A/42/427
English
Page 191
Fuelwood and charcoal are, and will remain, the major sources of energy for the great majority of rural people in developing countries. The removal of trees in both semiarid and humid land in African countries is a result to a large extent of increasing energy needs from an increasing population, both rural and urban. The most visible results are desertification, soil erosion, and general environmental degradation.
The reasons behind these disappointment are many, but a central cause is undoubtedly a singular focus on trees as the object of attention, rather than people. Forestry must enlarge its horizons: beyond trees – to he people who must exploit them.
Rutget Engelhard
Beijer Institute's
Centre for Energy and Development in Africa
WCED Public Hearing
Nairobi, 23 Sept 1986
has been done over the past 10 years to develop fuel-efficient stoves, and some of these new models use 30-50 per cent less fuel. These, as well as aluminium cooking pots and pressure cookers that also use much less fuel, should be made more widely available in urban areas.
69. Charcoal is a more convenient, cleaner fuel than wood, and its smoke causes less eye irritation and respiratory trouble than wood smoke.[1] But the usual methods for making it waste tremendous quantities of wood. Deforestation rates around cities could be greatly reduced if more efficient charcoal-making techniques, such as brick or metal kilns, were introduced.
70. Commercial forestry operations are rarely effective in providing fuelwood in rural areas, but they help to meet urban and industrial needs. Commercial farm forestry, or, on a larger scale, dedicated energy plantations, can be viable enterprises. Green belts round large urban areas can also provide wood fuel for the urban consumers, and such an urban green zone brings other environmental amenities. Some iron and steel industries in developing countries are based on charcoal produced from wood in such dedicated energy plantations. Unfortunately. most still draw their wood supplies from native forests, without reforestation. Often, especially in the initial stages, fiscal and tax incentives are necessary to get planting projects going. Later these can be tied to success rates for tree growth, and can eventually be phased out. In urban areas, there are also good prospects for increasing the supplies of alternative energy sources, such as electricity, liquid propane gas, kerosene, and coal.
71. These strategies, however, will not be able to help most rural people, particularly the poor, who collect their wood. For them wood is a 'free good' until the last available tree is cut down. Rural areas require totally different strategies. Given
- ↑ R. Overend, 'Bidenergy Conversion Process: A Brief State of the Art and Discussion of Environmental Implications' ,International Union of Forestry Research Organization, Proceedings, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, 1986.
