Gender, energy and nutrition: what goes under the pot influences what comes out of the pot

October 2, 2015 · 0 comments

Gender, energy and nutrition: what goes under the pot influences what comes out of the pot, 2015.

Author: Joy ClancyPrincipal Investigator, ENERGIA Gender and Energy Research Programme

Much of the research related to promoting clean cooking fuels and more efficient stoves for women in developing countries is about providing evidence of the links between health issues and indoor air pollution. However, we don’t often look at how energy access affects health by its impact on what gets cooked.

Participating in the Milan Expo made me think outside the box in respect of gender, energy and health. The situation is far more complex than the core issues of health related to indoor air pollution. Research at CSTM has already done a lot draw attention to other issues related to fuelwood collection such as damage to spines and sexual harassment. We now have an opportunity to link up with health/nutrition experts to show how access to clean energy contributes to improved health and nutrition and how women play a key role in both dimensions.

 

The United States’ Commitment to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

September 28, 2015 · 0 comments

The United States’ Commitment to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves: Year Five Progress Report

  • Link to the Fact Sheet
  • Office of the Spokesperson
  • Washington, DC
  • September 24, 2015

As the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves approaches its fifth anniversary, the United States is pleased to announce that it has not only met, but vastly exceeded that five year commitment. The U.S. investment over these five years ultimately spanned eleven federal agencies, and totaled over $114 million – well over double the original 5-year commitment. This investment includes roughly $76 million in research and efforts to develop the evidence base for clean cooking interventions, $31 million in field implementation activities, and $7 million in financing for the clean cooking sector.

This commitment has played an enormous role in positioning the Alliance to achieve its 2020 goal of enabling 100 million homes to adopt clean and efficient cooking solutions. More specifically, these U.S. investments have led to significant advances in the clean cooking sector. Highlights of how each agency’s investment has spurred such progress are noted below, as well as summary investment figures for each agency.

The U.S. Secretary of State and Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the launch the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (the Alliance) in 2010. As part of that launch, six U.S. federal agencies committed to cumulatively invest roughly $50 million over the following five years to help build this sector.

Looking forward, the urgency to continue this work remains. Billions of people still have no option but to cook over traditional stoves and open fires, and the World Health Organization still estimates that exposure to smoke from these stoves leads to over 4 million premature deaths each year. These exposures rank as the world’s fourth worst health risk – and the second worst for women and girls. In November 2014 the United States announced new anticipated support for the clean cooking sector and the Alliance that could result in up to $175 million in additional financing, research, and additional support through 2020 – a figure that does not include the renewal of financing commitments originally intended to conclude in 2015 (see below, OPIC). These figures are noted below as well. For all agencies, all future projected support is subject to the availability of funds.

The State Department has led a wide range of diplomatic activities to advance the Alliance and the clean cooking sector.

Major Accomplishments, 2010-2015:

  • Leveraged U.S. diplomacy to help build and extend partnerships with many of the Alliance’s leading public and private sector partners, identify high-profile Alliance champions, raise public awareness of cookstoves by hosting events in countries across the globe, and engaging U.S. embassies to support Alliance activities in their focus countries.
  • Leveraged a Department event in January 2013 to announce up to $74 million in new public and private commitments from partners to bring 4 million clean stoves to the East Africa by 2020 and launch clean cookstove manufacturing facilities in Kenya and Lesotho.
  • Through the Partnership on Women’s Entrepreneurship in Renewables (wPOWER), directly supported activities to scale adoption of household energy products by increasing the number of women entrepreneurs who are able to effectively and efficiently distribute these products, including grant funding to a wPOWER Hub at the Wangaari Maathai Institute for Peace & Environmental Studies and to allow the Alliance to expand its Women’s Empowerment Fund (WEF), provide gender capacity building support for WEF grantees, and support the development of robust monitoring and evaluation plans to measure impact on women and girls.
  • Worked with the Alliance to propose and launch a $2.1 million cookstoves initiative under the Climate and Clean Air Coalition that seeks to catalyze clean cooking stove technology to reduce black carbon emissions through high-level advocacy, support for new finance mechanisms, private sector innovation, and development of standards and testing protocols to provide clear criteria for evaluating black carbon emission reductions.
  • In partnership with USAID and the World Food Programme, provided funding to deliver 30,000 stoves to drought-affected women and their families in the Horn of Africa impacting a total of 200,000 individuals.

State Department Funding:

  • Original Five-Year Commitment in 2010: $0.37 million
  • Actual Five-Year Investment: $6.17 million
  • Additional Support Anticipated Through 2020: not applicable

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Behavior Change for Clean Cooking Panel Discussion, Lima, Peru, May 2015

September 18, 2015 · 0 comments

Behavior Change for Clean Cooking Panel Discussion, Lima, Peru, May 2015

On May 4, 2015, the USAID Translating Research into Action Project (TRAction) sponsored a panel discussion on behavior change communication in the clean cooking sector. The panel discussion was part of a workshop in Lima, Peru hosted by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, ‘Beyond Distribution: Ensuring and Evaluating the Adoption of Clean Cooking and its Benefits’.

