"Low hanging fruit" - Why intervention in developing countries is always easier.

So the following is an extract from a New York Times article someone showed me yesterday. The article presents data from a review paper in Nature Geoscience that cites Black Carbon (BC), which is produced from sources like cookstoves in developing countries:

While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies estimating that it is responsible for 18 percent of the planet’s warming, compared with 40 percent for carbon dioxide. Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming — especially in the short term, climate experts say. Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap, while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

In fact, reducing black carbon is one of a number of relatively quick and simple climate fixes using existing technologies — often called “low hanging fruit” — that scientists say should be plucked immediately to avert the worst projected consequences of global warming.

Let's not bother with the fact that the article missed out the most important line in the original paper:

It is important to emphasize that BC reduction can only help delay and not prevent unprecedented climate changes due to CO2 emissions.

Instead, I wanna focus on what the scientists and the reporters claim to be the solution to significantly reducing BC. They want to go into hundreds of thousands of villages across Asia (and possibly Africa and Latin America) and replace soot producing cookstoves with solar powered or gas ones. The stoves cost about $20, which is no doubt prohibitively expensive for both individual villagers and governments of the countries in which they live. Therefore I envisage a Euro-American funded programme to tackle this one. In order to persuade villagers to not only accept and use the new stove, but resist having two stoves, the programme will have to include various training and education elements. But before that we'd probably need feasibility and acceptability studies and once we're through with the pilots and started the community preparedness programme and constructed a timetable for delivery, we'd embark on the statutory monitoring and evaluation to ensure that things are being delivered effectively. Oh and let's not forget that we might also need an intervention programme to persuade governments to legislate against the old cookstoves, just in case voluntary behaviour change is not as forthcoming as the pilots first suggested. The new stoves may also have significant health benefits, so perhaps stepwise, clustered, randomised controlled trials would be in order and... you perhaps see what I am driving at.

A major programme to introduce and replace cookstoves in these countries is comparable to developing and delivering any major intervention, such as polio vaccinations, malaria net distribution or indeed male circumcision. However, for some reason changing the lifestyle of perhaps over a billion people represents "low hanging fruit" in comparison attempting to get far fewer individuals and corporations in the West to reduce their carbon dioxide output. (And remember, BC reduction will only delay not prevent runaway climate change. Also remember, that cookstoves in developing countries do not represent the total BC production).

Fact is, it's not just about the "simple" technology. Intervention (and the accompanying research) is always easier in developing countries because the rights of the target individuals are never in question. It's cheaper because these people's lives are worth much less than ours - the constuction, delivery, installation and training for use of these stoves will cost peanuts because the labour is cheap. A similar programme to perhaps fit biomass boilers in all homes in the UK, or perhaps legislate against non-energy efficient lightbulbs would be unthinkable, indeed refusing to open a new coal powered plant in the UK is unthinkable!

"Low hanging fruit" is just a euphemism for "low ethical standards". It means "We can mess about with these people and there will be fewer financial and political ramifications and no one will ever know if things go wrong". It's the reason why it will always be easier to go into Africa, Asia and Latin America to solve problems that affect us all.