Thirty-five-year-old Halima, a resident of a village in Bajaur's Utmankhel tehsil, is preparing food for 10 members of her family, including her six children. Although the children are helping her, it is not easy to cook two meals a day for so many people.

She says that until a few years ago, she used to cook food on firewood. Making curry and tea was not a big problem while roti was cooked on a tandoor, which required a lot of firewood to heat. Going to the mountains to collect wood and bring it home was more difficult.

"Our problems increased during the winter because dry wood was scarce due to continuous rains. Day and night, we used to worry about what would happen if the food was not cooked on time? We had to listen to our family members many times."

Showing a burn mark on her arm, Halima says that it was burnt 13 years ago while putting bread in the tandoor. Her hands would often burn, the smoke from the tandoor was so strong that it would make breathing difficult and bring tears to her eyes.

“If we were late for two or three minutes or if we had to put more bread on the table, the heat of the tandoor would decrease and we would have to reheat it.”

However, now she cooks on biogas and is grateful to the government that was considerate about women as it installed a biogas plant in her area. Since the plant’s installation, the women don’t have to collect firewood or face heat and smoke.

Such biogas plants have eased the problem not only for Halima but also of hundreds of other women in the tribal districts. However, millions of households are still using wood as fuel due to lack of information or other reasons.

Use of firewood a cause of destruction environment

The data of the Department of Statistics for 2023 shows that in more than 5.8m households of Khyber Pakhktunkhwa, 4.1m still use firewood for cooking, 1.3m use natural gas, 170,000 use LPG cylinders while 185,000 use other sources for fuel for cooking.

According to a study, titled Economic Evaluation of Household Firewood Consumption and Carbon Footprints in Pakistan: Implication For Climate Change Mitigations, jointly conducted by the Pakistan Institute of Development

Economics (PIDE) and COMSATS Islamabad, an average household in the country used an average of 1,706kg of firewood annually in 2018-19, which emitted 19.29 gigagrams of carbon. The United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP) in its 1991 report, estimated the annual consumption of wood per household in Pakistan at 2,324kg. If the latest report is to be trusted, it means that 4.184m families in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa burn approximately 7.138 million tonnes of wood annually for cooking and heating their homes. It means millions of trees are cut down every year for domestic fuel in the province, which is not only destroying the environment, but the burning of this fuel also releases tonnes of carbon, causing environmental pollution.

The 1.288m population of Bajaur district consisting of a total of 181,699 households of which 154,436 households still cook food on wood. 1,348 families use natural gas, 786 use LPG cylinders and the remaining 25,000 families use kerosene, electricity, biogas etc as fuel.

Firewood is dangerous to health and what is the alternative?

Medical experts say that burning wood at home is extremely dangerous for human health, especially for women and children.

Physician Dr Muhammad Iqbal says that toxic smoke and carbon particles emitting from wood and coal during cooking cause allergies, respiratory and lung diseases in people of all ages. He says the heat of the fire causes severe damage to the skin of women’s arms and faces, while in addition to smoke, radiation affects the eyes. In some cases, carbon particles can also cause heart disease and lung cancer.

According to Dr Iqbal, it is better to use gas instead of wood for domestic fuel. But in the villages of tribal districts, including Bajaur, most people live below the poverty line and for them it is not possible to access natural gas and bear the expenses of the LPG. In view of this situation, there is apparently no alternative to wood for the rural population and such wood is available to them free of charge in the mountains and forests. However, energy experts say that ‘no alternative stance’ is not true. Natural gas and grid electricity are certainly expensive but both biogas and solar energy can be obtained free of charge after the initial cost, provided that you become a producer.

Households that have livestock can get free biogas by using their waste (dung). Some work has been done in the tribal districts in this regard.

300 biogas plants installed in tribal districts 

Biogas production in Pakistan began in the second half of the 20th century when the first biogas plant was installed in Tando Jam (Sindh) in 1959 while attempts were made to install plants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the 1970s.

The Small Industries Development Board, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, made a plan to set up 400 biogas plants in 2011 but due to backward technology and lack of awareness in the community, this project could not be implemented. 

However, the provincial government approved a project, called Uplifting the Socio-Economic Condition and Gender Mainstreaming of Livestock in FATA, in 2017, which was proposed by the livestock department. 

