Humble cookstoves reduce deadly toll of smoke on young lives
For as little as three dollars, stoves can save lives, mitigate climate change and reduce deforestation in developing countries Nearly half the world’s households, around three billion people worldwide, eat food cooked on traditional stoves and fires that kill around 1.6 million people a year —- most of them children.
A new report says that a global programme to produce half a billion improved stoves could convert the world’s poor to safer cooking, save hundreds of thousands of young lives a year, and at the same time cut global greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of up to one billion tonnes of CO2 a year. Traditional, inefficient stoves make kitchens highly dangerous for the world’s most vulnerable people – women and children’s lungs in particular are subjected to a toxic mix of smoke and gases, leading to a silent epidemic of disease.
Household smoke is a major cause of childhood pneumonia, the biggest cause of death among children worldwide, and is strongly linked to chronic lung disease among women. Cooking fires and stoves are also significant contributors to climate change, through their emissions of CO2, other gases and particulates. Soot is now thought to be responsible for up to a fifth of the warming effect of man-made pollution. The report, ‘Stoking up a cookstove revolution: the secret weapon against poverty and climate change’ published by the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, gives many examples of stoves programmes across the developing world that provide affordable, robust ‘improved’ stoves that burn less fuel, cook faster and approximately halve harmful smoke emissions. Many use a chimney to remove smoke and gases from the kitchen, improving combustion.
For further information and a PDF of the report, “Stoking up a cook-stove revolution: the secret weapon against poverty and climate change” written by Fred Pearce, contact Juliet Heller +44 (0)1621 868083 or +44 (0)7946 616150. juliet.heller@ashdenawards.org
Source – http://uk.oneworld.net/article/view/164863/1/5795