Assessing Consumer Needs, Preferences and Willingness to Pay for ICS in Bangladesh. In this presentation, Julia Rosenbaum from the USAID WASHPlus Project, FHI360 discusses findings from a study on perceived and desired stove attributes and willingness to pay for improved stoves in Bangladesh. Co-authors on the paper presented include Julia Rosenbaum, Elisa Derby, and Karabi Dutta. | Video |

Behavior Change Approaches to Facilitate Clean Cooking and Reduce Household Air Pollution. In this presentation, Julia Rosenbaum from the USAID WASHPlus Project, FHI360 provides an overview of behavior change in the clean cooking sector. | Video |

The Role of Mixed Methods in Improved Cookstove Research. In this presentation, Debbi Stanistreet from the University of Liverpool summarizes how qualitative research methods can supplement traditional quantitative findings for better understanding clean cooking behavior. Co-authors on the paper presented include Debbi Stanistreet, Lirije Hyseni, Michelle Bashin, Ibrahim Sadumah, Daniel Pope, Michael Sage, and Nigel Bruce. | Video |

Advancing Communication and Behavior Change Strategies for Cleaner Cooking. In this presentation, Sumi Mehta from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves provides a brief background on household air pollution, as well as an overview of a recently published special issue of the Journal of Health Communication. The special issue highlights the importance of behavior change and communication for increasing clean cooking adoption through a series of manuscripts. | Video |

Piloting Improved Cookstoves in India. In this presentation, Subhrendu Pattanayak from Duke University discusses findings from a pilot study testing the effectiveness of social marketing strategies for promoting improved cookstoves in India. Co-authors on the paper presented include Jessica Lewis, Vasundhara Bhojvaid, Nina Brooks, Ipsita Das, Marc Jeuland, Omkar Patange and Subhrendu Pattanayak. | Video |

Behavior Change Approaches for Uptake and Use of Clean Cookstoves and Fuels in Uganda. On behalf of the PATH research team, Michael Johnson from the Berkeley Air Monitoring Group discusses findings from an evaluation of clean cooking behavior change interventions in Uganda. Co-authors on the paper presented include Allen Namagembe, Nancy Muller, Lisa Mueller Scott, Greg Zwisler, Michael Johnson, Jennifer Arney, Dana Charron, and Emmanuel Mugisha. | Video |

Guidance for Linking Stove Usage with Impacts. In this presentation, Michael Johnson from the Berkeley Air Monitoring Group presents findings on how much stove usage is required to meet air pollution guidelines. He describes how behavior change is needed to help achieve sufficient stove usage. Ranyee Chiang from the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was a co-author on the paper. | Video |

Advocacy in 2015 – Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

September 18, 2015 · 1 comment

Advocacy in 2015 – Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

Published on Sep 14, 2015 – Learn about the efforts of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and ENERGIA to integrate clean cooking into the major global moments of 2015. The information and positions presented during this webinar will provide insight on the Alliance and ENERGIA’s advocacy strategies and a clear picture of why we are calling for greater support.

Presenters will discuss in detail how clean cooking fits into the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda (the Global Goals). A key component of the Global Goals will be the indicators we use to measure them. The Alliance and ENERGIA are contributing to the work of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGI) by jointly advocating for the consistent and accurate inclusion of cooking energy throughout the Post-2015 indicator framework.

Willingness to Pay for Cookstoves and Fuels Webinar

September 18, 2015 · 0 comments

Willingness to Pay for Cookstoves and Fuels Webinar

On August 5, 2015 Winrock International and the U.S. EPA hosted a webinar titled “Willingness to Pay for Cookstoves and Fuels”.

Theresa Beltramo from UNHCR, Elisa Derby from Winrock International, Pam Jagger from the University of North Carolina, and Julia Rosenbaum from FHI 360 discussed the primary objectives and methodologies for assessing willingness to pay, and results, challenges, and lessons learned from research studies from Bangladesh, Malawi, and Uganda.

You can view the full recording of the event HERE. Presentation slides and Questions and Answers from the webinar are available in PDF format below.

For more information, please refer to the following web resources:

Attachment Size
Q&A_Webinar_5August2015.pdf 531.49 KB
Webinar_8August2015_WTP.pdf 2.66 MB

 

Cookstoves illustrate the need for a comprehensive carbon market

September 8, 2015 · 0 comments

Cookstoves illustrate the need for a comprehensive carbon market. Env Res Lett, Aug 2015

Authors: Luke Sanford and Jennifer Burney

Existing carbon offset protocols for improved cookstoves do not require emissions testing. They are based only on estimated reductions in the use of non-renewable biomass generated by a given stove, and use simplistic calculations to convert those fuel savings to imputed emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). Yet recent research has shown that different cookstoves vary tremendously in their combustion quality, and thus in their emissions profiles of both CO2 and other products of incomplete combustion. Given the high global warming potential of some of these non-CO2 emissions, offset protocols that do not account for combustion quality may thus not be assigning either appropriate absolute or relative climate values to different technologies.

