Scaling up improved cookstoves in the Côte Sud
Roughly half of the world’s population burns solid biomass fuels for cooking and heating. Throughout poor, rural areas of the developing world, biomass is the dominant fuel, and cooking is usually performed using a simple three-stone open fire, often in poorly ventilated structures. In Haiti, this dependence on wood and wood-based charcoal has been the country’s reality for decades. In the South Department, the Côte Sud Initiative and its partners are working to make real alternatives to the use of wood fuels and production of charcoal a reality for this and future generations.
The cycle of charcoal, deforestation, and poverty
Decades of deforestation has severely eroded hillsides and riverbanks, making Haiti particularly vulnerable to flooding.
In Haiti, only 2% of the original forest cover remains in the otherwise deforested national landscape. This is both driven by, and continues despite, the reality that biofuels comprise 75% of the total energy consumed in Haiti. Of the biofuels used by households and small businesses to cook their meals and heat their homes, the majority is made from wood. This is in part due to a lack of electricity infrastructure and pervasive poverty; electrical grids are available to less than one in four Haitians and electricity comprises only 2.6% of the national energy balance, which makes what little electricity is available outside the economic reach of the grand majority of Haitians. Particularly in rural areas, dead wood and farm waste are gathered and used for cooking. Additionally, green wood is collected and used as firewood or transformed into charcoal, both for household cooking needs and for small businesses. From dead wood to the production of charcoal from green wood, the majority of the population is dependent on tree-based sources of energy. Other viable and large-scale alternatives for household energy have been lacking for generations, creating a systematic dependence on wood and charcoal, as they are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain. The most recent statistics in 2003 estimated that wood consumed in Haiti amounts to over 4 million tons.
This dependency on wood is directly related to the severe and chronic levels of poverty throughout the country. Access to electricity is extremely limited in the majority of rural Haiti. Rural residents rely primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods; the production of charcoal is very often a supplemental income. The need for these extra funds surfaces in times of want; a striking example is the soaring production of charcoal at the beginning each school year, when parents are faced with the payment of high private school fees for their children, the result of inadequate free public education.
Studies at the Earth Institute (EI) have found that while the rainy season brings conditions that are unfavorable for charcoal production, the decreased supply increases both the demand for the good and the price it fetches. Further, economic needs are often exacerbated after natural disaster events such as flooding, which compromise agricultural investments. The already vulnerable population continues to exploit natural resources as an income safety net for their families and basic subsistence. This already vulnerable landscape is only further damaged in the negative feedback loops as communities cut down the remaining trees and branches to produce charcoal. The viscous cycle continues, as the population is increasingly susceptible to natural disasters and the severe effects of increased damage to infrastructure, decreased agricultural products, and increased need to produce charcoal.
Realities of charcoal production in Port-à-Piment
Charcoal produced throughout the watershed acts as a source of income for residents, who must work within the limitations of road infrastructure to get their goods to markets. Most of the charcoal produced in the watershed, as throughout Haiti, goes to serve the energy needs of Port-au-Prince.
Researchers at EI have studied the complex chain of charcoal, from production in the field to sale in the market, in the Port-à-Piment watershed, the site of the Port-à-Piment Millennium Village Project. Estimates determine that between 60-85% of people in Port-à-Piment use woody biomass for their household energy needs, while between 15-40% use charcoal and less than 2% use kerosene, LPG or electricity. Cooking in the Port-à-Piment watershed is done mainly using three-stone fires—a means of cooking that uses a large quantity of fuel wood and places an enormous stress on the environment. While this is true in most places where rural households cook on open fires, this is particularly true in the South Department of Haiti. Its position on the southwest peninsula of Haiti is one of the most frequently hit by hurricanes and vulnerable to floods. The majority of the population is rural, living on an overwhelmingly steep terrain, where agricultural production is difficult. Further, the biological hotspot of the Pic Macaya National Park boarders the upper the watershed zones; it is unclear what level of forest cover is left in the unenforced areas of Pic Macaya. This proximity to remaining forests and economic vulnerability of the population contribute to the South’s role as a major producer of charcoal for the whole of Haiti.
