Kenya: "Multi-storey gardens" save slum school children from hunger

It it not completely random of me to start posting interesting stuff happening in Kenya (although I do admit this blog is as versatile as I like or not like it to be).It is to my utter enlightenment that I got an internship with UN Environmental Program in Nairobi. Yep, this is where I will be this summer. UNEP has been the epicenter of my world for a while and I do want to have a bite of the UN system before I devote myself to it.

One thing I am equally excited is that I met a Kenyan friend here in my school in Copenhagen. She is going to conduct health related research this summer in one of the urban slums in Nairobi. It just occurred to me that I'd like to go in with her to find out the cooking situation, since I have devoted a lot of time here with Energy Crossroad to help member chapters in Nepal and some western and Central African countries like Cameroon and Uganda to develop their efficient cooking stove implementation projects. I myself wrote a big paper on the issues and examined why big energy companies like BP and Shell made the efforts to promote their own stove products. Super intriguing stuff and not always black-and-white good or bad.

Anyway, just another summer down the line.

The Nation (Kenya) / Monday, 08 June 2009

Nairobi (kenya) - When the idea of starting a project to grow food crops in one of the slum areas of Nairobi was first put forward, it sounded next to impossible.

No wonder pupils of Gitiba Primary School in Dagoretti were quick to dismiss the initiative as unworkable. They were convinced that food cannot be grown in ghettoes where they lived. Moreover, the place, like other city slums, is overcrowded and they do not even have space to play in.

But the idea has now worked, with the establishment of a multi-storey garden. And the school where the demonstration garden for the project is based is in the process of becoming a model of food growing in slums or other overcrowded areas of the country’s urban centres.

A multi-storey garden is an upright sack or a large plastic bag filled with soil, with food crops like vegetables, kales, carrots or onions planted in tiers. And the garden is part of a government- initiated programme commonly known as Njaa Marufuku Kenya (Eradicate Hunger in Kenya), which the Ministry of Agriculture has been implementing since 2005.

The objective of the programme, according to the national coordinator of Njaa Marufuku Kenya, Mrs Philomena Chege, is to reduce poverty and improve food security in the country. Mrs Chege says the programme has helped address the food security problem in several parts of the country. “We have financed numerous projects initiated by organised groups of farmers, women and youths,” Mrs Chege told the Nation during an interview.

Gitiba is a catchment area for pupils living in sprawling slums that surround the busy Dagoretti Market. It is one of the areas of the city where poverty bites and most of the hapless children usually rely on school-feeding programmes for their survival.

Currently, the multi-storey garden project, which was introduced at the institution at the end of last year, can be said to be a success story. At least several homes in the six slums surrounding the school have multi-storey gardens established and managed by the pupils.

The slums Njiku, Kamwanya, Ichagitho, Mworoto, Ndunyu and Quarry are notorious for their chang’aa dens. Some parents in the area have neglected their children and left them at the mercy of the school administration. Residents believe most of the children would be on the streets if there was no free education. Since the World Food Programme (WFP) sponsors a feeding programme at the school, the children are assured of a meal a day.

A teacher at the school, Mr Karuku Njugi, sold the idea of the multi-storey garden to the pupils. “I had attended the Nairobi International Trade Fair last year where I happened to come across a brochure by Njaa Marufuku Kenya,” Mr Njugi recalled.

The booklets, which were being distributed to the public, talked of fighting poverty in the slums through projects like multi-storey gardens. This attracted the teacher. It was due to the pathetic situation at the school, where a big number of children rely on one meal a day. He said cases of children yawning and sleeping in class early in the morning as they complain of hunger are common at the school.

So, after getting the brochure, he decided to contact the area district agriculture extension officer at the divisional headquarters in Waithaka. “I wanted to know how children in the school could benefit from the project and this is how the agriculture officers helped the school to develop a multi-storey garden,” Mr Njugi said.

They did this by inviting the school to Karen Estate, where people have started similar projects. Initially, the garden appeared strange and a liability to the children, the teacher said. Having been born and brought up in an urban area, Mr Njugi said, the children detested laying their hands on soils to mix it and make the garden inside the sack or plastic bag.

However, it was after assurances that they would no longer sleep hungry as is the case in most of the city slums that the project became a success. The children, with the assistance of their teacher, Mr Njugi, and agriculture extension officers, have established numerous multi-storey demonstration gardens in their school compound. Today, many pupils and their parents acknowledge that it is easier to provide a plate of ugali on the table when there is a multi-storey garden in their ghettoes.

“Lunch and even supper is no longer a big problem. We only need a packet of unga as sukumawiki (kales) or spinach are readily available,” 10-year-old Margaret Wanjiru says. She is one of the pupils who embraced the idea of multi-storey gardens when it was introduced at their school.

Her mother, Ms Grace Njeri Njenga, who has been supporting her daughter in her new project, said: “It has saved a lot of money for us. We want to multiply the gardens and ensure we have enough food supply.”

