For those of you who don’t know, I am at the moment at Uttarakhand on the outskirts of a small hill station called Ranikhet. I am here on a volunteering assignment with an NGO named Grassroots.
The first week of my visit is an orientation to what Grassroots and its sister concern Umang does. As a part of the orientation, I visited 2 neighboring villages about 20 kms from here called Chilagaon and Bhauri.
The entire village looked really dry. On asking I found out that the water level in the villages has dropped considerably over the last few years. The major reasons are afforestation for firewood needed for cooking. Also, the state government had asked the villagers to plant eucalyptus which the government would buy at a high price. Eucalyptus and Pine use up a lot of the ground water hence leave the surroundings dry. The villagers had planted eucalyptus but by the time the trees had grown, the government had changed and the new government refused to purchase the eucalyptus. Now, the forest department has made it illegal for cutting down of trees which are not within the boundary wall their home. The villagers are stuck now with water consuming trees in a dry region.
We saw a number of bio-gas plants while we were there. In the village of Chilagaon, there were 10 houses which had bio gas plants. The cost of a small plant is typically 7000INR but Grassroots provides a large number of construction material and transportation for those material for free due to which the cost to every villager is about 2000INR.
Many of the villagers explained to us how it worked. A basic bio gas plant is able to produce enough gas to provide them for a part of their cooking. They still depend on firewood for a lot of their needs. During winter especially, the bio gas produced is less hence during winter they mainly depend on firewood.
On asking one of the villages who had been using the bio gas plant for 3 years about the impact of the plant, he told me that typically one village household requires 4 trees worth of firewood in a year and due to the afforestation, the water levels have reduced considerably and there is hardly any rain in a year. But those houses which have bio gas plants need to use wood equivalent to 1 tree in the year as a large part of the cooking can be done using the bio gas plants. Hence, bio gas plants help in controlling afforestation and the effect of climate change to some extent.
Though bio gas plants the villagers are able to reduce the smoke that comes out of firewood which is good for them and the environment. Bio gas cooks food almost 75% faster than firewood. He also mentioned how bio gas has helped the women by freeing them of the chore of wood collection. Typically a Pahadi woman has to walk about 3 kilometers in search of firewood and has to carry the wood for a long distance. I met a few Pahadi woman a few days back who were carrying wood and they explained to me about how painful and cumbersome the process of wood collection is. According to one of those women, a Pahadi woman’s life is a waste cause she spends all her time doing cumbersome tasks and then has to take care of the family. So bio gas has helped the woman of Chilagaon as they now have more time in their hands which they spend on knitting sweaters for Umang (Grassroots’ sister concern) for which they are able to earn a small amount.
Not many of the villagers were aware of the effects of afforestation, the youth there especially did not see the correlation between afforestation and climate change.
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