Mayuri Bhattacharjee has bagged the award this year, 2019, and we at, CLTS Foundation Global, are extremely proud to have one of our associates winning accolades globally for a cause she is so passionate about. She has been working tirelessly to bring out the stories of the vulnerable and marginalised community who are often pushed to the corner in the mainstream WASH programmes and schemes. As a menstrual educator and trainer, Mayuri’s work primarily focuses on menstrual hygiene management and access to safe sanitation for persons with disabilities.

Recently, Mayuri has led the campaign named Dignity in Floods to highlight WASH issues in disaster-hit areas and in situations of emergency with special focus on menstrual hygiene management.  Since the launch of the campaign earlier this year, the petition for building 50 women-friendly flood shelters in Assam has received over 30,000 signatures. The petition not only demands separate toilets for women in shelter homes but also ensuring the supply of sanitary napkins, clean clothes and soap. The importance of campaign was publicly acknowledged and help was assured by the Assam Disaster Management Board. The campaign truly echoes the common sentiments of 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of ‘leaving no one behind’ and the ‘endeavour to reach the furthest behind first’.

We take this opportunity to wish her all the very best for her future collaborations!

The post Mayuri Bhattacharjee wins prestigious 2019 Ton Schouten Award by IRC WASH! appeared first on CLTS Foundation Global.

-Van Jones

Founder, Green for All

Last week (20th Nov 2018 to 29^th Nov 2018), CLTS Foundation Global joined hands with Vita, an Irish NGO  to commit to the cause of contributing to Ethiopia’s strategy to improve efficiency of biomass use which plays a major role in Ethiopia’s vision of becoming a middle-income country with a Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) by 2025.

The World Energy Council defines biomass as sources of energy that is being derived from organic matter provided that they are not embedded in geological formations, i.e., fossilized. Traditional forms of biomass imply forestry and agricultural residues. Data from The World Energy Council reveals that woody biomass is the source of over 10% of all energy supplied annually in the primary energy supply of forest biomass used worldwide. Overall, woody biomass provides about 90% of the primary energy annually sourced from all forms of biomass. About 90% of all the biomass consumption is in the traditional use. The major use of biomass (two-thirds) is in the form of cooking and heating in rural areas of developing countries

Ethiopia has identified Water and Energy to be the key to achieving its goals for CRGE and poverty eradication. Amongst several other implications for the Water and Energy sector’s contribution to Ethiopia’s development, it is alarming to note that by 2030, fuelwood availability in the country will be severely impacted by an increase in temperature and changes in rainfall patterns. The fuelwood final consumption in Ethiopia in the year 2017 was 82,853 thousand cubic meters and the country has already shown a rapid decline in forest cover from 15.2% in the year 1990 to 12.5% in the year 2015 (World Bank, 2015). With the current trend of declining forest cover and ever-growing demand for fuelwood, it has been estimated that up to 8.5 million people will be living in high-risk areas in Ethiopia where they are unable to meet their household energy needs. Hence, it can be stated with conviction that there is a dire need for efficient utilization of the available woody biomass and serious alarm needs to be raised not only on the sustainability of the current conservation, management and forms of collection and consumption of fuelwood but regeneration and creation of biomass and afforestation.

The current strategic priority of Ethiopia for sustainable access to energy under CRGE focuses on improved efficiency of biomass use; in other words, working towards reducing the demand for biomass by increasing fuel efficiency. The traditional cookstoves (Sost Gulicha in Amharic) are the commonly used cookstoves by the Ethiopian rural community. The fuel (charcoal, firewood) used in these do not undergo complete combustion and hence leads to inefficient usage of the resource and excessive demand for fuelwood. Smoke from the traditional cookstoves is a major cause of indoor air pollution and directly impacts the respiratory health of the women and children in particular. It is also dangerous since there is no covering surrounding the fire and can lead to fire hazard and burns. Indiscriminate and widespread collection of fuelwood is also a major cause of deforestation and degradation of the natural environment leading to soil erosion, loss of biodiversity among other impacts.

The National Improved Cook Stoves Programme (NICSP) designed for this purpose has the goal of distributing 30 million improved cookstoves (Gonzeye, Mirt, Opessi and Tikikil) by 2031 and also linking second order benefits such as reduced emissions, deforestation, dam siltation. This would, of course, catalyse a massive positive health impact on millions of rural women, who would be able to protect themselves from respiratory disorders from directly inhaling smoke while cooking in traditional stoves. (Picture of Mirt model of cook stove on left)

The objective of CLTS Foundation Global’s mission was:-

• To explore and identify how the community led approach can be utilised for mobilising communities to adopt fuel-efficient cookstoves.
• To agree on a framework for a new community-based approach to adoption of fuel-efficient cookstoves (Community Led Approach to Fuel-Efficient Cook Stoves).
• To identify what agencies will take part in the pilot programme and what their roles and responsibilities would be and get a commitment from stakeholders.

