Environmental research

In the urban poor communities of Dharan municipality, 70 % of household rely on wood and 30 % kerosene for cooking which can be expensive, time consuming to obtain and damaging to the environment. Cutting wood has placed a huge strain on the wood resources of the surrounding area. Further, Kerosene produces creates unhealthy particulate and volatile hydrocarbon emissions causing respiratory problems. According to the World Bank, homes where kerosene is the dominant lighting fuel expose occupants to the equivalent of smoke from 2 packs of cigarettes a day. Women are mostly confined to household cores spending much of their time in collecting woods and in the kitchen. They are more exposed to indoor smoke causing adverse effect to their health. Decentralized renewable energy technologies represent a practical solution to these problems. Renewable energy systems such as biogas and bio-briquette have proven effective in providing modest but very useful amounts of energy to poor communities in Nepal. The proposed project will spread biogas in the two urban poor communities in Dharan city through training for the local people on constructing biogesters using local materials, awareness raising about the benefits of the model. Wider use of biogas units would help reduce the demand for firewood in urban poor communities and would produce high quality fertilizer for local farming efforts. Further, bio-briquette and bio-gas will help in reducing greenhouse gas like methane. Methane is greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. By capturing and burning the methane produced from animal manure, anaerobic digesters help to slow down the rate of global warming. Lumanti is run by women members only.

Nepal