Dos por Tres stoves prevent deforestation and degradation of the environment

  • This wood will last her twice as long with a La Justa 2x3.
  • Oak is the wood of choice and big trees are coming down.
  • This is the amount of wood needed to cook a meal with a Dos por Tres stove.
  • Old stoves like this use more than twice as much wood to cook a meal.
  • Wood gets harder to find and further away every day.
  • With a stove that uses this much wood it's important to stock up.
  • The 2x3 requires very little wood to cook the same amount of food, faster.
  • Everyone has responsibility for collecting wood.
  • "The project is the way through which we can conserve nature and prolong our lives." – Prof. Pineda (photo by RRavenel)
  • Using half the wood for cooking means half the degradation of the forest.

The Dos por Tres stove uses about half the amount of firewood of a traditional stove.  Since 65% of energy consumed in Honduras comes from fuelwood, even a small reduction in woodcutting for private use, primarily for cooking, can help make forests more sustainable. 

Proyecto Mirador operates in the Western Honduran highland region. The uplands are covered mainly with Central American Pine trees and the lowlands with tropical dry forests, of which very little remains, making the region a threatened tropical ecosystem. Honduras contains the second largest area of rainforest in the Americas next to the Amazon. With more than 37.1% of its forests disappearing since 1990, rural Honduras is a significant contributor to global climate change.

Studies of Copan, in the same Honduran highlands where Proyecto Mirador is working, indicate that the mismanaged clearing of a pine forest for fuel wood purposes led to accelerated rates of erosion and the collapse of the Mayan State (Springer Netherlands, "Causes and consequences of deforestation among the pre-historic Maya," Human Ecology, 12/29/04). Jared Diamond reaches a similar conclusion in his book Collapse. Other consequences of deforestation include ruined topsoil, an increased likelihood of mudslides, reduced biodiversity and decreasing rainfall.

Deforestation in Honduras has averaged 250,000 acres annually, for a total of about 37% of forest cover since 1990, due to illegal logging, clearing for agriculture, and the gathering of wood for kitchen fires. If each of the 740,000 rural homes in Honduras had a Dos por Tres fuel efficient stove, these dramatic numbers could be reduced.