In order to do so, the CLTS Foundation Global team embarked on a week-long mission in Ethiopia in the last week of November 2018 involving extensive field visits, workshops, discussion and brain-storming sessions with Vita. We were first briefed about the targets and roadmaps in place for faster achievement of fuel-efficient cookstoves. Discussions were held on the availability of improved models of fuel-efficient cookstoves, community preferences of the models and technical issues. Initial participatory exercises with Vita team members revealed the bottlenecks leading to slow adoption of fuel-efficient cookstoves and consensus was reached on the top three biophysical and socio-economic factors that contributed to the slow pace of uptake.

Next up, we tried to zero in on the kebeles (villages) where we would be applying the CLTS methodology to field test our assumptions in the discussions (Picture on the right). Two villages, Molle in Mirab Abaya woreda and Delbo in Arba Minch Zuriya woreda were chosen. The two villages were distinct in terms where Molle had a higher rate of adoption of fuel-efficient cookstoves amounting to 57% and Delbo had a significantly lower rate of 30%. The villages had a common history of introduction and adoption of CLTS and had achieved ODF status through the approach. We also visited one of the local suppliers who produce the fuel-efficient cookstove ‘Mirt’ model which is the most widely used and accredited model of fuel-efficient cook stove developed in Ethiopia. This was initiated in order to understand the bottlenecks on the supply side.

• Applying the CLTS methodology of triggering (picture on the right) in the two villages brought out a host of outcomes: natural leaders from within the community came forward to form a committee of their own to raise awareness and promote the uptake of fuel-efficient cookstoves in their kebeles.
• The committee got together to chart out a plan on how they intend to achieve a 100% traditional cookstove free kebeles.
• The community members along with the supplier were subsequently invited to participate in the workshop in Hawassa (Head Quarter of SNNP Region), which had participants from various governmental departments, non-governmental organisations, members of the Irish Aid consortium apart from Vita and CLTS Foundation Global team members.

The workshop (on the left) aimed to present the community-led methodology to the participants and to gather their reviews on whether it can be a replicable methodology for the initial pilot project to improve uptake of fuel-efficient cookstoves. Audio-visuals of field exercises were used, community presentations of their analysis of fuel use and secondary data on the effectiveness of this method in the water and sanitation sector were used to capture what was done in the field.

What was rewarding from the entire mission was that participants from diverse institutions expressed their interest in the methodology and were intent on delving deeper into it by trying them in selected kebeles, which had a different contextual setting than the first two. The mission was concluded with key institutional players making a commitment to make at least 20 kebeles to be ‘Sost Gulicha Free’ (Traditional Cook Stove Free) and work towards reinforcing the forward linkages in the supply side and urgently bridging the gap between demand in villages and undisposed stockpile of thousands of improved cookstoves at the end of the producer/supplier through Post-Triggering Follow-up activities. One such activity that was proposed to bridge the demand and supply gap involved increasing accessibility of the fuel-efficient cookstoves where trucks loaded with the stoves can be brought to the villages and it can move around the kebeles supplying stoves to the households that have demanded it. It would function as a ‘limited period offer’ provided that there has been significant demand for the stoves (by at least 50 households) from the kebeles. The institutional actors along with the kebeles committees formed through triggering play a major role here for coordinating the logistics and to make it a successful follow-up activity.

Keep following this space for more updates on how we developed the methodology and why CLTS was piggybacked for the project.

The post Community Led Approach to Fuel Efficient Cook Stoves: A joint initiative by CLTS Foundation Global and Vita Ireland appeared first on CLTS Foundation Global.

Ms Emily Woods is an NSF scholar with a passion for developing innovative and affordable technology solutions. After a chance meeting at the World Water Week this year, we decided to take the conversation forward and learn more about innovations in non-sewered sanitation from Ms Woods herself.  Here are the excerpts from our chat:

Please tell us about the on-going faecal sludge management being done by Sanivation in urbanising communities…

Absolutely! Sanivation is focusing on partnering with different institutions and governments to create sustainable non-sewered faecal sludge management in urbanizing cities. It looks a little bit different in different areas because different areas have different needs. Sometimes it’s providing Container Based Toilets; sometimes it’s helping emptying pit latrines. But all of it is about getting waste to our treatment processing facilities where we treat the waste and convert it to solid sustainable fuel like charcoal and firewood substitute.

Any particular reason for having chosen Naivasha for the project…

We currently have operations in Naivasha, Kenya which is peri-urban area and also in Kakuma refugee camp which is on the South Sudan border.

