Cool Carbon:
Posted October 8, 2009 by Ross Hornsey
Promoting Fuel-Efficiency in Darjeeling
Country: India
A traditonal stove Photo: Kelly Doering/Mercy Corps
Many rural agriculture and tea estate workers in India lead a fragile existence. Wages are low with often poor working conditions. Tea estate workers depend heavily on wood as their main source of energy with an average household using around 600 kg of firewood per month. Most cannot afford the cleaner, but more expensive options. Mercy Corps’s intention is to address fuel poverty with the aim of improving livelihoods and quality of life.
With firewood in short supply, many tea estates have stopped providing firewood quotas to laborers, and instead provide the cash equivalent to meet their legal obligations. Consequently many communities are resorting to illegal felling in government supervised forest reserves, causing widespread deforestation.
An associated problem is of food preparation and the care of siblings frequently taking place in and around the kitchen area, in the vicinity of these traditional clay wood-burning stoves. They emit large amounts of smoke, exacerbating risks from smoke particles and chemicals.
In addition women and young adults spend up to 18 hours per week collecting firewood, taking time away from other activities that would contribute to household income. The firewood required denudes the forest cover limiting the amount of fodder available for animals. Raising cows and goats historically has been one of the major sources of income, now threatened.
Reducing firewood consumption with fuel efficient stoves would simultaneously improve health, reduce deforestation and reduce costs for marginal communities.
Mercy Corps will achieve this through a community awareness campaign, training communities to encourage installation of the stoves, and developing microenterprise in stove installation.
Each household that uses a fuel efficient stove and ultimately replaces the fuel by a renewable resource could reduce their emissions by 12 tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to the yearly emissions of one US household.
Each stove costs £10 (£10), including installation and training.
Blog Post: Posted October 6, 2009, 4:41 am by Jim Jarvie
Disaster risk reduction in Padang — not just earthquakes
Country: Indonesia
Flying in to Padang to help our team with earthquake response, an aerial view makes it clear that earthquakes are not the only problem people have to deal with now or anticipate in the future.
The landscape has a beauty that sits in stark contrast to the recent disaster — but its reading is full of warning signs. The flight along the coast by the city, before circling inland and making our final approach for landing over rugged hills, shows telltale warning signs.
Looking inland, the city sits on a large plain, barely above sea level. Two hazards call out. If there were to be a future tsunami, as we saw in similar landscapes in Aceh and Sri Lanka, that water could travel a long way inland. Coastal protection is minimal. Ironically, where the few stone and concrete protrusions emerge into the sea like a giant’s comb running parallel to the shore, there is no mangrove behind them — just exposed habitation. The areas with remaining mangrove look as though they will give better protection to those behind them.
Either way, if even the moderate climate projection models hold true, sea level rise threatens the city. With the added hazard of more frequent, and likely more intensive storms, Padang has a lot to protect itself from.
Deforestation and overcultivation contributed to earthquake-triggered landslides, in which hundreds of people perished. Photo: REUTERS/ IFRC/Wayne Ulrich, courtesy of www.alertnet.org
The plane wheels around, taking us inland over the hills before descending to the ground. We scan for the landslides reported in the UN situation reports and now covered by the media. It becomes obvious what weaknesses the earthquake tremors could work upon. Large patches of forest are felled by human hands, weakening the soil and making the earth more vulnerable; hillsides are exposed by slash and burn agriculture, again exacerbating the chance of a hill giving way.
Under regular circumstances this is already a dangerous issue; there are regular reports of houses swept away, many killed by landslides after heavy rains. The government had already tried to run a programme giving cash incentives for people to adopt better upland agriculture practices. These are just the sorts of landscapes that climate change will make more vulnerable. Add inevitable earthquakes because they sit along the dangerous Alpide Belt, which is the second most seismic region in the world with 17 percent of the world’s largest earthquakes, and disasters are bound to happen.
This does not mean that people are defenseless. But what is needed is a disaster risk reduction plan that incorporates current and future risks and places them in the context of human vulnerability and activity. Mercy Corps is right now working on a strategy to foster and integrate earthquake recovery, economic stability and sustainable disaster risk reduction to protect interventions in all of these areas.
The indicator of success is how well we help communities deal with the next big calamity, whether a spontaneous and acute event like an earthquake, or a long and chronic challenge like rising seas. Or — more challenging and likely still — a combination of them both.
