A sustainable forest management (SFM) project implemented by the Cambodian Forestry Administration will help set up kilns to produce energy-saving cooking stoves at six locations in four provinces to save energy and preserve forests near those communities.

Nhem Sovanna, national adviser for the SFM project, said that it would focus on rural areas where the majority of people used traditional stoves that needed a lot of wood or coal in order to fuel them.

So far, the SFM has covered 30 communities in four provinces − Kampong Chhnang, Pursat, Battambang and Banteay Meanchey − to set up six kilns to produce 300,000 stoves.

The plan to set up kilns aimed to introduce people who live near the communities’ forests to save energy during cooking and help them save energy, Sovanna said.

“As part of our program, we will organise training centres to teach people in local areas how to produce at least 300,000 stoves each year,” he said.

According to data released at an SFM project technical meeting on Tuesday, the project began in November, 2011 and will end in February, 2015.

It is funded by the United Nations Development Program and the Global Environmental Fund.

This year, the project will cost slightly more than $1 million, and the entire project will cost nearly $4 million over three years, the data indicates.

Cooking on circular-mouthed stoves could reduce the amount of energy consumed by 22 per cent, Victor Jona, deputy director-general of the energy department at the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, told an energy conference in Phnom Penh last July.

According to Jona, at that time, 2.8 million stoves had been produced and 1.6 million of them had been distributed by the Group for the Environment, Renewable Energy and Solidarity (GERES), a French NGO, with the co-operation of the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy.

Nhem Sovanna said there were more than 400 forest communities in Cambodia’s provinces.

However, he said the majority of them did not have a plan for living sustainably in the forest.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Rann Reuy at [email protected]