Hello all- apologizes for the long post, didnt know another way to do this.

I am involved with a multilateral development organization founded by Dartmouth alums and based in Hanover. The International Humanitarian Foundation, or IHF, conducts projects in partnership with local communit based organizations as our partners. We also give talented students at Dartmouth and other New England colleges the opportunity to gain first hand experience with all aspects of international development and non-profit work.

We are currently involved in a project addressing indoor air pollution in India. I believe this project would be an outstanding addition to the Dartmouth Initiative in Global Health and would like to submit it to the committee for consideration. A brief description of the project and our work to date follows, please contact m or visit our website for more information.

Thanks,
Dave Morse
Executive Director, IHF
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A recent World Health Organization ranks indoor air pollution as a top five factor causing ill health, behind problems like malnutrition, AIDS, and poor sanitation. Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) is the number one cause of illness in children and a significant cause of death. Studies in India and Mexico have produced results showing that extended exposure to cooking fire generated indoor air pollution significantly increases the incidence of acute lower respiratory diseases.

This project targets several peri-urban or rural villages where the local representatives of the Betsy Elizabeth Trust, a local CBO with enormous capital in the communities where it operates, have an established presence. The residents, particularly women and children who spend significant amounts of their time indoors, face serious health risks due to indoor (biomass) fuel emissions from polluting cook stoves.

The IHF is in the process of coordinating and funding redesign of cook stoves as well as installing stoves in local homes. We are seeking to augment our field work with the hiring of a local individual to act as an officer charged to maintain the improved stoves, follow up the implantation, and to identify other possible contributions the IHF may be able to assist with. Local potters will construct the improved cook stoves and, if funding allows, the BET will hire additional staff to act as a local Project Manager and provide daily oversight of the project. IHF agents and students involved in the project will make return visits to India to assist in the implementation of the project and ensure the accountability and effectiveness of the BET.

With the pilot stage of the project nearly complete, we are considering options for assessing early results and beginning to scale the project up. A Dartmouth 05 has spent the winter term in India and has produced invaluable local data as well as having a tremendously positive experience. A Thayer undergraduate student has been using this data to generate models that can be used by local potters. A team of Dartmouth undergraduates have been supporting the project through research and maintaining communications.

The IHF has committed itself to installing 2000 stoves over the next year, to maintaining high levels of studnet involvement in the project as well as generating techinical stove designs and methods for installation that can be applied throughout India and in other locations.

Hi David--

Have you considered trying to sell carbon credits to finance part of this project? These cookstoves are typically more efficient as well as less polluting, and there is an emerging global market for carbon offset credits. (One example of such a credit is offered by the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, which finances the development of green energy production.) This might be an interesting project for a Tuck and/or Thayer student.

This could potentially be done through the development of a NH Interfaith Power & Light Company. IPLs have been forming in various states around the country to offer green energy to interested consumers (both individual and corporate). Since green electricity generation isn't available everywhere, the funds are often used either for the production of green energy elsewhere on the grid or to finance reductions in energy use elsewhere. I looked into the possibility of financing clean stove projects this way at one point, and the numbers worked out to be pretty favorable, if I remember correctly. (I.e., it appeared to be cheaper to reduce total carbon emissions by building more efficient stoves in the developing world than by building wind energy plants in the U.S., so we could potentially sell offset credits at a competative rate and fund both clean stoves and other health programs.) Such a project would meet many of the criteria for desirable carbon offsets (additivity, non-leakage, etc.) plus would have a strong social justice co-benefit.

Kim Perez

Kim,

I'm trying to work with Dave on this and hope to make in into my MPH field experience project. I'd be interested in more details on the carbon credit idea since something similar had been going through my mind. I'll just go hunting on the web if you don't have specific links already available. Your numbers on the financing and where they came from would also be wonderful. I know a faith-based initiative that is doing some micro-finance work in Southern India that has an especially strong desire to get our faith community working on sustainable development and global health priorities. I would like to feel them out for project funds in that area; they might be able to help research and promote the IPL idea, too.

Jay Smith, M.D.