They have their multi-storey gardens at the back of their houses, where there is very little space. And they have planted kales, spinach and onions. In future, Mrs Njenga said they will look for more space, even if it means having some of the multi-storey gardens at the doorstep of their three- roomed iron sheet house.

At Njiku slums, 12-year-old Rosemary Njeri planted kales in her multi-storey garden outside her mother’s house. But chickens started destroying them. Now she has lifted it and tied it with a string to the rafter of the roof of their dilapidated iron sheet house.

“We are now happy that during lunch or supper we can pluck the kales and prepare ugali without using money,” the girl, who is in Class Five, said.

Kenya: Land deals may sink dream city

Nairobi (Kenya) — Plans to build a technology city and create 40,000 jobs have run into allegatio... Read more >

On Happines and Urban Life

NYT OP-ED columnist David Brooks recently had an articled which started with talking about the trade-off Sandra Bullock faced -- winning the Academy and having an abusive husband. But the main discussion here is what really makes people happy, what tilts the balance, what aspect of social urban life intrudes personal well-being and what enhances it. The findings he cited are rather surprising.

Over the past few decades, teams of researchers have been studying happiness. Their work, which seemed flimsy at first, has developed an impressive rigor, and one of the key findings is that, just as the old sages predicted, worldly success has shallow roots while interpersonal bonds permeate through and through.

For example, the relationship between happiness and income is complicated, and after a point, tenuous. It is true that poor nations become happier as they become middle-class nations. But once the basic necessities have been achieved, future income is lightly connected to well-being. Growing countries are slightly less happy than countries with slower growth rates, according to Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution and Eduardo Lora. The United States is much richer than it was 50 years ago, but this has produced no measurable increase in overall happiness. On the other hand, it has become a much more unequal country, but this inequality doesn’t seem to have reduced national happiness.

On a personal scale, winning the lottery doesn’t seem to produce lasting gains in well-being. People aren’t happiest during the years when they are winning the most promotions. Instead, people are happy in their 20’s, dip in middle age and then, on average, hit peak happiness just after retirement at age 65.

People get slightly happier as they climb the income scale, but this depends on how they experience growth. Does wealth inflame unrealistic expectations? Does it destabilize settled relationships? Or does it flow from a virtuous cycle in which an interesting job produces hard work that in turn leads to more interesting opportunities?

If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbors. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing). (p.s. Denmark is found to have among the highest level of social trust, which is attributed by many to the reason why its people are also the happiest in the world)

The overall impression from this research is that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important.

The second impression is that most of us pay attention to the wrong things. Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives. Most schools and colleges spend too much time preparing students for careers and not enough preparing them to make social decisions. Most governments release a ton of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions. In short, modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones.

This may be changing. There is a rash of compelling books — including “The Hidden Wealth of Nations” by David Halpern and “The Politics of Happiness” by Derek Bok — that argue that public institutions should pay attention to well-being and not just material growth narrowly conceived.

Governments keep initiating policies they think will produce prosperity, only to get sacked, time and again, from their spiritual blind side.

The disillusion of youth

Meng Si, the then head of the communication team of the China Youth 15, just published an article on ChinaDialogue why the China-US youth joint statement failed to be delivered at the very last moment, despite all the energy and hope generated toward the good faith.

Political wrangling at Copenhagen forced a group of young Chinese and American delegates to ditch plans for a unified front. Meng Si explains what happened.

On December 19 last year, the controversial Copenhagen Accord was agreed. On the same day, following a heated debate, a group of young Chinese delegates decided to abandon the announcement of a joint China-US Youth Declaration, uneasy about the dangers it might trigger.

The declaration in question had grown out of a meeting between the US and Chinese youth groups during the United Nations climate-change summit and described how the two sides had built up a sense of mutual trust and an awareness of their shared mission. It expressed their deep concern about global warming and their hopes that the governments of both nations would step up their efforts in the ongoing negotiations.

But, as the conference progressed and the pressure on the Chinese government increased, the Chinese members of this group of twenty-somethings opted to pull back. Their greatest concern was the inability to control interpretation of the declaration by western media and politicians and the risk that their actions could put yet more strain on the Chinese government – and bring unforeseen dangers upon themselves. “We were scared of being used,” says Ren Jiaojie, a journalism student at a well-known Beijing university.

Late last year, Ren and around 40 other young Chinese people arrived in Copenhagen, hoping to break the silence of their peers on the international issue of climate change. They constituted the largest Chinese youth group ever to take part in a United Nations climate-change summit.

...after a meeting between the China and US youth groups, the two sides started to hatch a plan to “make their own voices heard” and to push for the best possible result in the negotiations. On December 10, after a workshop at Copenhagen University involving more than 100 members from both groups, five representatives from each side worked through the night to produce a draft declaration, which other Chinese participants then went on to revise.

