothing,”

“We’re learning that there’s a ceiling for stoves—around Rs1,000,” Serrar says. “The thing is, in villages, the man of the household doesn’t make the decision about a stove— the woman does. And the woman can’t take a decision to spend that much on a stove.”

Similarly, other stove companies are also trying to deal with the pricing issue. Envirofit, for example, sells 8,500 stoves a month in the four southern states and Maharashtra but the report quotes Atul Joshi, senior manager for sales and marketing, as saying that they need to sell  25,000 stoves each month to start breaking even.

Read the full feature: Replacing the traditional ‘chulha’ in the Mint

Nigeria Brings Stoves To Battle IAP-Linked Deaths

The International Center for Energy Environment and Development (ICEED) has said quoting WHO estimates that about 79,000 deaths occur annually from Indoor Air Pollution. According to ICEED, Nigeria faces an energy crisis with 70% of the population not having access to modern energy for cooking.

"Wood is the dominant fuel for the poor majority. Burning wood inefficiently creates serious health and environmental problems. Recent estimates by the World Health Organization show that about 79,000 deaths occur annually from indoor air pollution caused by burning wood inefficiently. The deforestation rate in Nigeria is estimated to be above 3% per year. Fuel-efficient cookstoves save up to 85% of wood fuel, compared to traditional three-stone cook stoves, they cook at least 45 minutes faster, and the quality of air inside the kitchen is greatly improved."

ICEED further says, "Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves causes 79,000 premature deaths annually in Nigeria. Traditional cookstoves also increase pressure on scarce natural resources and are expensive to fuel. International Centre for Energy Environment and Development (ICEED), with support from GTZ and the Swiss Embassy, is responding to this problem by introducing clean institutional cookstoves to Nigeria. Ewah Eleri, Executive Director of ICEED said, “Clean cookstoves help schools to save money on wood fuel, improve health for cooks and contribute to a reduction in deforestation and we hope that the Niger State Government will install them in all Government School kitchens”.

"Clean cooking stoves help schools to save money on wood fuel, improve health for cooks and contribute to a reduction in deforestation and we hope that the Niger State government will install them in all government school kitchens," according to statement by Public Relations Officer of the center, Mr Michael Donovan, reported in allAfrica.

His Excellency Dr. Mua’zu Babangida Aliyu has welcomed the initiative and the Niger State Government Girls Secondary School in Bida unveiled the first institutional clean cookstove in Nigeria.

Kitchen Smoke Higher Cause Of COPD Than Smoking In India

Smoke in the kitchen is the most important cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in India, says a study conducted by Pune-based Chest Research Foundation (CRF) in collaboration with the KEM Hospital, Pune, and the Imperial College, London. According to a report in The Times of India, the study says that smoking is the second biggest cause of COPD in India.

The study also says that 6.9 per cent in the Indian population suffers from respiratory diseases. Among those identified with COPD, only 7 per cent were smokers while the remaining 93 per cent were non-smokers. Over 700 million people in India suffer from high levels of indoor air pollution affecting women and young children as 75 per cent homes use biomass fuel like wood, crop residue and dung cakes.

The age factor was particularly disturbing. "Nearly 23 per cent of COPDs occurred in people less than 40 years of age. It was believed that COPD starts after 40 in people who have been smoking for over 15-20 years. In India, where the exposure to indoor air pollution begins from childhood, it occurs in younger people," said chest physician Sundeep Salvi, director of the CRF to Times of India.

According to a report published by the Maharashtra State Health Resource Centre in March 2010 that examined the top 10 causes of deaths in Maharashtra, COPD was the number one cause.

The study was conducted in 22 rural villages in Pune district with a population of over 1 lakh. As many as 3,000 adults over the age of 25 years were randomly selected for the study which used a standardised respiratory health questionnaire and spirometry (lung function test for determining COPD).