We use statistical resampling of recent emissions studies to estimate the actual radiative forcing impacts of traditional and improved cookstoves. We compare the carbon offsets generated by protocols in the four carbon markets that currently accept cookstove offsets (Clean Development Mechanism, American Carbon Registry, Verified Carbon Standard, and Gold Standard) to a theoretical protocol that also accounts for emissions of carbonaceous aerosols and carbon monoxide, using appropriate statistical techniques to estimate emissions factor distributions from the literature.

We show that current protocols underestimate the climate value of many improved cookstoves and fail to distinguish between (i.e., assign equal offset values to) technologies with very different climate impacts. We find that a comprehensive carbon accounting standard would generate significantly higher offsets for some improved cookstove classes than those generated by current protocols, and would create much larger separation between different cookstove classes.

Finally, we provide compelling evidence for the inclusion of renewable biomass into current protocols, and propose guidelines for the statistics needed in future emissions tests in order to accurately estimate the climate impact (and thus offsets generated by) cookstoves and other household energy technologies.

Stunting is associated with poor outcomes in childhood pneumonia

September 8, 2015 · 0 comments

Stunting is associated with poor outcomes in childhood pneumonia. Trop Med Intl Health, Oct 2015.

Authors: Peter P. Moschovis, et al.

Objective – Stunting affects 26.7% of children worldwide, and little is known about its effects on the outcomes of childhood pneumonia. We evaluated the effect of stunting on the outcomes of pneumonia among children enrolled in two large clinical trials.

Methods – We analysed data from two WHO and USAID-sponsored inpatient treatment trials, the Severe Pneumonia Evaluation Antimicrobial Research study (n = 958) and the Amoxicillin Penicillin Pneumonia International Study (n = 1702), which enrolled children aged 2–59 months across 16 sites in LMICs. We assessed the effect of stunting (height-for-age Z score < −2) on treatment outcome and time to resolution of hypoxaemic pneumonia.

Results – Among 2542 (96%) children with valid data for height, 28% were stunted and 12.8% failed treatment by 5 days. The failure rate among stunted patients was 16.0% vs. 11.5% among non-stunted patients [unadjusted RR = 1.24 (95% CI 1.08, 1.41); adjusted RR = 1.28 (95% CI 1.10, 1.48)]. An inverse relationship was observed between height and failure rates, even among non-stunted children. Among 845 patients with hypoxaemic pneumonia, stunting was associated with a lower probability of normalisation of respiratory rate [HR = 0.63 (95% CI 0.52, 0.75)] and oxygen saturation [HR = 0.74 (95% CI 0.61, 0.89)].

Conclusions – Stunting increases the risk of treatment failure and is associated with a longer course of recovery in children with pneumonia. Strategies to decrease stunting may decrease the burden of adverse outcomes in childhood pneumonia in low-resource settings.

Dutch Social Entrepreneur Works To Save Lives In Africa With High Tech Stove

September 8, 2015 · 0 comments

Dutch Social Entrepreneur Works To Save Lives In Africa With High Tech Stove, 2015.

Judith Joan Walker, is the Director and COO of African Clean Energy. Walker’s African Clean Energy stove burns a variety of fuels, including wood and charcoal, but with no emissions. The stove also features a small solar panel that can be placed out a nearby window or on the roof, powering a small fan in the stove as well as a USB device charger and an LED light

Bangladesh – CEEB Third Annual Market Facilitation Platform for Improved Cookstoves

September 8, 2015 · 0 comments

Sept 16, 2015 – Bangladesh – CEEB Third Annual Market Facilitation Platform for Improved Cookstoves

The USAID-funded program Analyzing Clean Energy in Bangladesh (CCEB) will be hosting the Third Annual Market Facilitation Platform for Improved Cookstoves (ICS), as part of its effort to create vibrant and enabling environment for market development in new ICS technologies in Bangladesh.

  • When: Wednesday, September 16, 2015
  • Time: 10:00 a.m. – 5:0 0 p.m.
  • Venue: Windy Town, Bangaba ndhu International Conference Centre (BICC) , Dhaka

Additional information.

Clean Cooking Forum 2015, Accra, Ghana

September 8, 2015 · 0 comments

Clean Cooking Forum, Nov 10-13, 2015, Accra, Ghana.

The Forum theme, Accelerating Markets. Scaling Solutions, will mark the Alliance’s 5th Anniversary and convene global stakeholders to share best practices and business models, forge new partnerships, and strengthen the sector toward a 100 million household clean cooking adoption goal by 2020.

| Forum home page | Agenda |

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