Comments on: Leveraging carbon financing to enable accountable water treatment programs http://blogs.washplus.org/drinkingwaterupdates/2013/03/leveraging-carbon-financing-to-enable-accountable-water-treatment-programs/ from the WASHplus Project Tue, 22 Sep 2015 12:34:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.4 By: Jeff Albert http://blogs.washplus.org/drinkingwaterupdates/2013/03/leveraging-carbon-financing-to-enable-accountable-water-treatment-programs/#comment-12196 Jeff Albert Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:37:09 +0000 http://blogs.washplus.org/drinkingwaterupdates/?p=3512#comment-12196 Dr. Thomas writes that criticisms of the suppressed demand concept "primarily come from the water non-governmental organization sector, rather than from the carbon credit technical experts," but the NGOs to whom Dr. Thomas refers seem to be far more data-driven than the so-called "experts" who've blessed the concept. The notion of suppressed demand in this context assumes that the prevalence of the boiling water behavior increases as low-income countries get wealthier. While this hypothesis sounds reasonable, it is nothing more than that: a hypothesis. To my knowledge, no evidence confirming this hypothesis has been put forth by Manna Energy, Vestergaard Frandsen, or anyone else that would pass the laugh test among public health professionals or social science researchers. I would argue that the fact that a number of certification agencies have bought into the suppressed demand argument without such evidence does nothing more than raise a serious questions about their status as "experts." A rigorous publication-quality analysis of the causal relationship between income indicators and boiling prevalence may yet establish that suppressed demand is real - though it would surprise me. But it is only with the publication of that evidence that these carbon-for-water schemes should be certified as real - in concert with rigorous evidence that large fractions of the targeted populations even boil their water to begin with. This will vary significantly from country to country. For example, decades of public health messaging have inspired nearly all low-income Indonesians to rely exclusively on boiled water. In Africa, the practice is far, far, more rare. Jeff Albert, PhD Rabat, Morocco Dr. Thomas writes that criticisms of the suppressed demand concept “primarily come from the water non-governmental organization sector, rather than from the carbon credit technical experts,” but the NGOs to whom Dr. Thomas refers seem to be far more data-driven than the so-called “experts” who’ve blessed the concept.
The notion of suppressed demand in this context assumes that the prevalence of the boiling water behavior increases as low-income countries get wealthier. While this hypothesis sounds reasonable, it is nothing more than that: a hypothesis. To my knowledge, no evidence confirming this hypothesis has been put forth by Manna Energy, Vestergaard Frandsen, or anyone else that would pass the laugh test among public health professionals or social science researchers. I would argue that the fact that a number of certification agencies have bought into the suppressed demand argument without such evidence does nothing more than raise a serious questions about their status as “experts.”
A rigorous publication-quality analysis of the causal relationship between income indicators and boiling prevalence may yet establish that suppressed demand is real – though it would surprise me. But it is only with the publication of that evidence that these carbon-for-water schemes should be certified as real – in concert with rigorous evidence that large fractions of the targeted populations even boil their water to begin with. This will vary significantly from country to country. For example, decades of public health messaging have inspired nearly all low-income Indonesians to rely exclusively on boiled water. In Africa, the practice is far, far, more rare.

Jeff Albert, PhD
Rabat, Morocco

]]>