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ENERGIA News Issue 4, October 1997

Economic Factors in the Adoption of Improved Stoves

Dev Nathan

This article first appeared in Wood Energy News vol. 12 no. 1 (December 1996/April 1997). We are very grateful to Dev Nathan and the Regional Wood Energy Development Programme in Asia (RWEDP) for permission to reprint it here.

Indoor air pollution due to the burning of biomass fuels has been shown to be an important factor increasing the prevalence of acute respiratory infections in infants and children, and chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD), often leading to heart damage (cor pulmonale), in adult women. Studies undertaken by Dr M.R. Pandey and his colleagues (1996) also show that exposure to harmful indoor air pollutants, and thus the morbidity and mortality it can cause, could be significantly reduced by installation and use of improved stoves.

Improved stove programmes have rarely had an explicit health focus. The exception is, perhaps, the early Indian smokeless chula programme. Improved stove programmes have almost all been promoted in order to reduce the use of wood for fuel and thus reduce deforestation. But these programmes have met with varied success. China is the main success story. By 1991, some 150 million or 70 per cent, of farm households in China had adopted improved stoves sold to them at commercial prices. In India, on the other hand, only about 15 per cent of farm households had adopted improved stoves by 1992, even though the improved stoves were offered at highly subsidised prices.

Why is there such a marked difference in the performance of China and India in the dissemination of improved stoves? In examining this question, we will look at the role of economic factors, in particular the lack of value generally placed on women's labour. These factors affect the rate of dissemination of a technology that would benefit women by reducing the labour time they spend in gathering and using wood as fuel, and could have significant health benefits for women, infants and children who spend a lot of time around their mothers.

In considering the various factors in household energy use (as, for instance, in Kirk Smith et al., 1992), the most important is held to be the level of household income. This, according to the above-mentioned article, explains China's relative success in disseminating the 150 million improved stoves, while India has managed little more than a tenth of that number. From such an analysis would follow the policy prescription that a key factor in the adoption of improved stoves or in moving up the “energy ladder” (i.e. moving from the non-commercial to commercial fuels) would be an increase in household incomes.

The transition away from reliance on collected wood as fuel and toward increased purchase of commercial (often fossil) fuels tends to occur as people's standards of living improve.’ (Smith et al, 1992).

The question we need to ask is whether the model of the household as a unit possessing a certain aggregate amount of resources, land, labour and capital is sufficient to explain the nature of woodfuel demand and supply. Or do we need to carry out a gender analysis of labour availability in the farm household in order to understand the woodfuel market? The point is not to introduce gender for the sake of complexity - complexity is not a virtue if it does not increase explanatory power - but let us just see what difference is made by a gender disaggregation of the farm family's labour availability. Table 1 highlights the imbalance in domestic labour time between the genders in four developing countries.

Table 1: Women's greater workload

* For Nepal, firewood collection includes grass and leaf fodder collection; for Indonesia, cooking is included in food processing.
Source: Cecelski (1995)

Significance of differences in urban and rural patterns

Rural use of woodfuel differs significantly from urban use. In urban areas, it is a commodity, sold and purchased on the market. There is very little collection of wood for self-use. Consequently, in urban areas, woodfuel is compared with all other fuels, and its sale and purchase are subject to the same forces as the supply and demand of other fuels. In the rural situation, on the other hand, woodfuel is not produced as a commodity (i.e. it is not produced for sale). It is largely collected by farm households for self-consumption. A study in Pakistan (Ouerghi, 1993, 71) showed that 69 per cent of woodfuel was collected and therefore considered financially free.

What the rural household expends is labour time in collecting the woodfuel. Thus it is through the labour necessary for appropriation and processing that wood as energy relates to the rest of the farm economy. But not all labour time is valued in the same way. There is first of all a distinction between the technical concept of effort (or energy expended) and the economic concept of work. For instance, the effort involved in childcare or healthcare is not regarded as work, but as a service: a service performed by a woman for her family.

But a distinction does exist between work that provides or brings in cash income and work which does not. A notion also exists of the other earnings possible with the available labour time: the opportunity cost of labour in terms of alternatives foregone.

