Our News - May 2008

May 30th, 2008

ADES opens a third stove workshop in Madagascar

Since its opening on May 30th 2008, ADES’ third stove centre, in Moron-dava, has been churning out stoves to fill a strong community need.  The new workshop is directed by Mr. Eugene Zafindratsity, a well re-spected community member with strong ties throughout Morondava.  The workshop has recently hosted events for local women’s groups to help promote stoves, as well as demonstrations for the military.  This pro-ject is currently financed through a £2 / traveller contribution by the Adventure Company.

May 2008

Oxford University Climate Change & Caving Expedition to Chile Offsets entire journey for all members with BVCO

The Oxford University Madre de Dios Speleo, Chile 2008 expedition took place over 5 weeks in March and April this year. The 6 expedition members, headed up by Chris Day of the Earth Sciences department, Oxford University, travelled to Chile for climate change research purposes.

The aims were:

Cave exploration: to locate, explore, and survey caves along the northern shores of Madre de Dios and neighbouring islands.

Recovery of speleothems (or cave formation – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speleothem) for climate change studies.

Film-making: The group travelled from the UK by plane each emitting 1.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide for each leg of the journey. They then sailed over 1000km by ferry to the caves contributing to 0.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide each; along with the reconnaissance trip this amounted to a carbon footprint of 23 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The expedition’s footprint has been fully offset through BVCO and the South Africa fuel efficient and solar stove programme.

For more information see http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~chrisd/mdds08/.