But, as time went on, says Ren, the youth groups started to realise that the negotiations were much more complex than they had expected and that the issues at stake were not simply environmental.

On the same day that the youth groups were drafting their declaration, the so-called BASIC nations – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – unveiled their draft agreement, now known as the “Beijing Text”. This was seen as a response to the “Danish Text”, which favoured developed nations, and a demonstration of the tension between industrialised and emerging economies.

To longstanding observers of climate-change politics, such tension was hardly news. But China was placed in a particularly difficult position this time around. The United States’ public criticism of the country’s status as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, coupled with requirements for Chinese transparency in Hillary Clinton’s proposed US$100 billion (683 billion yuan) financial-assistance package, meant that, for the first time, China was under pressure from both the developed and developing worlds. And a subsequent speech by president Barack Obama served only to sustain this pressure.

Meanwhile, a meeting on December 11 between 10 Chinese and American youth delegates and the US secretary of commerce, Gary Locke, left the group unsure of their next move. The Chinese participants came away from the 20-minute meeting with the official feeling somewhat disgruntled. The delegates seem to have expected a more supportive stance from Locke (a Chinese-American), but they found him to be very critical of China. As attendee Wang Ning recalls: “He didn’t discuss historical responsibilities, only the current circumstances, calling China the largest emitter of carbon dioxide.”

The changes and experiences of those few days split the group. “We have no control over media reports and the United States is looking for ways to put China on the spot,” said Li Li, a youth delegate who had attended the previous UN climate-change conference in Poznań, Poland. Some other members agreed, believing that the declaration was likely to be exaggerated by western media, particularly in the United States, and presented as a case of China’s young citizens putting pressure on the government – to China’s detriment. This was not what they wanted to see.

They consulted an official from the Chinese delegation, who, exhausted by the negotiations and the battle in the media, told the group that this was a political issue that they did not understand and should keep out of. Another Chinese negotiator had a more positive view and suggested that they mention the Kyoto Protocol, the twin-track mechanism and common but differentiated responsibilities in their declaration, along with affirmation of China’s efforts to reduce emissions. But some of the young Chinese believed this would simply be seen as an attempt to echo the government view – again creating a negative impression.

Due to their own lack of experience, the group also asked for advice from NGO staff and journalists. Ma Fenglei, who helped to write the declaration, recalls: “Some suggested we use the opportunity to call for developed nations to make further cuts. But others said we shouldn’t get too political.” A reporter from the China Youth Daily told them not to think too hard about it – to do and say what they wanted and to let the voice of youth be heard. As a result of this clash of opinions, an idea that had been motivated by a simple desire – to work for a common future – lost the impact that the group had hoped for.

Sun Qian, a Chinese student based in the United Kingdom, still thinks the group should have published the declaration: “It’s a public issue, and the young people of China should not have left without saying anything.” But some of those who advocated abandoning the declaration believe that a rushed statement would have been unwise. Others say that, while a sense of responsibility for the fate of humanity is important, responsibility to national interests should come first. Some Chinese reporters suggested it would have been more prudent to use the declaration to support the Chinese government and put pressure on the United States.

As a youth-group liaison officer under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Li Lina is well informed about youth groups, both in China and overseas. “Unlike in China, young westerners have rarely experienced the real changes that economic development can bring and therefore tend not to consider issues of national strength and personal livelihood,” she says. Although the beginnings of social awareness are now visible in China, she believes opinions are still guided primarily by concern for problems that the nation faces and a reliance on government action.

On December 19, national leaders gathered in the main conference venue, the Bella Centre, for a final meeting. That same night, the Chinese youth delegation met in their hotel and held a vote. The decision: to remain silent.

news from the new UNFCC session in Bonn Germany

Notes from April 10 Response meeting prepared by Global Campaign for Climate Action (GCCA)

The campaignable intelligence is limited at this stage as this meeting in Bonn is primarily aimed at discussing the process moving forward, however, we will send out whatever information we believe may be relevant today and tomorrow.

• There were several statements in Plenary about the ambition for the outcome - AOSIS, LDCs, EIT, ASEAN all called for a comprehensive deal at Cancun. Hallway intelligence suggests very little optimism for a comprehensive deal at Cancún outcome.
  

• Countries that have not associated with the Copenhagen Accord will not have access to the funding outlined in the Accord.
  

• Several countries, including Canada, France and Italy, have suggested that they will focus more of their efforts on the G8, G20 and MEF meetings throughout the year rather than the UNFCCC process in order to move areas such as Finance forward.
  

• Several countries want to use the Copenhagen Accord as the basis for the next agreement and it looks like, due to the reduced number of meetings, that the chairs of the working groups will be given more scope to redraft the text and present this at the next meeting in June in order to begin negotiating on the text. A decision on this will be made by the end of this meeting.
  

