As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been MIA while working on a BOP mapping project that will be publicly unveiled on June 12 at the IADB conference. Side note – have you seen the speaker list? Cardinal Maradiaga, Carlos Slim, Hernando de Soto, Nicholas Negroponte, Portia Simpson Miller, Bill Clinton, Hector Ureta...whomever’s put the agenda together has done a great job. Anyway, while I was crunching numbers, I managed to at least read some of my favorite blogs and web sites, and have kept tabs on some of the better BOP projects and news stories that have come across my desk lately. A snapshot:

About a month ago JP wrote about fuel efficient cookers , but they make me so giddy that I just had to write about them too, with a few fresh examples.  

If you're new to the concept and hear "fuel efficient cooker," you'll probably think "Great! Sounds eco-friendly." It sure is.  Solar cookers require no wood at all, while clay, biogas, and other kinds of cookers can alleviate deforestation by reducing firewood usage by 50% or more.  The reduced consumption of fuel means saving money, another benefit.  

Less need to collect firewood means more time to go to things like attend school, for children, particularly girls, are often the ones asked to perform this wearisome task.  The Near East Foundation estimates that in one Moroccan village where it introduced clay cookers, women aged 8 to 60 each day were collecting 20-30 kg of wood over 15 kilometers for a total of 120 hours a year.

Using non-wood powered cookers brings another physical benefit: fewer respiratory and eye problems. Burning wood, dung, and crop residues (biomass fuels used by 60% of Africans) indoors can irritate lungs and eyes, and the WHO reports, causes 1.5 million deaths (more than malaria) by indoor air pollution every year.

Browsing the morning headlines, I came across a startling and at first disturbing trend in the Indian tourism industry.  I had just finished reading a nice article on how the government plans to operate eco-tours of rural Jharkhand when I found a Guardian piece describing one community organization's forays into "Poorism." 

Proteak’s co-founder, Hector Bonilla is convinced he can defy a deeply engrained and concerning global trend in an extremely problematic sector. He operates within the law, practices responsible forestry and runs a transparent company. This might seem routine, until you consider what he does for a living. Hector is in the teak business. Do even a basic Google search on teak logging and you find plenty of evidence of the issues with harvesting this valuable wood. Article after article discusses the environmental devastation and social ills that arise from the massive illegal or forced logging among major teak producing countries.