A traditional three-stone open fire consumes a large quantity of wood fuel and produces dangerous smoke.
Though relatively few people use charcoal for their daily needs in the South, the large majority of residents of the Port-à-Piment watershed rely upon the wages earned by producing it, either as a source of supplemental income or full time work. While agriculture is a primary source for livelihoods in rural Haiti, in a preliminary study in Port-à-Piment, 85% of respondants self-identified as producing charcoal at least seasonally or part time. In addition to those who produce, charcoal is also the livelihood for those who act as merchants, transporters, and wholesalers in the charcoal market system—often producing for the urban centers in Port-au-Prince or Les Cayes.
While production of charcoal can be done by individuals, families, and labor groups called konbits, the burden of collecting the fuel wood used for cooking in the rural areas of the South falls primarily to women and children. The amount of time invested varies by season, but feedback from focus groups in the Port-à-Piment watershed estimate that between 30 minutes and 2 hours are spent collecting firewood each day. Some households are not even able to prepare two meals a day, especially during the rainy season, due to difficulties obtaining fuelwood. Moreover, particulate emissions due to inefficient combustion from the traditional cooking method are also considered a major cause of indoor air pollution in the rural households. During the dry season many women are able to cook in partially enclosed kitchens outdoors, but in the rainy season many women cook in small indoor rooms, increasing their household’s exposure to harmful indoor air pollutants.
Creating alternatives through improved cookstoves
Enèji Pwòp customer Leoni (right) is still cooking with her miracle stove more than one year after purchasing it. Her daughter (left) helps her at her market cooking stand.
While the problem of charcoal is complex and requires multiple adjustments and actions to break the pervasive cycle, one of the many actions being undertaken by the CSI is the integration of improved cookstoves, which can lessen the dependence on biomass in cooking. The Earth Institute and EarthSpark International have combined EI’s expertise from other Millennium Villages in efficiency testing with EarthSpark’s operational excellence and marketing creativity in cookstove distribution to create a CSI Cookstove Program. Improved cookstoves use less wood more efficiently, which can decrease the amount of time needed to collect firewood and prepare food, save families money in expenditures on fuel, and decrease a household’s exposure to harmful smoke. Earthspark estimates that a family saves an average of US$0.25 a day on fuel by using more efficient cookstoves—a small sum that amounts to significant savings to Haitian households.
EarthSpark is an International energy NGO that provides support to Eneji Pwop, a small store in Les Anglais that sells clean energy products. EarthSpark’s mission is to empower communities by eradicating energy poverty. They seek to achieve this by partnering with entrepreneurs and organizations to develop local businesses and supply chains for clean and efficient energy technologies. EarthSpark has been operating since 2009 to provide communities around Les Anglais with access to clean cookstoves and solar products for household use, such as solar lanterns and lightbulbs. Partnering with the CSI, EarthSpark will scale its distribution model of improved household energy products to the other communes in the South Department; Earthspark will also increase marketing, identify and train vendors and oversee the sales of cookstoves.
Cooking tests of beans at a school.
EI has previously provided technical support to help launch cookstove programs in the Millennium Villages by providing technical expertise in executing controlled cooking tests, cookstove marketing and delivery. The same field testing program based upon the widely accepted Controlled Cooking Test (CCT) methodology to compare fuelwood consumption across multiple stove models will be employed in Haiti. In the CCTs, two local foods are identified and tests are conducted, where local women cook local foods with their own fuel wood employing typical cooking techniques, like a three-stone fire, while also testing both local and imported improved cookstoves simultaneously. Questionnaires assess cooks' overall impression of the stoves' design, usability and cost, including specific questions regarding which stoves the cooks would purchase and use at various prices.
A team is currently working in the CSI to provide EarthSpark and other Haitian partners with technical assistance on how to run Controlled Cooking Tests (CCTs), and assist Earthspark with training, marketing and distribution of stoves. A series of updates and findings will be provded by the CSI cookstove expert while conducting the CCTs and working with Earthspark to expand the CSI Cookstove Program in the South of Haiti.
For more information on charcoal in Haiti, please visit: Haiti’s Charcoal Challenge and Charcoal, Construction and Coffins on the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet blog.