What empirical studies do show is that the collection, processing and use of woodfuel are largely activities undertaken by women, and, to an extent, by children. Men, on the other hand, tend to dominate in waged and other monetary income-earning work. There are some differences in this pattern, as will be discussed later, but even in matrilineal communities like the Khasi in north-east India or the Mosuo in Yunnan, China, men dominate the external economic sector, the sector involving cash relations. It is women's unwaged labour that is the main factor in the collection and use of woodfuel. Thus, the extent to which an attempt is made to economise on women's labour in woodfuel collection depends on the alternatives available for its use.

Opportunity costs of women's unvalued labour

The use of improved stoves is one example of a way of economising on the labour of fuel collection, since less fuel is needed for their operation. For the farm household, it is not the fuel comparison that is important, but the labour comparison; the comparison of women's labour time. Will money really be spent in acquiring (or maintaining and subsequently replacing) an improved stove in order to economise on labour that does not produce monetary income (i.e. does not produce marketable goods and services), or where the saved labour cannot be used to produce such marketable goods and services? What would be the opportunity value of the improved stove, in terms of other income that could be earned or production that could be increased, if more commercial uses for that labour were available?

Regarding the role of women's income-earning opportunities in determining the adoption of labour-saving innovations like improved stoves, we can make an inter-country comparison: China's “best” rural areas, where the improved stove programme has been successful, have a high level of village-level industry and commercial production of livestock and vegetables. In these income-earning activities, there is substantial participation by women, which does not even fall during the child-bearing years. This high degree of participation by women in the income-earning labour force must be reflected in a strong drive to economise on their labour in fuel collection and use, resulting in the high rate of adoption of unsubsidised improved stoves.

In contrast, rural areas in India show low participation in money-earning activities by the women of farm households: ‘If women are involved in income-generating activities which will value their time and make it more profitable to purchase firewood than collect it, improved stoves will have higher chances of success. Households will be motivated to use more efficient stoves because of the direct financial impact.'(Ouerghi, 1993).

Whether a farm household seeks greater efficiency in fuel use (an improvement which will cost some money)depends on the opportunity cost of labour in woodfuel collection and cooking. The lower the income or production lost by women spending more time in collecting, the less will be the incentive to adopt improved stoves, or to switch to more efficient commercial fuels.

The labour time we need to consider is not only that spent in collecting, but also that spent in cooking, including fuel preparation. As shown in Gerald Leach and Marcia Gowen (1987), the rate of fuel collection can be converted into a monetary value, using the existing price of woodfuel, in order to give a cash measure of the opportunity cost of woodfuel collection. In a Mexican example cited by the authors, the rate of wood collection was 6.2 kg/hour, while the local market price of wood was Mn$3.00 per kg. This gives a “value” to woodfuel collection of Mn$18.60 per hour. The minimum labour wage was at that time Mn$27.50 per hour.

Obviously, if employment were available, it would be preferable to earn cash as a labourer and buy wood, rather than collect it. But the absence of adequate employment or other income-earning opportunities would mean that the above substitution would not take place. There would be no incentive to save labour time in collecting woodfuel or in cooking with it. This lack of incentive would almost certainly affect the farm household's decision maker. If women have no alternative income-earning opportunities for the potential labour time saved by improved stoves, then even if they are the household decision makers (as they are in a number of matrilineal societies), they will not decide in favour of spending cash to acquire the improved stoves. This might explain why, even in matrilineal communities like those in eastern Bhutan, stove programmes have failed.

The above analysis of the effect of the lack of value placed on women's labour time holds good even for the labour of children, girls in particular. To the extent that the education of girls is not valued (which is at least to some extent the case, because they tend to leave the community and the investment in their education is then lost to their own parental families), there would again be no pressure to economise on their labour, which also contributes to woodfuel collection.

From the above, it also follows that pressure to economise on woodfuel use would increase if women were to become more involved in money-earning activities, particularly those outside the homestead.

Most of the activities reserved for women, either socially or in projects, tend to be physically located in and around the home. It increases the intensity of house-based work, as more tasks have to be performed at the same time. On the other hand, if work taken up by women were of a type that took them outside the homestead, it is likely there would be greater pressure for economising on their labour time.