Read the Times of India Story, "Young Lungs At Higher Risk From Wood Smoke, Dung Cakes"

Indian Annual IAP Deaths Between 4,00,000 To 6,00,000

Indian Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad has in a written reply to a question raised in Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Indian Parliament) said that about 4,00,000 to 6,00,000 premature deaths can be attributed annually to use of biomass fuel in Indian population as per WHO Report (Kirk R. Smith : National burden of disease in India from indoor air pollution, 2000; WHO 2007).

According to the statement, "based on extrapolation of health effects in developed countries due to indoor air pollution, WHO has estimated that about 2.8 million premature deaths are due to indoor air pollution and highest number of deaths will occur in India."

"Ministry of Environment & Forests have introduced the new national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) in 2009 for the extended list of 12 pollutants which are more closely related to health"

The reply further states that "the Government though the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy has taken various steps to control and prevent indoor air pollution, through National Programme on Biogas Development to provide alternatives to burning firewood, agricultural residues, cattle dung and coal as fuel. National Programme on Improved Chulhas has been taken up to promote thermally efficient and low smoke stoves/smokeless chulhas. IEC activities through electronic and print media are undertaken to give publicity to the programmes. Women Education programmes are also organised in villages to generate awareness about the hazards of burning firewood, agricultural wastes, cattle dung in traditional chulhas and benefits of the biogas technology etc"

Defining The Energy Poverty Line: Rural India's Income Growth-Energy Use Disrelation

Energy poverty is a term which is often used but mostly lacks a clear definition. Several existing approaches define energy poverty line as the minimum quantity of physical energy needed to perform such basic tasks as cooking and lighting. The World Bank Development Research Group proposes an alternative measure that is based on energy demand.

It defines the energy poverty line as the threshold point at which energy consumption begins to rise with increases in household income in a recent study on "Energy Poverty in Rural and Urban India: Are the Energy Poor Also Income Poor?" by Shahidur R. Khandker, Douglas F. Barnes and Hussain A. Samad of The World Bank Development Research Group's Agriculture and Rural Development Team.

This approach was applied to cross-sectional data from a comprehensive 2005 household survey representative of both urban and rural India.


The study notes that the patterns of urban and rural energy demand in India differ markedly. In rural areas, patterns of energy use typically involve high reliance on traditional fuels, including wood, dung, and straw burned in inefficient stoves. In urban areas, only one-third of households use fuelwood, compared to nine-tenths of rural households. In terms of quantity of energy use, rural households consume about 132 kg of fuelwood per month, more than four times the amount consumed by urban households (32 kg). In terms of total energy use, biomass accounts for 89 percent of household energy consumption in rural areas and 35 percent in urban areas. However, the transition to modern fuels has been increasing. For cooking, urban households frequently use kerosene, along with LPG. Use of LPG among urban households is 71 percent, with monthly consumption averaging 9 kg (with an average consumption of 13 kg per household that actually uses the fuel). This compares to only 17 percent among rural households, whose monthly LPG consumption averages just 1.7 kg (with an average LPG consumption of 10.7 kg per user household).

According to the study, the provision of high quality energy services to rural areas has lagged behind urban areas. It is both financially and physically more difficult to service remote and poor populations compared to those living in urban areas. However, one would expect energy poverty would be commensurate with income poverty. This pattern is confirmed for urban India but it is not the case for rural areas. This means that despite national energy programs to help bring better energy services to people in rural areas, a significant gap in services still persists.

Besides providing electricity, improving biomass use and its efficiency is essential for reducing energy poverty. According to the findings, some 90 percent of rural households in India still use fuel wood that explains some 56 percent of household total expenditure on energy. Yet only less than 4 percent of rural households (according to the survey) had improved stoves for biomass use. Improving efficiency of fuel wood use for cooking is extremely.

The study says that for rural households, fuel wood constitutes the highest share of total energy expenditure, at 40 percent. This expenditure may not represent what households actually paid. Since biomass is mostly collected without direct cost, the local market price has been used to impute the value of biomass use in rural areas. For urban households, electricity is the highest energy expenditure, followed by LPG. Overall, urban households pay about Rs. 557 per month on energy, compared to Rs. 477 spent by rural households. Because of the higher use of biomass energy in rural areas, rural households actually consume more energy in total compared to urban ones.