• We need to be pushing the idea that the negotiators can break up progress and not be dependent on each process to achieve progress. We need to identify key things, such as Finance, MRV, Gigatonnes gap, legally binding, that we can get progress on in June 2010 so that they are signed off in Cancun at COP 16 and ensure that we work towards only have 2-3 tradeoffs in Cancún and not the many trade offs that were in Copenhagen.
  

• The US are pushing the all or nothing message with regards to agreeing a deal. We need to communicate that it is not necessarily all or nothing. Certain elements can move forward irrespective of others, for example, REDD (or another issue) could be used as the ”key” to unlock the all or nothing deadlock. By using REDD as an example of an area where agreement is possible, without being contingent upon all other things being agreed.
  

• The EU could be conducive to moving forward on pieces – looking for partners. Possible options: Environmental Group, some South American countries: Guatemala, Panama, Dominican Republic etc.

Danish solution to community based power system--visit to Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy

Thanks to the organization of folks from Energy Crossroads Denmark Chapter, we went on a trip to Nordic Folkcenter for Renewable Energy in Hurrup Thy, the most northern part of Denmark.

Folkecenter for Renewable Energy (FC) is a non-profit research and training instituteis that provides research, development of technology, training and information for the feasibility, manufacture and implementation of significant renewable resource technologies in Denmark and throughout the world. It receives trainees from many parts of the world. It's got enough stories of its trainees from developing world and going back home to implement projects and organize similar folkcenter programs. One folkcenter chapter was set up in Mali by a former trainee and a trainee from Thailand bought back a second-hand wind turbine from Denmark. Another master student from Channi I met there is also thinking of setting up similar institute once he gets back to India.

The greatest thing I find about this place reside in its accessibility to the general population while maintaining a certain level of technical advancement and research. Although it is less clear to me how widely spread its influence is and the level of scientific research, it surely started a model that plants seeds all over the world. The head of information Jane was extremely helpful in setting things up for us, food, accommodation, tours. She brought up a lot of information when I asked her the details about the second-hand windmill "business."

In the following parts I will introduce some of the gadgets we learned about there and potential opportunities both for Enenrgy Crossroads or whoever is interested in employing these technologies in good use. Again, the technology for to fulfill basic development need is there to a large extend, it is often a matter of getting it off ground.

The corridor in sunlight. The solar modules filter the light and the result is a pleasant smooth light.
The thin-film modules allow 30 % of the light to pass through. The pattern of the modules creates an exciting light/shadow pattern in the corridor.
(http://www.folkecenter.net/gb/rd/solar-energy/architecture/)

I was very excited to see a real "Jiko" stove used in Kenya

as a more efficient cooking device. Charcoal balls are burned in the lower level of,closed, with air coming in from the holes you see above. Like a beehive . My concern would be output of the smoke. Our Cameroonian friend said people there mostly put them outside while using. Well I guess this defnitely saves the materials for stacks if cooking outside is not an issue for the locals.
.

This is the control box for a mini windmill on top of the roof. The left one is directly connected to the grid. You can see a meter as is the black box on the right. The other I believe transform the current from direct to alternate. The big silver box above is a dumpload that is used to, literally, dump the excessive energy generated by the windmill. Yes sometimes it generates so much and if there is not enough consumption in the house it has to be thrown away to keep the system safe. Also, because the price for them to sell back the electricity is cheaper than that with which they buy electricity from the grid, there is not much incentives for them to actually sell it back. The dumpload also exists for other testing purposes.

And here come all the windmills that are being tested here. Some are owned by NFC. Others are put here by small and medium sized companies for a fee to be tested. In general, the wind speed in this area averages around 5.8m/s, with 3.5 m/s being the starting point for the windmill to work and 25-26 m/s the maximum it can hold without being damaged (beyond that point it should be shut down to protect itself).

There are currently 5200 windmills currently registered throughout Denmark. Yes, like each single one of the living human being, it all has a licence and every drop of electricity it generates is also kept in the book. You should even be able to access these data online in case you want to check their performance or buy an old one.

If I am not mistaken the one on the immediate right side is an old 55 KWp VISTAS. It is 25 meters high till the top of the blade. It has been erected for 25 years and is still good to go for at least another 20 years.

This one is the 6 KWp EasyWind produced by a Germany company for primarily for the household market. It costs about 25,000 euros and the payback is estimated to be around 8 years under current electricity prices (flows around 2 DKK/kwh). The power it produces should be enough for family that consumes energy modestly. It can annually produce about 10,000 - 15,000 kWh, depending on wind conditions. It only took the staff seven hours for the whole installation and at the end of day it was ready to produce power. I personally think this is a much better choice than solar PV in windy places like Denmark. Payback time is much better and the same goes for embedded energy life cycle analysis.
For more info, http://www.folkecenter.net/gb/rd/wind-energy/48006/easywind/

A mini combined heat and power station, produced in Japan. This is also what NFC mostly advocates for, for a decentralized community power supply system. The major principle is that in this case, plant oil, is burned to generate electricity at an efficiency of around 25 % and the waste heat is used for heating, achieving an overall efficiency of about 85%. Usually if only electricity is generated, the efficiency is just slightly higher, say 30%. Of course the larger the plant and the efficiency could be much higher (around 50%). Yet the problem, as every system has its flaw, is the oil used. The production of oil is not as efficient as desired. Three kilogram of seeds produces about only 1 kg of oil, although the residue plants could go for animals. But this depends on the type of plant since some are not favored by animals. And of course when it comes to acquiring the biomass in large scale, one has to deal with the controversy of deforestation for plantation and such. Another discussion the director Preben raised is about the low-cost of storing energy in the form of biomass. It also only should be used as backup to solar or wind because of all its problems.

