This month, we look at the efforts of Dr. Karabi Dutta, who, despite being a biotechnologist by trade, takes a multi-disciplinary (including architecture and economics, to name but two) approach to improving air quality in India. In just four years time, Dr. Karabi Dutta has managed to change the fortunes, by improving the quality of the air breathed, of the inhabitants of seventeen villages in and around Pune, located in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. This impressive result comes from Dr. Dutta’s dedication to the practice of household energy. Although a biotechnologist by trade, Dr. Dutta understands that the many facets and avenues of household energy do not exist in isolation from each other. To become an effective household energy practitioner, one needs to know a great deal beyond one’s area of expertise. Dr. Dutta’s own list includes knowledge of social sciences and health sciences; environmental or biological sciences; a basic understanding of statistics and statistical methods; a reasonably good knowledge of the geography of the area of work; and an understanding of the social structure and customs of the community where work occurs. As she notes, since this ‘is difficult, if not impossible, it is [one of] the most important issues facing household energy practitioners today’; i.e., to understand all the many areas of knowledge which effect household energy use. Yet, Dr. Dutta is on her way to proving that the impossible may, indeed, be within reach.
This is exemplified in one of Dr. Dutta’s current projects in which the Shell Foundation, UK, has provided funding to monitor the change in indoor air quality, following the introduction of improved biomass stoves, in rural homes within Maharashtra, India; some of these stoves have chimneys, while some do not. Preliminary feedback from the project revealed that rural households preferred chimneyless improved stoves due to both the ease of maintenance and avoided chore of chimney cleaning. This concerned Dr. Dutta, as many rural kitchens are either poorly ventilated or have no ventilators to help the quick dissemination of pollutants.
So, this biotechnologist, never one to be confined by her area of expertise, turned to architecture. A project proposal to study the various kitchen architectures in village homes with respect to ventilation was submitted to the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India (recently receiving approval). Entitled ‘Establishing norms for kitchen architecture and cooking devices for pollution free cooking in rural Maharashtra’, the objective is to design kitchen models showing those positions of ventilators and stoves which achieve the greatest improvements in indoor air quality; these models will be kept in the village administrative centres and the householders can adapt these designs when they remodel their kitchens or build new kitchens.
Not only does Dr. Dutta realize that no one discipline is sufficient in mitigating the negative impacts of current household energy demand in developing countries, but she also understands that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Although the immediate aim of her work is to monitor and improve indoor air quality in rural households, Dr. Dutta approaches each household and project individually, constantly adapting and updating her methods to promote change. For example, in recognizing that not all households will, or are able to, make the switch to improved stoves, Dr. Dutta, as part of her monitoring activities, incorporates awareness raising on the ill effects of air pollution, especially on children, from the use of traditional stoves; this has led to households who do not possess an improved stove moving their traditional stoves out of the kitchen and onto the open verandah to protect their children from the stove emissions.
Despite the presence of all these multi-dimensional pieces (e.g., methods, approaches, and solutions), Dr. Dutta understands that, ironically, it all comes down to one key challenge: all households use a variety of biomass as fuel, this biomass is available free of cost, and thus the target audience is not going to stop using these fuels in the near future, nor are they likely to shift to cleaner fuels for which they have to spend money. This is the case for each of the four separate indoor air monitoring projects she is currently involved in, and the many preceding these; Dr. Dutta is not deterred, though. In her quest to improve indoor air quality, she knows that this issue is linked with economics (e.g., fuel is free), sociology (e.g., cultural influences of fuel choices), natural resource sciences (e.g., the need to balance resource demand and supply), and thus always must be considered in any attempt to effect change – a true household energy practitioner indeed.
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