ABSTRACT
The firewood crisis is probably most acute in the countries of the densely populated Indian subcontinent, and in the semiarid stretches of central Africa fringing the Sahara Desert, though it plagues many other regions as well. As firewood prices rise, so does the economic burden on the urban poor. The firewood crisis is in some ways more, and in others less, intractable than the energy crisis of the industrialized world. The poor, like the rich, are faced with the necessity of energy conservation. Tree-planting projects almost always become deeply enmeshed in the political, cultural, and administrative tangles of a rural locality; they touch upon, and are influenced by, the daily living habits of many people, and they frequently end in failure. The planting jobs were given to the local poor, mostly landless laborers who badly needed the low wages they could earn in the planting program.