But the dialogue is also about scale and balance, time and place. The picture below is an oil producing machine that has been also employed in villages in Mali, Africa. The seed plant called Jatropha is squeezed through this machine to produce oil and by-product of soap. Village women in Mali would collect the seeds on and bring them to where the machine is located and then sell the oil (I guess they have to pay a fee for the machine, Jane did not mention it though). It has since become a means to make a living for those women. I dont remember how much this one costs but there is also a Danish model that costs 3500 DKK and produces 8 litre of oil per hour. Ann was thinking about buying one back to Uganda. It is certainly easier said than done, as we discussed later and raise questions such as what type of local plants could be used to grown to produce the oil, how much people are willing to pay to use the machine, where can they sell the oil, will this pose challenge to local food supply...etc. Some particular vegetable oil could also be used for car engine but one needs to add a preheater, converter and filter for it to burn properly and not to harm the engine.

It is not my intention to mention solar hot water, my personal favorite, at

last. It is just matter of how blogger uploaded my pictures. Again I am surprised to know that vacuum tube collector is actually cheaper than flat plat (the same case in India, but the opposite in the States). Flat plate uses more copper which is expensive in India, and has lower efficiency than vacuum tube. Aesthetically they could be really different which then is a matter of personal taste. In places where there is much winter snow, tube is also subject to snow accumulation on top just because it is so well insulated. NFC has tube collector that only stores water inside, that is the tube is both a heater and storage. More sophisticatedly there is oil liquid running up and down within the tube to transfer the heat to the water that is running on top of all the tubes. It then condenses and falls back down and start the process again.

The left one is broken as you can see the white color at the bottom.

We did not go into detail with solar PV. Here in Denmark its payback time is usually twice as much as that of wind, which is about 20 years. It is still not a bad case considering the solar panel can usually last over 20 years. PV market has also become increasingly competitive and the efficiency is still progressing as new technology breakthrough is often on the news. China now has become one of the largest producer worldwide and its domestic market is yet to be fully taped.

a new found architect-- Hundertwasser

I know my post gets a little bit random now as I just tapped into architecture now. Well I am just taking this class on integrated sustainability of architecture and interesting stuff came to me all the time. Such as this Austrian architect Hundertwasser, I would name him Green Gaudi, if you please. Perfect planting of plants and green roofs, together with colors and castles--what else do I need for a home?

a comment by the one posted the picture:

This is an interesting collision that I wanted to record, trees or TVs - should our urban environment should be dominated by screens or plants? But can advertising be displayed on a plant? Can I glean any "information" about the state of our urban environment from a plant?

http://uber.tv/g-one/

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2271/2370253487_eb308b5848.jpg

Ant guess what is this?

an incinerator plant for heating!!

A Small Stove With Big Ambitions

The invention of a tiny stove in India demonstrates the link between reduced carbon emissions and improved health – and how technology can contribute to slowing climate change. Global energy giant BP is producing and marketing Oorja, which means energy in Hindi, a small pellet stove that produces substantially fewer emissions than the traditional wood-burning stoves so common throughout India. In developing the stove, BP ran models by rural consumers. A team of businesswomen based in villages sell stoves and fuel made of agricultural waste products, while also offering BP advice on promoting other energy products to rural India’s millions. The multinational corporation does not expect to earn profit on the product until 2010, and the very poor cannot afford it, but the small stove still points to a new direction. In wealthy and poor countries alike, efforts to control climate changes will require innovative and affordable alternative-energy products, combined with meticulous grassroots marketing campaigns in order to change old habits. – YaleGlobal

world.

SULEBHAAVI, India: As India's richest families race to outfit their kitchens with the latest European trappings, thousands of village entrepreneurs are discovering how to squeeze profits from a squat $17 stove locally designed to reduce global warming and preserve women's health.

Named "Oorja," meaning energy in Hindi, the stove is part of India’s answer to rising concern over India's total emissions – the fourth largest in the world and likely to climb due to surging energy needs and the unveiling of the globe's cheapest car. Unlike many government or NGO-funded projects, this one relies on India’s keen entrepreneurs.

