Cooking with a traditional three-stone stove in south-west Uganda's sprawling Nakivale refugee settlement used to be an exhausting daily exercise for 39-year-old Runiza. "I had to walk for five hours every day to collect firewood," the Congolese refugee recalls. It was not just physical exhaustion, she says. "The danger of being raped, attacked or robbed caused me to feel mentally drained." It's a major concern for all women in rural areas like Nakivale, where they traditionally collect firewood for the family – a journey that often takes them to dangerous areas far from the safety of their homes. But a year ago, Runiza decided to give up the cooking technique she learnt from her mother as a child and to use environmentally friendly biomass briquettes and an energy saving mud stove. "Since I have learnt how to make mud briquettes, long-distance walks to collect firewood are just a distant memory," she says. "I have now two fire points and cooking is much faster." [Innovation: Briquette-making project helps protect women in Ugandan camp-Making a Difference, By Rocco Nuri in Nakivale, Uganda-unhcr]
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Cooking with a traditional three-stone stove in south-west Uganda's sprawling Nakivale refugee
settlement used to be an exhausting daily exercise for 39-year-old Runiza. "I had to walk for five
hours every day to collect firewood," the Congolese refugee recalls.
It was not just physical exhaustion, she says. "The danger of being raped, attacked or robbed
caused me to feel mentally drained." It's a major concern for all women in rural areas like
Nakivale, where they traditionally collect firewood for the family – a journey that often takes them
to dangerous areas far from the safety of their homes.
But a year ago, Runiza decided to give up the cooking technique she learnt from her mother as a
child and to use environmentally friendly biomass briquettes and an energy saving mud stove.
"Since I have learnt how to make mud briquettes, long-distance walks to collect firewood are just
a distant memory," she says. "I have now two fire points and cooking is much faster." [Innovation:
Briquette-making project helps protect women in Ugandan camp-Making a Difference, By Rocco
Nuri in Nakivale, Uganda-unhcr]
The importance of bio mass as a resource for future energy generation, both thermal and electrical
is well recognized worldwide. However, in Sri Lanka lack of information and sometimes
misinformation hinders the utilization of these renewable and indigenous resources, the
development of which has a multitude of spin off benefits. The availability of a substantial
quantities of variety of bio mass and the very real potential for developing these to be a very
significant national resource is hardly known or noticed.
Traditional biomass accounts for nearly 52% of the primary energy supplied in Sri Lanka. Nearly
76% of our population still depend on fuel wood and other forms of biomass for their household
cooking. However the introduction of LPG for the domestic cooking some decades ago has reduced
such use in the urban households.
In addition the traditional small and medium industrial sector too has been using bio mass
particularly fuel wood for their thermal energy needs. The Brick and Tile sector in particular uses
considerable amounts of fuel wood form different sources. Unfortunately jungle wood harvested
in an unsustainable manner continues to be used heavily, although the renewable sources such as
rubber wood from replanting activates also make a major contribution. Some measures to
introduce rice husk as a heating medium for brick making has not made a significant impact yet...
The tea and rubber processing industries, with more than 1000 factories distributed in the wet
zone of the country is a heavy user of fuel wood. Although some of the estates have grown wood
lots to furnish their energy needs the major supplies comes from rubber plantations or from jungle
clearing. In the past decades the difficulty of getting fuel wood from such sources has prompted
the tea industry to rely on diesel and other heating oils to fire their dryers. [THE BIOMASS
ENERGY SECTOR IN SRI LANKA-SUCESSES AND CONSTRAINTS by Eng. Parakrama
Jayasinghe BSc. FIE (SL), C Eng. MIMech E](President – Bio Energy Association of Sri Lanka)
Sri Lanka is an island of about 20 million population with urban, rural and estate population of
14.6%, 80.0% and 5.4%, respectively. This study describes biomass fuel use for cooking in Sri
Lanka. Wood was the principal cooking fuel used in 78.3% and 78.5% of households in 2000 and
2007, respectively. In 2007, 96.3% of estate sector households used firewood as compared to
84.2% in the rural and 34.6% in the urban sectors. Similar trends were noted in 2000 as well.
[Biomass Fuel Use for Cooking in Sri Lanka: Analysis of Data from National Demographic