Editorial

The ITDG Stoves Project is now in its sixth year of providing assistance to stove programmes around the world. Collaborators in Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal and Sri Lanka are all in the process of moving forward from the pilot phase to larger scale dissemination of stoves.

During the development of these and other stove programmes there has been a major shift in approach. m e requirement for durable stoves that maintain high performance has led to the development of stove designs that are made by artisans from pottery, metal and other durable materials. Fortunately this approach is providing more total benefits to users and artisans at a lower or equal cost than earlier approaches that tried to promote mud stoves through under-resourced extension programmes.

Further research on the relationship of domestic fuel use to deforestation is showing that the urban and pert-urban purchasers of wood and charcoal often have a proportionately much greater effect than rural consumers on the deforestation caused by fuel collection. In these cases programmes concentrated on urban and pert-urban users are often a more effective approach. These people also represent a stronger potential market for artisan made stoves because they have more cash and purchase their fuel.

As a result of these shifts there are new research requirements and demands for assistance. In response to this challenge the ITDG Stoves Project proposes to focus part of its research and development activities, through collaborators' programmes, on the design and production of pottery and metal stoves. This will involve rationalisation of stove designs for production and the evaluation and modification of production techniques and technologies for different scales of output.

We also plan to monitor the progress of different types of projects, aiming to identify those approaches which are the most successful in terms of fuel savings and user satisfaction, on both the regional scale and for those households most affected by the 'fuelwood crisis'.

From Shinfield we plan to expand our series of technical papers and continue to produce 'Boiling Point'. Unfortunately rising costs and budgetary constraints have forced us to seek voluntary subcriptions from those individuals and institutions that can afford to pay (see details on enclosed Subscription Information leaflet). However, we will still send BP to those who cannot afford the subscription, or who cannot obtain foreign exchange, BUT WE WOULD ASK THAT YOU WRITE TO US TO CONFIRM THAT YOU WISH TO CONTINUE RECEIVING BOILING POINT. We hope that you value the information it gives and will continue contributing to it in 1984.