Such businesswomen include Lakshmi Babu Pitagi, who began her career by selling tea door to door in the quiet lanes of Karnataka’s Sulebhaavi village. Now she is part of a rapidly growing network of women recruited to sell an innovative biomass stove run on fuel pellets made from ground nut and other agricultural residues.

Pitagi seeks to liberate her neighbors from relentless eye-watering fumes of traditional wood-burning stoves, which pose serious health hazards and expand India's carbon footprint. And she expresses confidence that she can make money in the process. Within seven months of launching the product, she convinced a quarter of Sulebhaavi's households to purchase the stove.

"This is a lifelong business," crows Pitagi, 33, who makes a slender commission on the hexagonal 675-rupee metal stoves and the 20-rupee sacks of pellets to keep them burning. As she and other vendors learn the trade, they are also educating their boss, global energy giant BP, about the challenges of rural marketing in a culturally diverse nation that’s just beginning to tap into the "base of the pyramid" of consumer power.

Hundreds of millions of Indian villagers still rely on wood-burning stoves, as gas remains a remote luxury in many states. Rural families report that it costs roughly 330 rupees per month, or $8.50, to cook entirely with gas, and many can't save the lump sum required for a gas cylinder. In contrast, BP's vendors pitch the affordability of a weekly supply of two sacks of pellets, which tend to be 50 rupees cheaper than wood purchased in a local market.

On the environmental front, a 2006 report prepared by an independent agency concludes that the stove reduces carbon monoxide by 71 percent and lessens suspended particulate matter by 34 percent. Cooking takes less time because the pellets burn more efficiently than wood, explains H.S. Mukunda, a professor at the Combustion, Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Biomass use would thus fall from 1.5 to 2 tons per family per year to 0.4 to 0.6 tons per family per year, he says.

The idea of a cleaner stove is hardly novel in India, where indoor air pollution kills nearly 400,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization.

But in contrast to previous government and philanthropic efforts to simply give away newfangled stoves – programs that have proved largely unsustainable throughout Asia – BP is relying on commercial gusto to spur product acceptance. The company will also test the stove in Vietnam and China later this year.

By giving dealers an incentive to keep supplying the pellets long after they make their first commission on the stove, BP has swerved away from the longtime practice of dumping a stove on consumers and letting them fend for themselves to find fuel.

Pellet delivery trucks roll to Pitagi's door and the company supplies a pamphlet that invokes the Hindu goddess of prosperity and reads, “When you use Oorja, it's like inviting the goddess Lakshmi into your home.”

For the energy giant, however, this is yet to become a profitable venture. The company is striving for greater economies of scale and more technical modifications to erase the 225-rupee gap between the stove's current manufacturing cost and retail price. Citing a "long-term commitment," BP officials decline to release figures on the scale of its investment since the project's low-key launch in late 2006.

Still, with a sales goal of one million stoves by the end of 2009 and a break-even target of 2010, company managers are cheered by the market response, with more than 7,000 new consumers each week purchasing an Oorja stove. The company has recruited and trained entrepreneurs in 2,750 villages across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra states, where they racked up sales of nearly 200,000 stoves.

Many analysts agree that the commercial approach has better odds for success. "Anything that comes to the beneficiaries for free is not taken seriously," says Pradeep Kashyap, vice president of the Rural Marketing Agencies Association of India. Kashyap, who has evaluated previous stove projects, recalls other stoves that ended up as dusty shoe boxes because government programs typically suffer from "no targets, no accountability, and no responsibility."

But in a country with poor roads, ensuring a reliable network for repairs and pellet supply represents a major challenge for BP. Eschewing national advertising, the company has zeroed in on local tactics, including village fairs, roadside demonstrations and mobile vans. Training sessions tap experienced village entrepreneurs to coach novices.

It's a costly exercise. But BP is betting that the learning process will pay off later when it tries to bring other products into rural markets, including low-cost lighting and heating devices. This is the first time the company has mounted a methodical search for grassroots consumers, although it has made other attempts to diversify into alternative energies, including wind power, solar power and jatropha biofuel.

Ironically, it was a 2001 breakthrough in manufacturing cheap computer fans that led to the possibility of creating a low-cost stove for the masses, recounts Mukunda, whose team had been pondering various designs since 1986.

To be sure, Oorja remains out of reach for the poorest of the poor. Women who walk for hours to collect free firewood in India generally cannot afford a one-time payment of 675 rupees. Entrepreneurs like Pitagi generally refuse to supply the stoves on installments, except when it comes to their own relatives. For all the buzz generated by microfinance initiatives in India, no viable plan has emerged.

"We accept the fact that we don't have the means to reach the people at the extreme lower end of the spectrum," says Sunitha Krishnamurthi, general manager for marketing at BP Energy India Pvt. Ltd, the Bangalore-based unit that is spearheading the Oorja project. "Our audience makes more than $2 a day."