Blog Post: Posted September 30, 2009, 4:50 pm by Sonya Shannon
The resilence of children
Country: Uganda
Topics: Youth, Rural, Hunger, Food/Nutrition, Environment, Economic Development, Climate Change, Children
Today I learned about the true resilience of children.
We set out to meet with villagers from northern Uganda's Kotido county, which is about three hours from where I am based in Pader. We were going there to prepare the community members in Nakeplemoru to organise a peace committee, as well as discuss with them how this peace building structure could be used as a way to handle conflicts at the community level.
But we had to get there first.
Riding along the dry rugged road, I wondered how the day would end. With each twist and turn along the road, around pot holes and washed out sections caused by heavy rains, I bobbed up and down and was tossed about with an occasionally jarring thump. I was beginning to see how poor infrastructure can create major delays in development, preventing the flow of goods from reaching markets, delaying travel and ultimately slowing down progress as a whole. I also now understand why most non-governmental organisation vehicles that frequent the roads of Pader, Kotido, Kitgum and Lira carry a spare reserve of two tires on the rack instead of the usual one.
Photo: Sonya Shannon/Mercy Corps
As we drove further north, I began to notice the scenery changing from rich greens and muted red browns to simply dull and dusty brown. The thriving first season’s crops that I once saw farther south, of sorghum, maize and beans were now replaced with half-shriveled fields of groundnuts, far too gone to be revived.
Upon riding farther north, closer to the Sudan border, it became evident that this area really is “where Saharan and Sub-Saharan meet.” The talk you often hear about the poorest of the poor being the most affected by climate change really begins to hit home. Headlines that read “Food insecurity rises for northern Ugandans" are evident in the failed crops that line the roads.
Uganda as a country is “food secure” but the northern parts, most affected by prolonged drought, are where the poorest and least equipped to handle it are bearing the brunt of the burden, and feeling the greatest impact. The outcome has resulted in a decrease in health, lower incomes and declining morale, leaving many dependent on food handouts in order to survive, as well as feeling discouraged about future developments.
As I shifted my focus back to the meeting ahead of us, I began to reflect on what I’d previously heard about tribunals and committees that have been formed in other areas such as Rwanda, in an attempt to achieve reconciliation. I also thought on how they’ve not been so successful, though some have been more government initiated than community driven, and I wondered what the outcome will be here in northern Uganda.
I began to notice, as we drove along, the groups of Karamojong women walking alongside the road. They strolled gracefully by, with plastic jerry cans of water and bags stuffed full of rations balanced perfectly on their heads. They stood out with their brightly coloured clothing amongst the dull hues of the landscape. Their dark skin set a perfect mahogany background for the fabrics of pink, red and bright green shawls that wrapped across their torsos, tied in a knot across their backs. Their tall thin legs were partially covered down to the knee with a type of skirt made of tan and red plaid, complete with pleats that resembled a kilt. Their heads were mostly clean shaven, but some were crowned with narrow patches of hair closely cropped to the scalp.
A young boy who is not camara shy at Nakaplemoru Photo: Sonya Shannon/Mercy Corps
I wondered as I watched them walk along what had inspired their tribal wear. Had it been due to previous colonial encounters or had they simply taken part of the décor from their cousins to the east in Kenya, the Masai? As we passed them, we waved awkwardly like silly tourists, yet they kindly returned the gesture.
Upon arriving in the village, we parked the vehicle and greeted the few who had already gathered under the shade of a large tree. We continued to mingle while we waited for others to arrive, as word spread throughout the village that Mercy Corps was here. After talking for a bit with some of the adults and elders, I gravitated to a group of children that I noticed were pointing at me and laughing.
I began to introduce myself to each one and shake hands (shaking hands is customary here). As I peered closer into the faces of these children, I began to notice the whites of their eyes tinted in a yellow haze. Some have a secretion that formed puddles in the corners of their eyes, and I noticed this seems quite uniform as I make my rounds. I surmise this is a sign of ill health, which is later confirmed as I’m told that jaundiced eyes are often a symptom of malaria, sickness and liver disorders in this land where illness is tolerated, due to lack of medical attention, and the fortunate simply live on.
Despite their obvious rough surroundings and lack of health and nutrition, they seemed to focus on the moment and take great pleasure in getting their pictures taken. They smiled and laughed at my attempts to entertain them as we crouched next to the closest surface to write on: a large rock. I wrote my name in blue chalk that one of the children ran to get.
