Development of the Rocket Stove, an alternative cooking method in the Amoron'I Mania region, Madagascar 

The population of Ambohimitombo and Kianjandrakefina, two villages 300 km south of Antananarivo, lives in extreme poverty. Although land cleared for farming in this area is protected (slash-and-burn cultivation), cutting wood for heating and timber destroys 10 to 20 hectares of forest a year and causes soil erosion and sterility and the deterioration and drying out of basins and rivers.

Madagasikara Miantoka, an association under Madagascan law, raises awareness in the local populations on protecting and sustainably managing habitats and natural resources. The “Rocket Stove” project aims at reducing deforestation while developing a new micro-entrepreneurial activity. The “Rocket Stove” is a new type of oven, based on clay, that decreases the consumption of heating wood by 50% and thus diminishes deforestation.

The creation of an oven fabrication workshop will provide jobs for 25 farmers in the framework of a cooperative, while training them in micro-entrepreneurship. The Air Liquide Foundation, aware of the social, environmental and economic risks of deforestation, financed the raw material needed to make a first series of “Rocket Stoves” as well as the remodeling of the cooperative’s workshops. The objective of the Madagasikara Miantoka association is to equip 3,000 households with this stove by the end of 2012.