Deforestation

A group of distinguished scientists, led by George M. Woodwell, Director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, have recently published findings in the book Forests in a Full World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

The book recalls that the overwhelming majority of people cooked with wood until the beginning of the 20th century, when the world's population quadrupled. Although the use of fossil fuels and electricity for cooking was adopted, over 2 billion people continue using wood. As a result of the population increase, 500 million more people are cooking with wood than in 1900.

The bulk of information on wood consumption in the household comes from the calculations of refugee needs. Even though fuel use in refugee camps is minimal in comparison with settled communities, this provides a useful measure.

Muiruri Kimani wrote a report for the German Organization for Technical Cooperation, GTZ, entitled, "Meeting Energy Requirements in Refugee Situations, 1995." In it, he fixes .7 kilograms per person per day as the fuel wood requirement for refugees. Dadaab is a warmer and drier place than Goma. The need there was principally for cooking, and possibly boiling water and camel milk.

Benaco and Lumasi, Tanzania: In 1995, Howard Frederick of CARE described studies done in the camps in Tanzania. Fuel consumption measured in terms of per person per day, varied from 2.3 kg to 2.9 kg in the Benaco Camp.

In 1995, Matthew Owens, then of the Intermediate Development Technology Group provided the following unsourced information: "...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." (p. 22.)

Based on these refugee experiences, we can bracket individual needs for fire wood between a low of 0.6 kg per person per day and a high of 2.8 kg., (a figure which includes some heating). One kilogram of moderate weight dry wood per person per day would be a starkly minimum average.

If we multiply even that modest number by two billion, the results are staggering. People consume 730 million metric tons -- or 1,123 million cubic meters -- per year. This figure is lower than FAO's estimate of 1,890 million cubic meters per year in "State of the World's Forests, 1997."

How does that volume compare with the annual consumption of roundwood? In 1994, FAO reported that figure as 1,476 million cubic meters.

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.