As I wrote, again and again, spelling out every letter aloud, I wondered what life would have been like for these resilient children if they had access to more. If they didn’t have to haul water, herd goats, work at the market or in the fields. If they could go to school, eat healthy meals and didn’t have to grow up so soon.
Life isn't easy here. Yet the children of the Acholi and Karamojong people of northern Uganda are still resilient. They still smile.
Posted August 28, 2009
Rainforest SOS
Topics: Environment
Photo: Geoff Oliver Bugbee for Mercy Corps
The preservation of tropical rainforests has never been more important. The destruction of the world’s forests is responsible for almost 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than the entire transportation sector worldwide.
It will, therefore, be almost impossible to stop the trend of global warming unless we can reduce these levels. To highlight the urgency of this issue, Mercy Corps is lending its support to a new campaign being launched by His Royal Highness, Prince Charles.
The Prince’s Rainforests Project (PRP) was set up by The Prince of Wales to educate people on the importance of rainforests in mitigating climate change and to engage them in the issue. The key message being conveyed is that destruction of rainforests has real and serious consequences for each and every one of us, no matter where we live, both today and for generations to come. More than 500,000 signatures have now been collected worldwide.
On September 30 the PRP will be launching Rainforest SOS Month, which aims to send the largest SOS in history to world leaders. This distress call will clearly state that it is critical to protect the rainforests now to curtail climate change in the future.
The SOS will be presented by The Prince of Wales to international political leaders prior to the forthcoming global Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December. In an historic meeting this spring, HRH convened world leaders on these issues and formed an international working group now working to achieve consensus on an emergency package of funding prior to the Copenhagen conference. The PRP has also drafted a proposal for emergency funding to support Rainforest Nations to transition into alternative sustainable economies.
In addition to signing up as a campaign supporter, Mercy Corps will be showcasing its innovative project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — which is using carbon financing to reduce deforestation through the introduction of fuel efficient stoves. The campaign will be spreading its message using radio, TV and the internet.
As Prince Charles has said, “The whole world is in this together.”
Blog Post: Posted August 17, 2009, 8:29 am by Roger Burks
Peace and clean on Independence Day
Country: Indonesia
Saiful, age 7 (right) runs harder to keep pace in a Mercy Corps-sponsored activity. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Urimessing — a poor neighborhood in Ambon, the biggest city in Indonesia's remote Maluku Islands — suffered like so many other areas hit hard by Maluku's inter-communal conflict. From 1999 to 2003, fighting between groups of Christians and Muslims destroyed thousands of houses, killed thousands and displaced at least half a million people.
This Muslim neighborhood witnessed its population triple over the course of just a few weeks during those turbulent times, as displaced families poured into its narrow alleyways to seek refuge from the violence. Overcrowding resulted. Sanitation suffered. The environment seemed forever spoiled from garbage and other waste clogging the streets and streams.
Late last year, Mercy Corps began helping residents clean up. Our Water and Environmental Sanitation (WES) project is working in 32 neighborhoods affected by conflict and its aftermath. And today — on Indonesia's Independence Day — children and their families are celebrating a tidier Urimessing.
Laribatu is the name of a children's game played on Independence Day, involving kids running back and forth, transferring objects from place to place. But today, the game has been transformed into Laribuang Sampah — which means "run to throw the garbage away" — as a lesson about the importance of putting litter in its proper place, garbage cans.
One of the participants is 7-year-old Saiful, who's made the finals of the race. Out of breath, he tells us what he likes most about living in Urimessing.
"I am very proud my neighborhood is clean," he smiles.
Independence Day is an occasion for all Indonesians to be proud of their beautiful and diverse country. But in small places like Urimessing, beset by a recent conflict and the challenges that followed, there seem to be even more reasons to celebrate.
Blog Post: Posted August 11, 2009, 12:53 pm by Jim Jarvie
Copenhagen's chance to reduce poverty and improve human security
Topics: Environment, Climate Change
The climate community is under increasing pressure to help the developing world, especially those at the “bottom of the pyramid.” The people who did the least to cause climate change will suffer its effects the most.
A critical part of the solution to this problem will be enhancing market-based incentives for climate-friendly behaviour. The projects that generate credits for sale in the carbon markets vary widely in scale. However, the most successful have focused on large, localized sites, such as the smoke stack of a single plant. These “centimeter-wide, kilometre-deep” projects are easy to monitor and verify.
In contrast, most projects that benefit the poor are “a kilometre wide, a centimeter deep,” with each family across a large territory producing a small emissions reduction. Monitoring and tracking these community-based projects is usually cost-prohibitive.