One exception is Lakshmibai Hireappa Sampagani, a 60-year old widow in Karnataka's Itagi village. She makes just 30 rupees (76 cents) a day in the fields, but still managed to buy an Oorja stove last October. "It's not like it was a luxury. It was a necessity for me," she insists. Heavy smoke was bothering her eyes, and she couldn't stand the long walk to collect wood, especially during the rainy season.

Wedged between the mud-packed walls of her narrow kitchen, Sampagani voices a common complaint. "When you don't have enough food to eat, where will you get the money for gas?" she asks, a basic question for housewives all over the developing world. Efforts to devise and refine local solutions like Oorja are essential to easing the painful daily struggle for affordable energy and emission control.

Margot Cohen is a journalist based in Bangalore.

Faces-my best of India

Yes I spent an hour adjusting these faces so each can have a show here and it took Picasa another hour to make the colliage. But I love it. The spendid smiles coming out of every Indian I encountered touched my heart, making one of the most colorful and spiritual part of my life journey. For them (no them vs us connotation here), life is just that smilable, however harsh and even "untouchable" as seen from visitors like me. The innocent and sometimes naughty eyes of the children are clear enough for you to see through the soul, which is as crystal and happy as the smiles.

these faces I found simplicity and contentedness. And of course, this is just the Indian answer, but worth contemplating for "sophisticated" folks like myself. We look for troubles ourselves because we are never satisfied with what we already got.

The land is only "!ncrediable" when the people there are incredible.

China's E-Bikes: Less-Than-Perfect Pioneers

http://cn.wsj.com/gb/20100119/ren163708_ENversion.shtml

China's experiment with electric bicycles is worth looking at because it represents the first-ever widespread adoption of an electric vehicle for commercial use. Their explosive development has posed all sorts of challenges, both in terms of regulation and pollution.

It's a big technological jump to cars from the smaller electric bikes, scooters and tricycles on China's streets today. But some of China's e-bike makers are already looking at how to take part in that transition, including Luyuan Group by leveraging their experience in battery technology and electric motors.

The e-bike phenomenon is so big the Asian Development Bank prepared a study looking at their impact on China's environment and transportation. Released last year, the study found that electric bikes are energy-efficient and perform much better environmentally when it comes to some forms of pollution, like the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, compared to alternatives like buses or motorcycles.

'This analysis shows that e-bike emissions, including material production and vehicle use phases, perform comparably to buses and significantly better than motorcycles and cars on most environmental metrics,' the report said. But they aren't perfect.

The biggest problem it found was with lead from batteries. Even though there's nearly a 100% recycling rate, because the batteries are replaced every few years, and China's lead industry is poorly regulated, lead emissions are two orders of magnitude higher than those from buses, their main competition.

Luyuan's outspoken chairman Ni Jie contests these claims. He says that China's coal-fired power-plants and coking plants emit far more lead than the battery industry. And he says advances in technology will make the batteries cleaner, especially as alternatives to lead like lithium become cheap enough to be universally adopted.

Chinese regulators have been especially worried about traffic safety problems, an area that the ADB didn't address in its report.

Ni claims that the rising fatality figures for e-bikes mask the truth. He says that e-bikes are safer versus bicycles or motorcycles when compared on a mile-by-mile basis. He also says that e-bike fatalities need to be grouped with motorcycles and bicycles figures. Overall, death rates have fallen for that group, he claims, because riders are switching from motorcycles and bicycles to e-bikes. E-bikes are slower than motorcycles, but more visible than bicycles, so are safer, he claims.

In the meantime, electric bikes are growing in popularity elsewhere, especially Northern European countries that already had a strong bicycle culture, such as the Netherlands, according to e-bike consultant Edward Benjamin.

And they're already making an appearance on the streets of New York--especially noticeable among food delivery.

India Worries as China Builds Ports in South Asia

Regardless that the blog now is about living in Denmark, China issue is almost an eternal concern of mine. I went to DIS to do some reading after I missed my field to Malmo, Sweden. And I found this article to justify my loss of the site visit. I am now thinking of focusing on China and its overseas ventures for my class "transitional economies" at Copenhagen Business School. The construction of the port is just one of the many oversea projects China commissioned during the past a few years, the ramifications of which is probably not yet fully perceivable, but duly worth looking into.

February 16, 2010VIKAS BAJAJ

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — For years, ships from other countries, laden with oil, machinery, clothes and cargo, sped past this small town near India as part of the world’s brisk trade with China.

Now, China is investing millions to turn this fishing hamlet into a booming new port, furthering an ambitious trading strategy in South Asia that is reshaping the region and forcing India to rethink relations with its neighbors.

As trade in the region grows more lucrative, China has been developing port facilities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and it is planning to build railroad lines in Nepal. These projects, analysts say, are part of a concerted effort by Chinese leaders and companies to open and expand markets for their goods and services in a part of Asia that has lagged behind the rest of the continent in trade and economic development.

