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Cooking stoves are such an integral part of our everyday life. The article “The Perfect Stove” in the New Yorker discusses the success and failure of engineers to create affordable, environmentally friendly, and easy to use stoves. Four stoves and their designs are discussed in detail. The technology for these stoves varies from fans, batteries to gasifiers. The low-emissions stove being designed by Aprovecho which uses a fan that uses heat from the fire to generate its own power was particularly interesting. I am sure some of these stoves will help supplement Mercy Corps efforts in the “Stove Projects” being undertaken in the African countries and other parts of the world.
Reading this article made me reminisce about my childhood which was spent mostly in a remote village in the southern part of India where I spent most of my evenings watching my grandmother cook on the old fashioned wood stove, covered in soot and perpetually teary eyed because of the smoke. For sure my late grandmother would have appreciated the efforts of these engineers and their quest for new and improved stoves!
The Perfect Stove: News Desk : The New Yorker
Submitted by Kokila Mallikarjuna
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Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa made quite a stir when it was published last year. In case you haven’t read it yet, our own Devan Wardwell has written an excellent summary (see below) that makes you feel as though you have read the book in detail!
- Moyo is from Zambia, and is an economist. She says she doesn’t give development advice. Instead, she gives economic advice on ways to administer aid that lead to economic prosperity.
- For the purposes of this book, Moyo characterizes “Aid” as “Official Development Assistance” – basically government to government loans and subsequent debt relief, facilitated by the World Bank and the IMF.
- She dismisses “humanitarian aid” (MC’s type of assistance) both as small fry compared to governmental aid/debt relief and as merely an extension of the “culture of aid” that permeates the west and has become a cultural commodity since pop stars have taken up its banner.
- She is not entirely against aid, stating, “It might well be the case that more modest aid programmes that are actually designed to address the critical problems faced by African countries can deliver some economic value. The DA proposal does allow for this perspective, leaving room for modest amounts of aid to be part of Africa’s development financing strategy.”
- Decreases a country’s incentive to save
- Eliminates the governmental balance provided by taxation and representation,
- Exacerbates civil wars
- Chokes off the export sector (“Dutch Disease”)
- Discourages private foreign investment
- Engenders lazy policy making
- Eliminates the incentive to reform governmental institutions (more…)
The snappily named Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance works to improve humanitarian action through learning and accountability. They have a particularly interesting and timely paper on lessons learned from previous major earthquake responses – you can read it here (pdf). They divide their lessons into four categories, Recovery First, Relief Issues, Managing Aid, and Livelihoods and Shelter.
I’ve pulled out soundbites on some of the findings I thought were most interesting: (more…)
So coincidentally I went to two different sites this week – one looking at boys and the other girls:
1. GIRLS: Until recently I had only got as far as the slick video published by the Nike Foundation on the Girl Effect. My explorations this week led me further into their website and I found the “Your Move” section of their site useful in giving some practical tools and structures for thinking about how to include a girl-focussed approach in programs. In particular I liked the approaches to finding girls in the community on page 10 and the self assessments to allow different types of organizations to understand the degree to which they are including girls in their programs (page 19 onwards). I’m still looking for some materials that talk about how this fits with an overall youth approach but it gave me some food for thought.
2. BOYS: A recent World Bank paper finds a correlation between countries with high numbers of under-educated boys and violence and tests five hypotheses relating to education and young men. The full report is published here or you can get a summary from Foreign Policy here. Our attention is drawn in particular to the challenges for Sub-Saharan Africa which faces the youngest age structure and the lowest educational attainment levels.
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Annie Leonard (of The Story of Stuff) thinks not. If you only watch one video about our last chance to save the planet this week, it should be this one…
The video is about 8 minutes long, and a lot of fun.
If you want more, you can read Annie’s blog post on climate and consumption here.
“The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the “devils in the details” in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis. If you’ve heard about cap and trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.“
“Climate change is a development issue” Douglas Alexander, UK Secretary of State
What’s the best way to deal with climate change? Oxfam America recently published a report, “The New Adaptation Marketplace: Climate Change and Opportunities for Green Economic Growth,” that highlights many industries and businesses, including the insurance, industry that may grow due to climate change. Insurance companies have been offering insurance against climate and weather-related causes as a means for individuals and companies to protect against ever-growing environmental changes. Companies like Zurich Financial Services Group and Swiss Re advocate that insurers can play a role in both mitigating and addressing climate change by encouraging and rewarding technologies that help with climate issues, and through supporting improving and building better infrastructure to withstand future problems. With the Zurich Financial Services Group noting that weather-related claims have grown nearly fifteen-fold in the past thirty years, climate insurance seems posed continue growing both as a business sector and resource.
But with the development of this insurance niche comes questions about how climate policy is assessed and carried out, and who will be able to afford these policies. The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies’ Climate Change and Global Warming Task Force notes insurance is contingent on risk assessment and certification, along with a “statement of catastrophe.” Swiss Re uses four indices to assess risk: weather, precipitation, wind and a combination of all three). But the Climate Change task force also notes that issues may arise in areas where there is a high-level of risk contrasted by low-level preparedness, such as in developing countries. With insurance premiums typically linked to risk, is it possible for those in poorer areas of the world (who may also be a greater risk of weather issues and climate change) to afford to insure themselves?
Additionally developed countries such as the United States are not immune to concerns climate insurance. The Climate Change task force also raised concern about companies having enough capital to fill claims when disasters hit. Hurricane Ike, the 2008 storm that hit Florida, caused nearly $11.5 billion in insurance losses.
With all companies emphasizing risk reduction as central to climate insurance, watching how companies and groups address this in both developing and developed countries. As the severity of our climate continues to change, so too will the means and methods of addressing it.
