Energy-saving stoves help protect Nairobi forest

NAIROBI (AlertNet) – Jane Wambui Njuguna, a 60-year-old grandmother from Ndaire village on the edge of Nairobi’s Ngong forest, is happy with her new cooking stove. It makes the wood she collects go much further, saving her time and effort.

It’s also helping slow deforestation in the 600-hectare (1,480-acre) forest reserve that serves as a green belt for the capital and lies just 6 km (4 miles) from the city centre.

Illegal wood harvesting has stripped the Ngong Forest Sanctuary of nearly half its indigenous tree cover, and civil society groups fear politicians are trying to sell off some of its land for development.

But the private charitable trust that manages the city forest hopes a portable cylindrical cooking vessel could boost efforts to preserve the forest.

Last year the Appropriate Wood and Solar Energy Network (AWSEN), a renewable energy community group Wambui has joined, received energy-saving stoves from India-based Project Surya.

Wambui says the stoves are so efficient that one bundle of firewood now lasts three weeks. She needs only a fistful of chopped wood to cook a meal, boil water and do a couple of other tasks.

“Before, collecting firewood from the forest was a daily affair,” she says. But now, “I dedicate the time saved through this invention to work on my farm and be with my grandchildren.”

While unauthorised logging is banned in the forest, zonal manager Makau Munyalu says illicit wood harvesting is a great concern for its custodians, the Ngong Road Forest Sanctuary Trust. In 2007, the forest was reportedly losing 400 to 500 trees every four to six months – a rate that has at least begun to decline.

REDUCING ‘BLACK CARBON’

The cook-stove initiative has not only reduced wood harvesting; it is also cutting indoor pollution.

“I am not worried about choking…because the stove does not emit smoke unlike the case when I was using an open fireplace,” Wambui says.

The human and environmental damage caused by burning wood and other biomass is a headache that stretches far beyond the reaches of the city forest.

A U.N.-supported project that investigates emerging causes of climate change besides greenhouse gas emissions has highlighted the role of Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs) – plumes of air pollutants consisting mainly of particles such as “black carbon” soot.

Studies have shown these clouds reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface by as much as 10 to 15 percent, enhancing atmospheric solar heating by up to 50 percent.

In September, U.N. Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner linked a quarter of black carbon emissions to inefficient cooking stoves, with wood burning accounting for 40 percent of soot.

As with the AWSEN group, more and more Kenyans are joining community-based initiatives to tackle climate change and its effects.

They include Wambui’s neighbours at the Dagoretti market on the fringes of Nairobi city, who have lived for years among piles of animal waste dumped by the bustling abattoirs that account for almost half the revenue generated here.

Last August, the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) issued a closure notice for all five slaughterhouses due to what it termed a contravention of environmental regulations, although it lifted the ban just a few days later.

The abattoirs supply a string of meat-roasting kiosks that have sprung up, fuelled with firewood from Ngong forest. Alongside these smoky joints, wood and charcoal retailers do a brisk trade.

Mwaniki Gatimu, who has run a barbecue stall for the last five years, says customers keep coming back because his prices are low. “We also buy cooking wood and charcoal cheaply,” he says.

On the negative side, the booming business that puts food on the table for Gatimu’s family is contributing to both pollution and deforestation.

WASTE AS AN ASSET

The solution could lie with a biogas project being piloted in the market, which aims to demonstrate how waste can be turned into an asset. The initiative is led by UNEP, the U.N. Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI).

A High Performance Temperature Controlled (HPTC) biogas digester has been installed at the Nyongara slaughterhouse to test the potential for generating gas from animal waste.

Project engineer Walter Danner says animal waste is fed into an airtight digester where oxygen-free decomposition takes place.

The methane gas produced by this process is then compressed into LPG cylinders for commercial distribution.

“It has potential to generate electricity and cooking gas,” says Danner. “In a few months we will be able to generate enough energy for both commercial and domestic use by the community.”

If successful, the Dagoretti market biogas scheme could reduce deforestation and provide power to pump water to local households, according to UNIDO’s representative for Kenya and Eritrea, Alexander Varghese.

“This will reduce the amount of time our women spend on household chores and engage them in more productive activities in society,” says Kang’ari Mugo, proprietor of the Nyongara slaughterhouse.