But these initiatives are irking India, whose government worries that China is expanding its sphere of regional influence by surrounding India with a “string of pearls” that could eventually undermine India’s pre-eminence and potentially rise to an economic and security threat.

“There is a method in the madness in terms of where they are locating their ports and staging points,” Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary who is now a member of the government’s National Security Advisory Board, said of China. “This kind of effort is aimed at counterbalancing and undermining India’s natural influence in these areas.”

India and China, the world’s two fastest-growing economies, have a history of tense relations. They share a contested Himalayan border over which they fought a war in 1962. India has given shelter to the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet as China exerted control over it. And China has close military ties with Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars.

But the two countries also do an increasingly booming business with each other. China recently became India’s largest trading partner, and both have worked together to advance similar positions in global trade and climate change negotiations.

Chinese officials deny ulterior motives for their projects in South Asia. And top Indian leaders have tried to play down talk of a rivalry with China, saying there is enough room in the world for both economies to rise simultaneously.

As recently as the 1990s, China’s and India’s trade with four South Asian nations — Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan — was roughly equal. But over the last decade, China has outpaced India in deepening ties.

For China, these countries provide both new markets and alternative routes to the Indian Ocean, which its ships now reach through a narrow channel between Indonesia and Malaysia known as the Strait of Malacca. India, for its part, needs to improve economic ties with its neighbors to broaden its growth and to help foster peace in the region. Some of the shift in trade toward China comes from heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, which has hampered trade between the two countries. But China has also made inroads in nations that have been more friendly with India, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Moreover, protectionist sentiments have marred India’s relationships with its neighbors. South Asia has a free-trade agreement, but countries that are part of the pact get few benefits, economists say, because India and its neighbors refuse to lower tariffs on many goods and services to protect their own businesses. By contrast, the countries of Southeast Asia have minimal or no duties on most goods and services that they import from one another.

India has had some success in establishing closer ties with Sri Lanka, with which it has a strong bilateral trade agreement. But China has become a partner of choice for big projects here like the Hambantota port. China’s Export-Import Bank is financing 85 percent of the cost of the $1 billion project, and China Harbour Engineering, which is part of a state-owned company, is building it. Similar arrangements have been struck for an international airport being built nearby.

Sri Lankan officials want to turn Hambantota, which was devastated by the 2004 tsunami and is the home constituency for President Mahinda Rajapaksa, into the second-largest urban area in the country after the capital, Colombo. (It is the ninth-biggest today.) The government is also building a convention center, a government complex and a cricket stadium.

Sri Lanka needs foreign assistance to make those dreams a reality, because the government’s finances are stretched by a large debt it accumulated in paying for a 25-year civil war that ended in May. In 2009, the country borrowed $2.6 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

Mr. Rajapaksa has said he offered the Hambantota port project first to India, but officials there turned it down. In an interview, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States, said the country looked for investors in America and around the world, but China offered the best terms. “We don’t have favorites,” he said.

Still, Sri Lankan officials have refused to disclose information that would allow analysts to compare China’s proposals with those submitted by other bidders. The country has also kept private details about other projects that are being financed and built by China, including a power plant, an arts center and a special economic zone.

The Sunday Times, a Sri Lankan newspaper, recently estimated that China was involved in projects totaling $6 billion — more than any other country, including India and Japan, which have historically been big donors and investors in Sri Lanka.

Harsha de Silva, a prominent economist in Colombo and an adviser to the country’s main opposition party, said the Sri Lankan government appeared to prefer awarding projects to China because it did not impose “conditions for reform, transparency and competitive bidding” that would be part of contracts with countries like India and the United States or organizations like the World Bank.

Other analysts say China is winning big projects here and elsewhere in the region because its companies offer lower costs. Chinese companies are also competitive because they have acquired a lot of expertise in building large infrastructure projects in China, said Jerry Lou, Morgan Stanley’s China strategist.

In 10 years, Chinese companies have become the biggest suppliers to ports of cranes used to move shipping containers, displacing South Korean and Japanese companies, he said. “They are running at very high efficiency and at the lowest costs,” Mr. Lou said. “China is a game-changer, rather than a new player in the world’s construction industry.”

India is starting to respond to China’s growing influence by becoming more aggressive in courting trade partners. India recently signed a free-trade deal with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and South Korea. Officials have even begun talking about signing a trade deal with China to bolster exports.

India’s chief trade negotiator, D. K. Mittal, acknowledged that the country’s economic ties with its neighbors were not as strong as they should be and blamed political distrust between the countries. But he said leaders were now determined to improve economic relations, something he said was highlighted in a recent agreement with Bangladesh.

In that deal, India agreed to sell electricity to Bangladesh, provide it with a $1 billion line of credit for infrastructure projects and reduce tariffs on imports. Bangladesh agreed to allow Indian ships to use a port that is being redeveloped by China. “The political leaders have to rise above and say, ‘I want this to happen,’ ” Mr. Mittal said in an interview. “That’s what the leaders are realizing.”