DRC: Reducing Emissions and Improving Security
A Mercy Corps project in the refugee camps in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) seeks to improve the security of women and children while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.
In the war-ravaged province of North Kivu, the total number of Internally Displace Persons (IDPs) exceeds 850,000. Demand for resources, particularly fuel wood, vastly exceeds the available supply. To collect wood, women and children have to leave the relative safety of the refugee camps, making them vulnerable to sexual assault and child abduction by rebel groups and the army. Mercy Corps surveys indicate that nine percent of women in camps have been raped or otherwise assaulted.
Mercy Corps installs fuel-efficient stoves that reduce the need for dangerous trips into the forest. A commercial carbon broker develops carbon credits from the reduction in emissions that arises from the use of stoves instead of open fires. The upfront funding from the broker supplements a UNHCR grant supporting the project, and serves to help more than 20,000 families in one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
This extreme example is one of relatively few carbon projects generating revenue that benefits vulnerable people. Yet if this kind of project can be successful in the DRC, larger projects in safer countries may be able to generate massive emissions reductions. The Copenhagen conference needs to set the stage for these types of market incentives for better climate behaviour.
Raising a REDD Flag
A relatively new, UN-backed initiative known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) seeks to compensate forest-rich countries for protecting or regenerating their forests. However, REDD may have the unintended consequences that further erode the human rights of marginalised people dependent on those forests.
For decades, tropical forests have been logged legally and illegally by states and private companies, without any input from or compensation to indigenous forest communities, who, in many cases, were displaced or worse.
REDD thus raises a troubling question: If countries can generate carbon revenues through REDD, to whom do the revenues belong, and how will they be allocated? Many forestry ministries have a long history of corruption and mismanagement. There are already signs of ministries competing over putative REDD funds. And high-level discussions in only a few countries have included the role of communities and civil society in implementing REDD and distributing revenues.
The Copenhagen conference will be a critical milestone in the global fight to address climate change. Yet it raises significant and far-reaching questions concerning economic development and human rights of the world’s most vulnerable citizens that must not be swept under the rug.
This piece was originally published on The New Security Beat.
Blog Post: Posted August 6, 2009, 3:43 pm by Roger Burks
Urban fish tales
Country: Indonesia
Ismet (left) and Endang enjoy a laugh along the banks of the languid Krukut River. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Where there is water, men will fish. But I never imagined I'd see lines cast smack dab in the middle of Jakarta, a megapolitan city of at least 8.5 million people.
But there they were, men sitting on the concrete banks of the small, languidly flowing Krukut River that runs through the heart of Petojo, a slum neighborhood in Central Jakarta. A few months ago this water was less safe to fish from: a 23-year-old latrine sat on its banks, less than 50 feet from where a handful of local men are fishing.
In October 2007, Mercy Corps opened a new kind of latrine here that's not only helped improve the water quality of the river, but also significantly contributed to a cleaner environment — as well as better awareness of health and hygiene — for this entire area.
The solid waste generated by this latrine — which local households pay 5,000 Indonesian rupiah (50 cents U.S.) per month to use — is separated from liquid waste and placed into a biogas digestor. The resulting biogas is used to power a nearby communal stove, and can also be used to generate electricity for lighting.
The liquid waste is diverted into another system called a baffled reactor. The water ends up in a small adjacent wetland, where water plants like lilies remove potentially harmful bacteria.
These are innovations that have made life in this poor neighborhood somewhat easier and much healthier for local families. And it's helped catfish thrive again in the Krukut River.
A little girl sits on the bank of the Krukut River, fishing derby numbers visible. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
I sat down for a while and talked with a couple fishermen — Endang and Ismet, both 58 years old — about fishing here. They told me that mostly black catfish live in the river, which make for some good eating. I asked them what they're using as bait; Endang opened a can of pink, wriggling worms. I told them that, when I went fishing with my grandpa, we used chicken innards to lure catfish. There was suddenly a bunch of nodding and enthusiastic chatter.
"Oh yes," Ismet said. "Guts are good."
This neighborhood has even established an occasional fishing derby. Participants pay 10,000 rupiah (U.S. $1) as an entry fee, then stand on painted numbers that line the bank and cast their lines. Whoever catches the biggest fish takes home the grand prize, which has sometimes been as high as 300,000 rupiah (U.S. £18).
