Fuelwood Use in a Peasant Community: A Tanzanian Case Study

The Western world has been recently brought to face the dangers of relying on petroleum fuels. The future will undoubtedly see an accelerated move to alternative energy sources, such as nuclear and solar furnaces. The industrialized nations can look forward to an escape from dependence on hydrocarbon fuels, however costly and inconvenient such an escape may prove to be. But the industrialized world encompasses only a minor part of humanity; there are a great many less developed societies around the world where there is no possibility of a move to unrestricted energy sources within the foreseeable future. In fact, in the many Third World nations that must import their fuel supplies, post-1973 price rises have led to increased reliance on a source of fuel even more limited than petroleum reserves-dry wood and charcoal from forested regions. Perhaps nine-tenths of the world's poor depend on wood fuel to cook their food and heat their homes, and there is no indication that the proportion will decline. Openshaw states that about 80 percent of all households in developing countries use wood fuel as their primary source of energy, and that local industries in these areas use it as well.' According to Eckholm, wood users constitute over one-third of the