Voice of America – Making Cooking Stoves Safer Worldwide, December 11, 2014
Smoky cook fires are a leading cause of indoor airpollution – poor air quality inside buildings. Indoor airpollution kills more than four million people each year. The problem is bigger than malaria, tuberculosis orHIV, the virus that causes the disease AIDS.
Recently, people concerned about the issue met fortwo days of discussions in New York City. Their hopewas to persuade private industry to build and sell betterstoves.
Traditional open-fire cooking affects the health of bothhuman beings and the world’s environment. Collectingwood for cooking fires is one of the main causes ofdeforestation. And the gases and soot that comefrom the fires pollute the air. They also are partlyresponsible for rising temperatures.
At the meeting, former Secretary of State Hillary Clintonnoted that almost three billion people use traditional stoves for heating andcooking. Because of their widespread use, she said, indoor air pollution is aninternational problem.
“But it also, if approached correctly, could be an economic opportunity. And that is the idea behind the alliance.”
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves supports companies that make andsell affordable, efficient and less-polluting cookers. The alliance alsosupports research into developing better stoves.
Ms. Clinton helped launch the group in 2010. At the meeting, the United Statespromised $200 million in financial support and research money. Butorganizers wanted to raise $500 million.
Radha Muthiah is the executive director of the alliance. She says four yearsafter the group was launched, 20 million more households are using cleancookstoves.
“We’ve proven that this market-based approach works. Twenty millionstoves later, we know that this is a recipe that can be scaled up.”
Jim Jetter works as a researcher for the United States EnvironmentalProtection Agency. He says it is not easy to build a low-cost device thatpeople will use.
“It’s a big technical challenge to make a cookstove that has low emissions ofair pollutants, that is fuel efficient, and that is low-cost so that people canafford it — and, most importantly, that it meets the user needs. If it doesn’tmeet the user’s needs, then people do not use the stoves and, and then thereare no benefits.”
