Hi Richard, Thanks for sharing your experience, and the specific parameters in the context within which you work. Can you contextualize what you mean when you suggest industrial/agriculture logging is a 'one time thing'? I'd be keen to learn more.
As Crispin suggests, there are very lucrative incentives for organizations that depend on the rhetoric that stoves are a panacea for some of the world's greatest problems. We are all aware that some very large players, from private companies to NGOs support stoves for their ability to generate profits and resources for humanitarian programming. Certainly, the 'stoves reduces rape' rhetoric has mobilized political advocacy, fundraising efforts, prize monies, and supported humanitarian industry efforts in Darfur and elsewhere. In a soon to be published article, I document other motivations for the construction of this rhetoric. The link is provided below for anyone interested. My suggestion that the fuel-efficient stove as a solution to major problems is mythology is something I take very seriously. As you are all aware, stoves are a relatively straightforward technology. By this I mean that they are intended, through combustion, to produce heat. With this heat they cook. The more efficient the design, the less fuel Y required to cook X. Straightforward, causal logic. However, to extend the causality between Y and significantly complex problems such as sexual violence and deforestation requires a number of constructed narratives that verge on myth. For example, in the case of sexual violence the lives of (mostly poor African) displaced women are relegated to having two domestic roles: collecting wood and cooking. In addition, women are suggested as being safe in camps (wherever these may be), while outside they are exposed to violence. These are highly disingenuous and relegate the vulnerabilities and complexities of violence. Yet, with these taken as true, the reduction of Y fuel to produce X food can prevent rape. It is assumed that through the simple act of cooking, women can protect themselves. All NGOs might do is test whether or not women leave the camp less frequently, and the rest of the narratives fall into place. In the mentioned paper, I point to numerous reports that suggest why these narratives are fallacies. A western analogy. In recent years, a number of police officials (i.e. Toronto, New York, etc.) suggested that women who wear short skirts provoke violence. Activist groups responded with global 'slut walks'; I've yet to see NGOs start handing out pants as a technology to prevent the rape of skirt-wearing women. The narratives suggesting that the poorest and most vulnerable people have the agency to solve the world's greatest problems - deforestation, violence, carbon pollution - through simple act of cooking is very dangerous. I believe this puts an unruly burden on the shoulders of poor women. These again depend on a whole slew of imagined narratives that assume away complex reality in order hold poor women as capable of solving these problems. Further, this implicitly suggests the act of cooking is also responsible for these problems, and not major industries, or excessive energy consumption/consumerism of the world's industrialized middle class. Of course, I'm not knocking the importance of stove innovations and their relation to real-world problems. However, I believe the same methodological accountability applied in developing and testing stoves (which you all take great care in) should be held to the extraordinary claims NGOs and advocacy groups are applying to them. For those of you interested, the link to the paper is below, which details the construction of the 'stoves reduce rape' narrative and some of the implications I suggest above. Always happy for feedback and discussion. Warmly, Samer https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259104849_Technologizing_Humanitarian_Space_Darfur_Advocacy_and_the_Rape-Stove_Panacea/file/60b7d529fb1e6ecbd5.pdf?origin=publication_detail _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