However, this pattern is reversed when the efficiency of energy use is taken into consideration. After adjusting for efficiency of use, people in urban areas actually consume more end-use energy compared to rural households. The reason is because they use more modern forms of energy that offer a wider range of energy services.

The study concludes that though rural energy activities receive significant support from the Government of India, the findings would tend to confirm that there is still a long way to go to ensure that the rural poor can take advantage of the many benefits of modern energy and the services that they provide to consumers.

Four Million Deaths Each Year Caused by Acute Respiratory Infections

Acute respiratory infections (ARIs), a disease group that includes pneumonia, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), are responsible for 4.25 million deaths each year, according to the first-ever Acute Respiratory Infections Atlas (ARIAtlas.org), published by the World Lung Foundation.

ARIs are the third largest cause of mortality in the world and the top killer in low- and middle-income countries. Compared to the illness and mortality they cause, ARIs receive a fraction of government, donor agency, and philanthropic support.

"We know that at least four million people die from ARIs, yet the global health community does not even recognize them as a distinct disease group,” said Peter Baldini, Chief Executive Officer, World Lung Foundation in a Press Release. “The goal of the Acute Respiratory Infections Atlas is to demonstrate in vivid detail the scale of this problem and to kick-start a serious conversation about addressing it. With relatively modest resources, the means are available to save millions of lives. We simply need commitment, sound policy, and strategic investment."

Collectively, ARIs cause at least 6% of the world’s disability and death, according to the Atlas. These deaths occur overwhelmingly in the world’s poorest countries, where the drivers of ARIs, including malnutrition, pollution, overcrowding, and tobacco use are most prevalent. In countries such as Mali, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Niger, the death rate from ARIs alone is ten times higher than the global median death rate from all causes.

The Atlas presents a number of other arresting facts:

• The death rate from pneumonia is 215 times higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries.
• Every year, three to five million people globally get severe flu infections and as many as 500,000 people die.
• RSV is the most common source of severe respiratory illness in children, yet no vaccine is available and there is no established treatment.
• Three million hospitalizations result from RSV, and mortality is seven times higher in the developing world.
• ARIs take a heavier toll on vulnerable populations, such as those infected with HIV.
• The average cost for an appropriate course of antibiotics for treating pneumonia is US$0.27.

According to the Atlas, children are most at risk with ARIs being the leading cause of illness and death in children worldwide. Malnutrition in utero, during infancy, and in early childhood is a major culprit. The impaired development of a fully functioning immune system makes young children particularly susceptible to ARIs:

According to the Atlas, every year, 1.96 million people die from ARIs as a result of indoor air pollution caused by the use of biomass fuels to cook and heat the home, as well as by exposure to secondhand smoke. The report susggests that this number is severely underestimated.

The World Lung Foundation calls for more investment to be made into low-cost cooking and heating alternatives and in strategies to reduce outdoor pollution, such as emissions standards, air quality targets, and incentives to use public transportation.

According to the Atlas, only about one percent (US$32 million) of all pharmaceutical research and development funding was spent on research and development for ARIs in 2007, compared with US$1.1 billion spent on HIV-related research, yet ARIs take twice the toll in lives lost.

Strategies for reducing ARIs are within reach. Some are low-cost and can be implemented immediately; others require longer-term efforts. Among the strategies described in the Atlas:

• Distribute effective nutritional supplements
• Expand vaccination programs
• Disseminate public awareness campaigns
• Reduce tobacco use
• Address the shortfall of 4.25 million healthcare workers needed to help vulnerable populations
• Improve access to lab testing and inexpensive diagnostic tests
• Find more efficient ways to manufacture vaccines and strengthen distribution
• Introduce safer cooking and heating alternatives.

(Images in this report are from the Acute Respiratory Infections Atlas)