Naivasha is an extremely fast urbanising community with amenable infrastructure here and the Government partners in the area have been interested to see what are the non-sewered options so that they can try to expand sanitation quicker. And then up in the refugee camp, we’re partnered with UNHCR and NRC where they are running out of space to put pit latrines and flooding and rocky soils make installing pit latrines very difficult and there are not many options for refugee camps. They are looking for more sustainable options to be cost-competitive pit latrines.

What inspired you to look into non-sewered sanitation and develop innovations?

Great question! I was working for a non-profit here in Kenya and they had funding to build 900 new pit latrines and so I was brought on board to design cheaper, better pit latrines but we realised that the average pit latrine area we were working on filled up in about three years and the area we were working on didn’t have any way for emptying pit latrines and definitely no way of treating the waste even if it was collected. And so we were installing a solution that was basically a three-year band-aid. When I brought this up with the non-profit and said: “Hey, this is just a three-year solution, shouldn’t we think longer term?”  Their response was “yeah you are right! Our funding is for pit latrines. Let’s go see if we can think of funding to also think about more sustainable options!” I was really frustrated with the answer and I think sometimes non-profit are too beholden to the funding they have. Sanivation, on the other hand, is a for-profit which is beholden to the beneficiaries and to the market. If you are not creating a solution that people are going to pay for, then you are not going to exist.

Could you give us an insight into how the entire project works?

Sanivation focuses on partnering with local governments to create comprehensive sanitation provision to rapidly urbanizing areas. Our secret is understanding that waste has value. If we can design systems about reusing human waste, then we can actually create secondary revenue streams in waste processing. What that means is we can, and have, built treatment factories that not only treat human waste but convert it to something valuable – in our case it is sustainable solid fuel, a firewood and charcoal substitute. Once we have these sustainable treatment factories we can also focus on working to collect more waste out of the communities: such as Container based toilets (picture on the right). Households here in and near Naivasha, they rent this toilet at about 2 to 5 dollars a month and they get this toilet that they can keep in their house and works just like a toilet but it has two containers on the inside – one collects the urine and one collects the feces. Their monthly rental fee pays for one of our staff to go to their house twice a week, collect the full bucket and put in empty pits and transport the full bucket to our treatment site. Or emptying pit latrines, this is something new which we are trying to work on with some experts from other places and we are very much trying to figure out what exactly is the business model where we can still be at a price that people can afford but also at a price that can make us a profitable company. So there’s still a lot of work to do there.

Were there any challenges that you faced during implementation? For e.g. resistance by the community towards adopting fuel derived from human waste? 

Yeah! I always get this question obviously and I think, the key point is that if the final product doesn’t look or smell anything like poop and it actually performs compared with other options and at a price which is competitive, people don’t seem to mind that it comes from poop. Usually, at first, people make a face! But when they see it burning and realise it doesn’t smell like poop; it doesn’t look like poop; they wouldn’t know it’s from poop unless we told them and then you tell them the price, people start coming around pretty fast (picture on the right).

Over the years of implementation of this project, has there been a noticeable behaviour change in the community towards sanitation?

Yes, Like I said we are really focused on partnering with other institutions and government organisations who are responsible for sanitation in the area. Moreover, the changes we have seen is that when we first started working here in Naivasha, the only solution for water and sanitation utility was to put sewerage lines and treatment plants. A lot of the work and a lot of the change has been a change in the mentality that there are other solutions. You don’t have to put in sewerage lines everywhere. Not everyone has to have a flush toilet. They can still have a dignified safe sanitation option. And I think that’s been one of the biggest changes. Now people have heard the term faecal sludge management (See picture of treated waste on left) or non-sewered options and they are starting to really get on board and we see that not only in Naivasha but all over Kenya right now and it’s really exciting!

Your comments on biomass being a more sustainable solution for the environment…

Absolutely! So for every ton of our charcoal (picture on left) that we sell, we are saving 88 trees from being cut down in Kenya! Deforestation is now a big problem in Kenya and also in rest of the places in the world. So in utilizing the calorific value for dried human waste is competitive with most dry wood from trees. They have very similar calorific values which is incredible! So instead of cutting down trees, let’s actually make use of this product that has been a waste product for so long around the world.

A peek into the future plans of Sanivation…

The key thing is that we are a company. It’s not just a project or a one-off. And so we are very much looking at what are the scaling plans and in the near future, we are focusing on Kenya as we start working with the Government through their policies so it makes it easier to stay within the country. I think with our work with the refugee camps and our partnership with the UNHCR might take us to very other places sooner rather than later. We also have a new factory opening on World Toilet Day on November 19^th this year. With time, I would love to partner and work all over the world and bringing different types of non-sewered solutions everywhere!

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