When I was a child, all households in my village (including my parents’) used three stone cook stoves. The vast majority still cook the same way now.
I left home at 17 and came back home many years later. The first wrong thing I saw (according to my perception) was the smoke coming out from my mum’s kitchen.
I was already an engineer and was working on small scale renewable energies. Although I wasn’t working on stoves at that time, I was aware of the harmful effects of smoke and the excessive fuel consumption of three stone stoves. I also had read about improved stoves and had seen designs being spread out in different parts of the world in developing countries.
The same day I arrived home, I asked my mother to change her three stone stove for an efficient and clean one that I would bring and install in her kitchen. I explained the benefits of the new stove, which from my point of view were great.
I told her they use less fuel and have lower smoke emissions which meant less of her time for fuel collection and better health. She listened patiently to my proposal and explanation of the benefits and replied: “Like the one of your aunt Maria? No thank you son.” She said she hadn’t seen such benefits. “Your aunty spends the same amount of time collecting fuels, and as for the smoke, I don’t see much wrong with it”. She gave me examples of large families all with smoky kitchens and said she had never seen a child dying from smoke inhalation, and the doctor or nurse had never told her that it could happen.
I started to think that sometimes one expects other people with other backgrounds to have the same perception as we have. I asked myself why she had a such a firm perception regarding clean stoves with “no benefits” or perhaps too little, too simple benefits compared to the big sacrifice she had to make to change her three stone stove for another one that she does not like and she does not like it for many good reasons from her point of view.
Now that I had become an advocate of energy access for the poor and I knew how important is for the poor to have clean and efficient cooking stoves, I asked myself why I was unable to convince my mother at that time. I asked myself whether other people had experienced similar situation where the perception of the potential users are very strong and they stick to their traditional three stone stoves. And what do they do to persuade these sorts of users to change their minds?
I would also like to add that poor people like the majority who use three stone stoves, generally lack information about many important issues. People living in isolated rural areas do not have access to information, they hardly listen to the radio, do not watch TV and most cannot dream to access to internet. Therefore, their perception is based on their own experience.
With that short personal story and introduction, I would like to ask other practitioners and advocates of energy access for the poor to share your thoughts about how to overcome this issue of strong perception of the poor in rural areas of no benefits or not enough benefits.
Consider that those using three stone stoves perceive many good qualities of a three stone stove: they find that the three stone stove is very simple; it costs no money; it is versatile – with a three stone stove the user can use as many pots as she/he wants and users do not need to carry their stove if they move from one to another place – they can quickly have a new one. These people have not seen or have not perceived the harmful effects of smoke and even the doctors or nurses who very occasionally talk to them have not told them anything about the harmful effects of smoke. Could you suggest how to overcome those issues of perception?
July 27th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
I was born in Italy, so I have not the same direct experience from my childhood, but similar. When I was a child, smoking cigarettes was allowed in public places, like pubs, shops. And people did not perceive the impact of indoor smoke on their health. Thanks to a severe ban, now it is not permitted, and since some years everyone (also the smokers!) perceive the insalubrity of a smoky room! .
In Developing Countries it is not so easy to implement similar policies at household level in order to avoid the use of solid biomass in uneffiecient and smoky stoves, but I guess that providing clean, reliable and effective technologies a process of innovation can start, even if slowly. Let the people feel the confort of an healthy kitchen, the difference can change perceptions.
July 27th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
There are many reasons people in rural areas don’t use efficient cooking stoves, my personal experience im mexican rural areas has not been the lack of information about the dangers in health, but instead they don’t use them because cooking stoves also work as a source for warmth, which incidentally beats the entire purpose of heat concentraring efficient stoves.
July 30th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Hi Francesco, thanks for your comment, I agree with you that in developing countries it would difficult to implement policies that can stop using smoky stoves and even if the policies are approved by governments to enforce them in rural areas would be extremely difficult. I agree with your suggestion of demonstrating the benefits by providing access to clean technologies my work, but these needs to be supported with education campaigns and information
July 30th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Hola Gerardo, you are right, rural people do not use efficient cooking stoves for many reasons, space heating is one of them. However I am not convinced that rural people in Mexico would not mind the death of their children if they were aware that smoke is a killer, I have got the impression that there is a need of information there. I would like to make the point that efficient cooking stoves can be designed to provide space heating and get rid of smoke at the same time.