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| Group Picture of the Opening Day Attendees |
ICS Regional Knowledge Sharing
Workshop, 18-20 August 2014 at Hotel Himalaya, Kathmandu Nepal has been one
important intervention in bringing together the south Asian Cookstoves testers
and related stakeholders to discuss on the issues of biomass cookstoves testing
and setting up the ground for the outline of the ISO TC 285 Field Testing
Guidance Document (Working Group III). It was participated by about 13 expert
delegates from the region and about 45 from Nepal. The first day
inauguration and policy session in general was participated by over 80
participants specially the people from related ministries of Government
of Nepal and associated stakeholders including colleagues from RTKCs from
China, India, Cambodia and invitees from Bhutan, The World Bank
representatives, Clean Energy Development Bank, GIZ among others organization
in Nepal. The remaining two days were with the specific testing centers and
closely related stakeholders.
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| Participants at the workshop |
The Nepalese policy makers on the
first day - inauguration session spoke about the context and its importance
especially in Nepal with their commitments for providing friendly environments
regarding ICS promotions by generating national and international
cooperation’s. The need for updated, firsthand data availability on ICS and
related Indoor Air pollution was highly emphasized and was committed by Nepal
Planning commission Vice Chair Prof. Dr. Govind Raj Pokhrel (chief guest of the
event) to incorporate these issues seriously in the upcoming plans.
The second session, the policy
session was related to understanding the ICS and standardization
policies/practices of China, India and Nepal. The success and failures of some
policies in India, Nepal and China were highlighted with updates on the status
of their existing policies/testing standard activities.
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| Participants at the workshop |
It was then followed by the panel
discussion on “Development Partner’s Perspectives on ICS Programmes and ICS
Testing Issues”. Panel Consisted of the representatives of The World bank, USA,
UNDP Bhutan, SNV Nepal, ENERGIA The Neatherlands and SE4ALL UNDP Nepal.
The discussion was based on the pre-framed questions such as: the organization's definition of program effectiveness;
main criteria in choosing stoves for the program; What priority is given to
tested stoves and which metrics do they use.. (efficiency, air quality…);
perception on user acceptance through stove testing results.. If laboratory
performance was significantly different from field performance, would that make
a difference to the program's decisions.. etc.. The overall impression was that
there is still lack of well-coordinated evaluation modalities for the
cookstoves programmes and need to have one that addresses the needs of all the
players – donors, ground users, implementers, policy people etc. Different
Organizations has their own way of evaluating effectiveness while the test
methods and results have not been considered seriously.
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| Participants at the workshop |
The following session was based on Sharing Testing Experiences by 4
RTKCs (Nepal, India, China, Cambodia) – purposes/methods/results/ relationship
with ISO IWA/ How do they support National Policies.. were some of the topics
of presentations and discussions. Role of key parameters and standard
units for evaluation of biomass cookstoves was presented along with Nepal
Benchmarks of Clean Cookstoves were also presented on the same session. The
testing experiences from the RTKC’s depicted the importance of Quality
Assurance as one of the important aspect that has not yet been taken care
seriously. Both the lab tests and field test are essential for the cookstoves
programmes as well as Research and Development of technology, but there should
be a mechanism to link up field test and lab test results. Question of
durability testing was unanswered.
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| Panel Discussion |
The late afternoon session dealt with
Group Breakouts into five, each with 7-10 people to
discussion on Integrating Stakeholders Perspectives on National Policy
Framework. Each group contained development partners, RTKC representatives,
policy makers. Each came up with certain issues to share as an outcome of their
discussions at the end. The overall impression of the group discussion was that
every programmes are to compliment national policies while there still exists
gaps in between the international programmes and national policies specially in
Nepal. National Policies needs more reviews to make it flexible to the
private sectors.
The Day two Sessions were based on
the field testing issues- began with sharing on Field Testing Experience –
methods used; results obtained; use of results by 4 testing centers and
followed by group discussions on : Field
Testing Protocols - Do we have all the protocols we need? How can we gain
confidence that field performance reflects design performance? The general
outcome was that we do not have a concrete protocol that address all the needs
and need one that has it all. Linking the lab results with field has been a
long standing issues with the presently available/followed field testing
methods. Incorporating user acceptance, durability would add to the field
testing guidelines to be worked on in future. Certain projects with CDM
requires just efficiencies of stoves in the field where WBTs in the field has
been the basis. The issue is the efficiencies in the lab and field using same
protocol gives significant variations and we need to address this issue
in the protocols as well. These were some of the issues being raised including
others.
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| Panel Discussion |
Another discussion was based on the
‘performance and usage metrics to be examined in the field’. Programme needs
and user acceptance were important parameters to be included while the
performance matrices should have easily comparable units and identities.
The last discussion topic of the day was on structure of writing Field Testing guidance document for ISO TC 285 Working
Group III- with questions to answer such as: what facets are required? Who can
participate? Etc. It took quite some time to let people know what is going on
in the ISO TC 285 and the next WG meeting in Guatemala. And then the issues of
field information as required depending on the programme/project scope were
raised.
Day three sessions began with presentations incorporating
Strength, Weakness, Challenges, and Opportunities of Stoves Testing. Five
testing centers presented opening discussion questions to the floor. Some of
the important issue rose regarding the topics were the GACC supported RTKC have
been well capacitated for conducting tests while the sustainability issue has
been overlooked. Especially in the developing countries people/stoves
entrepreneurs are not willing to get their stoves tested unless they are
required by the programmes or projects. R & D has not been so much
emphasized by the programmes/projects but need to be done that can be one of
the means of sustainability to RTKC. The challenges incorporating
calibration issue was important one where the equipments and instruments available
in the neighboring countries like India would reduce this problem to some
extent.
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| Group works at the workshop |
The following session was
associated with the in fractures for ICS Design and Testing Quality Assurance
and clearifying the concept of Round Robin Testing initiated by GACC. The
infrastructure for Stove Development units was shared by RTKCs having the
separate unit for development of stoves. The Round Robbin Testing by GACC was
clarified to the participants and views discussed on this initiatives urging
all the testing centres to participate.
The closing sessions was followed
by RTKC lab visit by international participants and then closing reception
dinner.
Overall the feedbacks from the
participants were encouraging and way forward for building on collaboration among
the South Asian RTKCs and other development partners. It was commonly agreed
that knowledge sharing activities as such should be organized periodically so
that everyone could be aware of the developments of each other and position
themselves in the pool that could help further development of the sector. Programme
Effectiveness needs to be well defined with appropriate modalities and methods.
For the complete report please
contact, RTKC Nepal at CRT/N
