Deforestation

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the overwhelming majority of people cooked with wood. Although the use of fossil fuels and electricity for cooking was adopted, over 3 billion people continue using cooking with wood or other biomass. Today, the bulk of information on wood consumption in the household comes from the calculations of refugee needs. Fuel use in refugee camps is minimal in comparison with settled communities, but the figures still provide a useful measure.

Estimates for daily refugee fuel consumption vary from .6 kg to 2.8 kg of wood per person. According to Matthew Owens of the Intermediate Development Technology Group, "...the great variation in fuel consumption mentioned between camps may be a pointer to the way people respond naturally to increasing fuel scarcity by adopting more economical cooking methods.

“In Ngara consumption is 2-3 kg per person per day. In Dadaab, where fuel is more scarce but the food is similar, consumption figures are lower (1.6-1.8 kg per person per day) and in camps in Bangladesh devoid of forest they were found to be as low as 0.8 kg per person per day."

Multiplying even a modest 1 kg of daily fuel use per person produces staggering results. People consume 730 million metric tons -- or 1,123 million cubic meters -- per year. The FAO's 1997 estimate for this figure was 1,890 million cubic meters per year (State of the World's Forests, 1997.) These data place the annual consumption of wood for domestic purposes within 10% of all the roundwood harvested or mined from the world's forests! Contrary to widely held belief, cooking with wood is a significant cause of global deforestation.

The information provided on this page was taken from Solar Household Energy, Inc.'s web site and was written by Dr. Barbara Knudson. The article in which these excerpts were originally published can be found on this page of the SHE web site.