So, even amidst the haze and din of Southeast Asia's biggest city, there is also the peace and simple virtue of sitting along a sleepy river with fishing pole, a can of worms and your thoughts.
Blog Post: Posted August 4, 2009, 7:05 am by Roger Burks
Exploring Jakarta's hidden city
Country: Indonesia
Mercy Corps Indonesia's Julisa Tambunan (foreground) and Elpido Meido interview residents of Jakarta's Penjaringan slum, taking turns as reporter and photographer to gain experience in documentary field work. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
In North Jakarta, Indonesia, there is city hidden under a long highway overpass. It's a place where residents live in boxes made from scrap wood — many of these places no bigger than cupboards or small closets — perched on knee-height stilts in case it floods. A system of open sewers serve as toilets. Even in the blazing light of day, it's dim under here, small gaslights and cooking fires illuminating all manner of small commerce from shanty restaurants with bits of food on plates to a group of transvestites readying themselves for whatever the night holds.
This place is called Penjaringan, and it is the biggest slum in Jakarta — home to thousands of individuals and families. It is where we brought more than a dozen students to continue the writing and photography training we began yesterday in the classrooms of Mercy Corps' office in South Jakarta, more than an hour away.
While our students took turns documenting the lives of Penjaringan through words and pictures, my colleague Thatcher Cook and I walked around the neighborhood to check on their progress and see if they had any questions. It gave us a chance to do a little work of our own, as well as experience the overwhelming life that exists beneath the bridge without the benefit of a translator. All we could understand was people greeting us with an always-friendly "Hello, Mister."
Because even though there is squalid poverty here, there is vitality. There is ruckus, even joy. A father walks, holding a newborn baby to his bare skin. A mother maintains an anxious distance as her young daughter wobbles along, trying to get the hang of a tiny, rusted bike. Children play as they do everywhere.
Penjaringan feels like a displacement camp, much like the ones I’ve experienced in places like Congo, post-tsunami India and Uganda. Only here, neither disaster nor conflict has forced families under the overpass: rather, they’re displaced by extreme poverty, relegated to an ever-expanding informal economy that is literally hidden from the eyes of most citizens who simply drive over it each day.
Mercy Corps is helping the neighborhood maintain better sanitation through a project called Rumah Kompos — the Composting House. Work crews collect organic and non-organic solid waste from households around Penjaringan. Organic waste is composted and turned into rich black soil, while much of the non-organic waste is recycled and transformed by local housewives into crafts like handbags. It’s a small, yet innovative way that residents can clean up the place where they live while earning an income to support their families.
Senior Writer Roger Burks under Penjaringan's overpass. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps
Late in the sweltering Jakarta afternoon, our students straggled back to the cars that would take us back to the office, exhausted yet abuzz about who they’d met and what they’d seen. They were journalists working in a harsh environment, asking tough questions and internalizing stories that will likely last a lifetime.
Tomorrow, the last day of our workshop here, Thatcher and I will help them edit photographs and shape stories from their experiences in Penjaringan. In the afternoon, we’ll have a slideshow of pictures and our students will read their stories.
Together, we’ll help give words to those silenced by the roar of trucks passing overhead. We’ll show the faces of those who take shelter in tiny, dark boxes that many of us would mistake for newspaper kiosks. We’ll get their stories out to the world.
Blog Post: Posted July 23, 2009, 7:06 am by Jim Jarvie
The 2009 Climate Conference: poverty reduction and human rights implications
Mercy Corps' local partner Proyecto Aldea Global works with poor communities that adjoin an important cloudforest, helping marginalised groups maintain their livelihoods while protecting natural resources. Photo: Geoff Bugbee for Mercy Corps
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, December 2009, is a critical meeting for our planet. Commonly called the COP, it's where the world's governments will decide the planet’s course of action to deal with climate change after the Kyoto protocol, which runs out in 2012. There is increasing recognition and pressure to help the developing world, especially those at the “bottom of the pyramid.” These countries have done the least to cause climate change, yet suffer its effects the most.
A critical part of the equation will be to enhance market-based incentives for climate-friendly behaviour. These are currently available through the carbon markets, which are mechanisms that encourage the reduction or capture of the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming — especially CO2. These carbon markets were worth £19 billion in 2006 and £38 billion in 2007. In late 2008 and early 2009 values fell with the global stock market, but their previous trajectory should recover.
