Promulgation on the use of energy saving of fuel efficient stoves has always focused on rural areas where presumably almost all residents, (approximately 90 percent of all households) use firewood for cooking.
However, environmentalists think there should be a change of approach and focus on urban areas where the consumption of charcoal and firewood is even greater.
Discussing the energy situation in Tanzania, they said that statistics show that urban areas need more of such advocacy because of the patterns of use and demand of the charcoal and firewood.
Their argument is supported by a Policy Brief on ‘Biomass Energy: Marginalized but an Important Energy Source for the Majority in Tanzania’ issued by the Tanzania Traditional Energy Development Organization (TaTEDO) in March, 2016.
The brief said that about 71 percent of all urban households in Tanzania consume charcoal while about 19 percent use firewood. The brief showed that in Dar es Salaam, 91 percent of all households consumed charcoal in 2012, and 3 percent consumed firewood.
According to another study by Neema Msuya, Abraham Temu and Enock Masanja of the Department of Chemical and Mining Engineering of the University of Dar es Salaam, titled ‘Environmental Burden of Charcoal Production and Use in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania which was produced in a Journal of Environmental Protection in January, 2011, over one million tonnes of charcoal is used for cooking annually in Tanzania’s urban areas.
“This is equivalent to 109,500 ha of forest loss,” they pointed out, saying the increasing tendency to use charcoal instead of electricity or LPG is driven by availability of charcoal and its presumed low price.
Increased consumption of charcoal results in increased forest cover loss,” the researchers said. Some of the impacts of the forest loss is the degradation of water sources, reduction in soil quality and hence decreases in agricultural productivity, damaged habitat, diminishing biodiversity, and reduced sequestration of carbon dioxide by trees.
The average charcoal consumption in Dar es Salaam (based on 2009 data) was 1904 tonnes/day, equals to 694,960 tonnes per year. Using this charcoal consumption as the basis, the projection for the charcoal demand for the next 20 years with respect to population growth shows only twenty years to come (in 2030) more than 18 million tonnes of charcoal will be consumed in Dar es Salaam.
They said that what it means for the environment is that more than 2.8 million ha of forest will be cut to fulfill the demand charcoal for Dar es Salaam alone. Also, the pro-cess of producing and using this amount of charcoal has huge impact on the environment as measured by the amount of gases which will result and emitted to the atmosphere.
Charcoal production and use will result in about 2.5 tonnes of CO2 annually, making a total of 49.7 million tonnes of CO2 up to 2030. “This is a disaster”, they pointed out, saying that not only to human health, but also to environment and other creatures.
The higher the production rate for charcoal the higher the removal of trees and at last no carbon sink. Because of inefficiency of the kilns and charcoal stoves a total of 20 million tonnes of CO will be released to the atmosphere up to 2030.