This could be through the adoption of labour-saving innovations, or through men taking on some of the responsibility for child care (as is seen among some swiddening communities, where women and older children go to the swidden fields, leaving men and younger children at home), or even through more social provision of these necessary functions (as through childcare centres at Food for Work sites). And there would be a definite increase in the demand for labour-saving food-processing methods, to reduce time spent in collecting fuel and in cooking itself.

The above analysis holds for farm households that collect their own fuel. It does not hold for farm households that buy fuel or engage paid labour to collect it for them. These would also be households which attach considerations of prestige to not having “their women” working outside the homestead. In the South Asian situation, these are also the households that would have considerable crop residues and animal dung for use as fuel, more than would be needed as organic manure for the fields. The availability of other “free”- that is, unpriced - fuel sources would reduce the pressures for reducing fuel use, and there would be little pressure to reduce women's cooking time.

Even in households that collect their own fuel, a reduction in wood availability is not likely to trigger fuel substitution in favour of commercial fuels. Rather, as has been observed, the same free labour would be used to collect other “free” fuel sources, like shrubs, dung cakes and crop residues. “This (the availability of unvalued women's labour time) explains why fuelwood transition (to more efficient, modern fuels) is not linked to income level and is not happening in rural areas (in Pakistan)”(Ouerghi, 1993, p. 77).

The experience of improved stove programmes has repeatedly shown that subsidies lead to the adoption of the improvements only so long as the subsidies are in place. A sustained change in patterns of fuel use cannot depend on continuous subsidies. The expenditure pattern resulting from women's unpaid labour cannot be successfully changed by subsidies. What is required is change in the role of women's labour.

Thus, the primary emphasis in attempting to bring about an increase in fuel efficiency or in fuel switching should be on increasing the possibility of women's income-earning opportunities, and those outside the homestead. The experiences of both South Korea and China show that this is the main factor in inducing greater fuel efficiency or fuel substitution. This is not an intervention in what is regarded as “energy policy”. But there is no a priori reason why an important effect on energy use should come from within what is considered the field of energy policy, which deals with the availability and price of different fuels. The availability and opportunity costs of different kinds of labour, of women and men, can be seen to have a major effect on the pattern of fuel use. Increasing women's income-earning labour relative to the amount of unpaid labour itself means a change in women's role in the household. This is a change in gender relations, and has further implications for other aspects of gender relations.

Discrimination in provision of leisure

But is the non-adoption of devices that save women's labour time only a reaction to its low opportunity cost? Even in the absence of increased income-earning opportunities, the possibility of increasing leisure still exists.

Given the fact that women routinely work a few hours more per day than men in most regions of the world, it seems clear that increasing women's leisure time is important. But then the factor of the gendered control of household income comes into the picture. If it is possible for some income to be spent on leisure, rather than in the expectation of a monetary return, then it is men's leisure time and related activities that are likely to be given priority. For instance, in a village of the Hani people in Yunnan, we observed that money was spent on acquiring cassette players, with which men could listen to music in their substantial leisure time, rather than in getting piped water or improved stoves, both of which would have reduced women's working hours.

What this means is that the sustained under-investment in devices that save women's labour time, which would also save fuel, is not only a function of the relatively low opportunity cost of women's labour time compared to that of men, but also of the systematic male bias in favour of their own leisure time over that of females.

References

• Cecelski E., 1995, From Rio to Beijing: Engendering the Energy Debate, Energy Policy, vol 23. no. 6
• Leach G. and Marcia Gowen, 1987, Household Energy Handbook, World Bank, Washington
• Ouerghi A., 1993, Woodfuel Use in Pakistan: Sustainability of Supply and Socio-economic and Environmental Implications, Pakistan Household Energy Strategy Study, HESS, Pakistan
• Smith K., R. van der Plas, D.F. Barnes and K. Openshaw, 1992, What Makes People Cook with Improved Stoves? A Comparative Review, joint ESMAP/UNDP report

For more information, please contact Dev Nathan through:
Wood Energy News, FAO Maliwan Mansions, Phra Atit Road, Bangkok, Thailand.