Dr Muhammad Kamran, the director of the project, says that he went to Japan for two months in 2017 where gas was being produced from animal dung on a commercial scale. After the approval of the Planning and Development (P&D), the implementation of the project began, for which an initial budget of Rs40m was allocated. He says that most households here have three or four cows or buffaloes, so the work was started at the household level. The aim was dung (waste) management, control of carbon emissions and obtaining renewable energy. 

“We (government) thought this project would benefit women the most, as the workload on them would be reduced and the cutting of trees for firewood would also be controlled.”

According to Mr Kamran, in the first phase, 150 biogas plants were installed in Bajaur and Mohmand, and later Kohat, Kurram and other areas were also included in the project. Thus, by 2022, about 300 bio plants were installed in the tribal districts.

The cost and function of a biogas plant 

Dr Muhammad Kamran says that the average cost per plant was Rs170,000 for all the plants he installed under the FATA Uplifting Project. However, no money was collected from any household and the cost was paid from the government treasury.

He says that earlier floating drums were installed in the ground for biogas, dung was put in them, which produced gas. But the problem with this process was that if the drums rusted and leaked, there was often an explosion.

Then the technology (or method) of making drums of bricks and concrete was introduced in Nepal. Now here too, a round drum or basin of eight to ten cubic feet (226 to 283 liters) is built in the ground and dung is put in it. Within 24 hours, gas starts to be produced in the drum through fermentation (the process of decomposition), which is delivered to the kitchen located 60 to 70 feet away through a pipe. Now the gas does not leak and the experiment has been more successful. 

According to the director, a cow gives a maximum of 20kg dung in 24 hours while 40kg of waste is required daily to keep the plant operational. Thus, a family of eight to 12 people with at least three cows  can easily install a biogas plant at home. This will provide one kilogram of gas per day, which is sufficient for all household needs.

Political interference behind 30 inactive plants 

A survey report published in 2019 in the International Journal of Engineering Works found that about 27pc of the biogas plants installed with the capital of private, government and non-government organisations in different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were closed, while 73pc were running successfully.

Later, in a joint study by the Agriculture University Peshawar and the Livestock Department in 2022, about 30pc of the plants were also confirmed to be inactive.

Project Director Dr Kamran says that his effort was to provide plants only to families that met the required criteria. But due to political interference, plants were installed in some houses where the department was not satisfied, and those plants were lying dormant today. Some other people do not put cow dung in the plants. It is necessary to feed the plant (put cow dung) at a fixed time every day. If there is a gap of two days, gas is not produced and the entire drum has to be emptied, which the landlords do not do. The laziness and lack of interest of the landlord or owner make the plant inactive. He says that the government wanted local artisans to be involved in the process of installing these plants so that the technology is transferred to the local level, people can install plants in their homes and fix them themselves in case of technical malfunctions. 

“Our aim was also to create employment opportunities, reduce poverty and protect forests and the environment, but people did not pay attention to this. On the contrary, they would come to us to ask for jobs.”

 Although in tribal districts, apart from the government, local people have also set up private biogas plants with their own funds, this alternative energy source has not yet gained much popularity. 

More scope for biogas and a little concern 

Not only women, but also men involved in cooking are making full use of biogas. Fazal Haq, a resident of tehsil Mamund, has been working as a cook in a dairy farm in Bajaur for the past 10 years. He says that until a few years ago, he used to cook on LPG cylinders. He would use four to five kilograms of LPG a week, which was very expensive. Sometimes, when the gas suddenly ran out, he had to travel several kilometers to go to the market to buy gas. 

“Since the biogas plant was installed on the farm, gas is available 24 hours a day. This is the best and cheapest source of energy. Open the button and heat water for ablution, bathing or washing dishes. This gas is enough for 30 employees in the cold and hot seasons.” 

Dairy farm manager Dr Rehmat Shah says there are three biogas plants in this area and all three are operational. If necessary, a generator can also be run with biogas, but this store cannot be.

He believes that people are taking a lot of interest in biogas plants, but compared to the past, the number of cows and buffaloes in homes is decreasing, which has reduced the availability of dung. The majority of people here do not even have the resources to install a plant. He believes that there are more than 30 dairy farms in Bajaur, if the government cooperates, biogas can be provided to most of the poor people here.

“If large biogas plants are installed on these dairy farms, supply can be provided to the surrounding houses through pipelines. In this way, it can help in saving the environment and natural forests, otherwise the cutting of trees will not.”