How do you protect nature and the safety of women in eastern Congo?

Efficient cooking stoves are a lifeline for women (refugees) in eastern Congo and at the same time an aid to preserving the environment and nature

Efficient cooking stoves are a lifeline for women (refugees) in Eastern Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo) and at the same time an aid to preserving the environment and nature

Tribal wars in the past decades have caused hundreds of thousands to flee and settle in refugee camps. In each camp tens of thousands of refugees are trying to continue to exist with the few means at their disposal, one of the most important commodities is fuel for cooking and heating, the demand for fuel weighs on the environment, as the women go out into the forest and cut down trees and bushes wherever they come by. The felling and collection creates a serious damage to the forest in particular and to the environment in general, while women going out into the field endangers them, a survey conducted in 2008 showed that 90% of the women were harassed, beaten, raped or murdered while they were engaged in collecting combustible materials.

An average family that cooks on an (open) fire needs 7 kg of wood every day, it turns out that by cooking with the help of a cheap stove, the amount of wood can be reduced to 2 kg. The oven was built from available materials: stones, mud bricks and iron and distributed in the camps.

When garbage materials and waste (household) are used properly, they can be turned into a combustible material, a group of women learned to make fire bricks from garbage materials by mixing the garbage with water and sawdust, the bricks are dried in the sun and after a few days they are an available source of energy, some of the bricks are used by the "makers" And a large part will be sold at a cheaper price than charcoal. Thus, the production of bricks is a source of income and at the same time contributes to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The production of bricks and the use of ovens create a situation where women do not have to go out into the forest and endanger themselves. If 10,000 families use the stove a year, they will save about 13,000 tons of trees, a savings that means saving 2000 dunams of forest.
About 2 million refugees are concentrated in the refugee camps in eastern Congo, western Tanzania and other places throughout Africa. In a simple calculation, if only a quarter of the refugees would use (simple) stoves and burners from household garbage... 50 thousand dunams of forest would be saved every year. If we multiply this figure by all those residents (who are not in refugee camps) who use wood to cook on an open fire... it will become clear to us that by a simple activity, by distributing stoves and teaching women to make firebricks from trash, it is possible to save thousands of square kilometers of forest, Damage to nature and the environment can be prevented on a huge scale.

Not far away, in western Kenya near the Kakamega forest, an industry is developing that provides residents with a livelihood and an interest in preserving nature: the Kakamega forest is an extension of the equatorial forests in the Congo, the forest grows around swamps and is a unique biological environment.

In recent decades, the forest has suffered from cutting, out of about 2,500 square kilometers, only 2 square kilometers of forest remain today, and despite this, the (small) forest carries about 400 species of butterflies, some of which are rare and beautiful butterflies and are sought after by collectors, researchers and others, entrepreneurs who have adopted the name Kippo (butterfly in Swahili) taught the residents how to raise butterflies in designated habitats, "Hawai" The butterflies raise the dozens of butterflies dropped by one pair and sell them, in order to prevent wild poachers, every farmer/trader must have a license from the Kenyan Nature Conservation Authority, until the start of the project, the residents made a living by selling agricultural surpluses - barely making a living that provided about $2 a day.

Today, the sale of butterflies brings in about 950 dollars per month, and thus the residents who until recently were engaged in the destruction of their natural environment have a significant (financial) drive to preserve nature.

While in Africa environmental solutions for burning wood and coal are being sought and found here, the coal industry is rampant and there is no compensating. Residents, it's no wonder that there is no mouth and whistle because whoever opens his mouth...will be poisoned!