Report on Eco-Chulhas from Lokkere Village, Gundulpet Taluk, Karnataka, India : June September 2009

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1 Report on Eco-Chulhas from Lokkere Village, Gundulpet Taluk, Karnataka, India : June September Background 1.1. About Junglescapes Junglescapes Charitable Trust is a non-profit based in Bangalore that works with villagers living in and around forest areas in Karnataka on sustainable wildlife conservation activities. Our activities include Afforestation of degraded forest areas Empowering villagers to gain alternate employment in eco-friendly occupations like community managed eco-tourism. Traditional occupations like agriculture do not work well in these areas due to frequent crop raids by animals and low water availability. Improving eco-awareness and creating better custodianship of the forest wealth among these populations Lantana One of the main problems facing forests in India is rampant growth of lantana, a non-native weed that is invasive and fast growing. Lantana is not eaten by animals and has no utility as such. It is aggressive and pushes out other plant species quite rapidly. Every year the Forest departments spend huge amounts of money trying to remove or burn lantana bushes. Junglescapes has also been running programs for enabling villagers to make furniture from lantana, but this consumes very insignificant quantities of the weed per year Human-Animal conflict The area lies in a prime elephant migratory corridor. There is significant humananimal conflict as a result. People are constantly concerned about elephant attacks on crops and humans. 2. Eco Chulha Experience in Lokkere 2.1 About Lokkere Lokkere is a small hamlet of 25 families. It is situated at the edge of one of the major tiger reserves in India called Bandipur, in the State of Karnataka (refer map in Annexure 2). The villagers are keen on conservation activities and have a

2 Village Forest Committee and a Women s Self-Help Group, both of which are organizations run by the villagers. Junglescapes has been working with the Lokkere villagers for over a year on afforestation and water harvesting activities. All our activities are run in consultation with the Forest department. 2.2 Eco-Chulhas at Lokkere Junglescapes had been looking at eco-chulhas for the Lokkere villagers for two reasons a. It reduces the amount of firewood that is used for cooking, thus reducing the depletion of forest cover. b. It also reduces human-animal conflict as the frequency of trips into the forest for firewood collection comes down. 2.3 First Philips Eco-Chulhas at Lokkere When we came to know about the Philips eco-chulhas, Junglescapes got in touch with Mr Griffioen Bas and Mr Unmesh Shah of Philips by , who in turn put us in touch with Erin Foundation, Bangalore (Mr Sai Prakash). Erin Foundation immediately gave us a SAMPOORNA chulha for trial. The trial chulha was taken to Lokkere by the Junglescapes volunteers on 20 th June 2009 along with the Engineer from Erin Foundation, and installed in the house of one of the villagers. A local villager (Mr Nagaraj) who had prior experience in masonry work assisted the Erin Engineer in the installation. Nagaraj was asked to propagate the idea and take further orders Further Chulhas Within a period of 2 weeks, Nagaraj had request for 15 more chulhas from the villagers. We requested Nagaraj to come to Bangalore for a 2 day training at Erin Foundation on chulha installation which was successfully completed. Nagaraj went back with 15 SARAL chulhas on 7 th August All the chulhas have been installed at the time of this report Feedback The feedback from the villagers is uniformly positive. They are very happy with the chulha for a number of reasons. We carried out an interview with the family where the first chulha was installed (refer Annexure 1) which is self-explanatory. We have also captured most of this interview on video (in Kannada language).

3 There is a strong preference for Saral over Sampoorna amongst the villagers. The reason is that the cooking stoves in Saral are with smaller diameter and hence they are able to use the existing smaller vessels. They feel that Sampoorna requires larger vessels that many do not possess, and they end up losing the energy that escapes through the gaps. 3. Summary The Philips eco-chulha can be a major tool in reducing the spread of lantana, apart from the health and other benefits for the villagers. Hence, it can play a major role in environment protection and prevention of deforestation for cooking purposes. On an average if a family uses 5 kgs of lantana per day, the total lantana consumed over 25 families per annum would be around 50 tons. If we extrapolate this over all the nearby villages (approx 300 families) the opportunity is tremendous. We have discussed this with the Forest department and they are excited about the potential to control lantana through this chulha. It is worth noting that all the families are Below the Poverty Line families. 4. Next Steps a. Our immediate goal is to make Lokkere a 100% eco-chulha village by end October b. There is a request for 30 more chulhas from two adjoining villages (Guddukere and Chik Yel Chetty) which are covered by Junglescapes activities and have a total number of 40 families. We have requested Erin to provide these and plan to install these by end October. c. We would like to promote this chulha in villages surrounding forests as a LANTANA CHULHA to drive home the point that this runs on lantana. d. The Forest Department is keen to popularize this chulha over a wider area. Erin may like to pursue this opportunity. e. Request Philips and Erin to carry out follow-up and education on proper maintenance of the chulha. Report prepared by Ramesh Venkataraman, Managing Trustee, Junglescapes Charitable Trust, Bangalore, India 12 th September 2009

4 Annexure 1: Interview with Mr Swami and his wife Mrs Nagamma, the users of the first eco-chulha installed at Lokkere (Sampoorna) on 20 th June What are the main benefits of the eco-chulha that you have been using? The main benefit is that it requires less firewood than earlier. We use almost a fourth of the firewood that we used earlier. The other benefit is that the cooking takes much less time. Where we were spending 2 and a half hours before, we spend around an hour now. This is a great benefit as all the women go to work as daily farm workers and they can leave early and also when they come back they can prepare dinner faster. We are able to cook on both the stoves. We use the main stove for cooking vegetables, sambar (Dhal), etc. and the second one for making rice and also hot water for drinking and for bathing the children. 2. Has it reduced the number of trips that you have to make into the jungles to collect firewood? What hazards do you face when you go to collect firewood? Yes. I (the husband) used to go thrice a week to collect firewood but now I have to go only once a week. When we go into the jungles we have to be careful as there are elephants and leopards around, there is always a risk. 3. Are you running the chulha on lantana? Yes. We are able to run this chulha almost entirely on lantana as the heat generation (conversion) on this stove is good. Lantana burns fast and generates heat fast and therefore the cooking is faster (the old chulhas were not compatible with lantana). We use smaller size lantana for starting the chulha but after minutes we use bigger lantana branches. 4. Why do you use other wood? We use other wood between the morning and evening cooking, to keep the stove warm. The cooking is mainly with lantana 5. What are the other benefits of the chulha? There is no smoke in this chulha. With the earlier chulha the entire house used to be filled with smoke. We also had to white wash (paint) the house frequently earlier which we can avoid now. Also, in the earlier chulha we needed to use a large amount of kerosene but now we use very little.

5 6. Are you happy with the chulha? Are there any complaints? We are very happy with the chulha. We have a suggestion on the Sampoorna. The cooking openings are too large and hence needs a large vessel to cover it, or else the heat escapes. The cooking hole should be made smaller to avoid this. The Saral is better as the holes are smaller. 7. Have you been told how to maintain the chulha? Yes, Nagaraj has told us to clean the ash regularly (information on cleaning the exhaust pipe appears not to be have been communicated as yet)

6 Annexure 2: Map of Lokkere Village (and Bandipur Tiger Reserve)