The carbon markets are based on carbon credits. Some are generated by projects that capture carbon, such as tree planting. Most involve projects that reduce CO2 emissions and vary tremendously, from an industrial-scale project that reduces emissions from a big power plant's smoke-towers, to a community project involving switching thousands of people from incandescent to compact florescent light bulbs.
While the carbon market is typically more suited for industrial projects, it is increasingly opening in ways that can work with vulnerable and poverty-stricken populations in development programming. Unfortunately, in practice, successful carbon projects have tended to be large existing or potential emitters at single or localized sites such as large factories. That is, they are “a centimeter wide, a kilometre deep” — for example, the smoke stack of a single power plant. In these types of project monitoring and verification are easy.
In contrast, projects benefiting the poor are “a kilometre wide, a centimeter deep,” covering several square kilometers of territories where families reside, with each family individually producing a small emissions reduction that contributes to a larger, community based project. Monitoring and tracking of these communities is usually cost prohibitive.
In La Merced, Nicaragua, Mercy Corps' local partner promotes erosion control, reforestation, and creation of water reserves, for the more efficient organic farming of coffee. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps
There is widespread worry over a relatively new, UN-backed initiative known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Set against the deforestation that causes about 20 percent of the greenhouse emissions that contribute to climate change, REDD sets out to compensate countries with large forest resources for protecting forests or regenerating those degraded by over-exploitation and illegal logging.
Whereas it will be a major discussion point at the COP, there remain dangers that it may further erode the human rights of forest-dependent people. Tropical forests have been logged ‘legally’ and illegally by state, para-statal and private industry for decades. Indigenous forest communities and other forest-dependent peoples have had no voice in how resources were taken, or how revenues from their exploitation were distributed. In many cases, they were displaced or worse. Forest areas in many forested developing countries are owned by the state, with indigenous populations living without secure land tenure.
The question therefore arises — if countries can generate carbon revenues through REDD — to whom do the revenues belong, and how will they be allocated? This question is set against the backdrop of many government forestry ministries having a long history of corruption and mismanagement. In many countries, there are signs of inter-agency rivalry over which ministry will have the biggest part of putative REDD funds. And in only very few countries are there high-level discussions about the role of communities and civil society in REDD implementation and revenue distribution. The human rights of marginalised peoples may erode further.
The COP meeting is a critical milestone in how to address climate change. Yet with it come significant and far reaching questions concerning economic development and human rights. It is a meeting that demands our closest attention.
One Table: Posted June 19, 2009, 2:36 pm by Laura Miller
Simple things can make the biggest difference in the DRC
Country: DR Congo
When asked by family or friends after a field visit, "How was your trip?" or "What's new in Africa?" I'm often guilty of giving oversimplified responses, though I realize our programmes go way beyond "fine" and "interesting."
For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the more interesting and complex places on the planet. It's hard to sum up years of conflict, more than five million conflict-related deaths, thousands of displaced people, and the beauty of the country and its people in a few words.
Fighting in North Kivu Province of the DRC has displaced tens of thousands of Congolese. IDP camps and the local population currently host more than 100,000 people. This population influx would create a strain on resources under any circumstances, but has become a critical issue in the DRC where the IDP camps in the Goma area border Virunga National Park — one of the most important ecological sites on the African continent.
Virunga National Park is not only home to two of the earth's most active volcanoes, the only mountain glaciers in Africa, and the almost extinct mountain gorilla, its forests are the major source of charcoal for the city of Goma. Charcoal is widely used as cooking fuel, and its production has been leading to a loss of forest cover for decades.
IDP camp residents building a fuel-efficient stove. Photo: Dee Goluba/Mercy Corps
Last month, I had the chance to visit IDP camps where Mercy Corps is implementing an environmental programme. What started as a fuel-efficient stove pilot project in 2007 has expanded to include firewood distributions, seedling nurseries, reforestation activities, and environmental education.
So far, Mercy Corps has provided fuel-efficient stoves to 20,000 displaced families. Rather than using charcoal, these stoves burn either wood or biomass briquettes and only needs half the cooking fuel required by traditional stoves. These stoves also emit less black carbon than traditional cooking methods.
Overall, the programme has been a hit. Beneficiaries I spoke with were ecstatic about the cost and time savings they're realizing. I met with several women and asked what they are doing with the money that they would have used otherwise on firewood. One woman told me that she's able to buy more food for her family, another told me that she can afford to take her daughter to the health centre when she falls ill.
Even in a country as complex as the Congo, it's sometimes the simple things that make the biggest difference.
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