Cost-Benefit Analysis of LPG Cookstove Intervention

Overview

This article has been adapted from UNEP-DTU Partnership's Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Tanzania is currently hosting 358,900 refugees and faces a protracted humanitarian crisis. The government has stressed the importance of finding a rapid solution to the growing issue of woodfuel collection, stating that the environmental destruction perpetrated by the refugees will no longer be tolerated. At a humanitarian level, energy has been identified as a major failure in the UNHCR mandate to protect Persons of Concern (PoC), due to the increase in reported cases of conflict and violence with the local communities surrounding Nyarugusu camp over access to woodfuel. Therefore, a pilot program to distribute LPG as cooking fuel was undertaken in the camp between December 2016 and March 2017.  

Scope of Research

The aim of this research is to bring an economic rationale to the core of the humanitarian decision making process in examining the specific issue of cooking in the Nyarugusu refugee camp. In conducting this research, we pursued two objectives:

1. To calculate the benefit-cost ratio of a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) stove program in the camp. The business-as-usual scenario entails the use of traditional cookstoves.
   
2. To assess the Willingness-To-Pay (WTP), among the camp’s residents, for LPG. This second question prompted an ethical and theoretical consideration about asking a WTP question in the context of a refugee camp, where the provision of basic needs is traditionally covered by the UNHCR mandate. This in turn is related to the debate on the sustainability of the camp, the ‘shared but differentiated’ burden of the refugees, and their inclusion into the country’s economy.