UK hosts international conference on clean cooking
2 May 2014 11:36 AM
International conference
examines impact of cooking with solid fuels on traditional cookstoves and open
fires.
An international conference
examining the health and environmental impacts of cooking with solid fuels on
traditional cookstoves and open fires was held in London yesterday by the
Department for International Development (DFID), the World Health Organization
(WHO) and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Alliance).
The World Health Organization
estimates that every year 4.3 million people die from illnesses caused by
exposure to smoke from cooking over coal, wood, dung, or biomass stoves. This
is more than the number of people dying from HIV/AIDS, malaria and
tuberculosis, combined. Nearly 3 billion people in the developing world cook
food and heat their homes with solid fuel on traditional cookstoves and open
fires.
Clean cookstoves and fuels have
the opportunity to address harmful emissions of smoke, and reduce burns. They
can also mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate
pollutants, help stem deforestation, and reduce the time women and girls spend
collecting fuel, often in dangerous situations far from their
homes.
WHO will soon be issuing new
indoor air quality guidelines for household fuel combustion to provide
technical recommendations about fuels, cookstoves and household energy
technologies with the best performance for protecting health.
Lynne Featherstone,
International Development Minister said:
It is tragic that so many
people’s lives are put at risk simply from cooking and heating their
homes. The international community needs to do more to find practical and
scalable clean cooking solutions, allowing people to lead healthier lives.
Today’s event will push for increased international action, including
more research and will help expand the development, supply and use of
sustainable clean cookstoves and fuels.
Radha Muthiah, Executive
Director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves said:
The Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves welcomes the opportunity to raise global awareness regarding the
little known issue of household air pollution and to highlight the many
cost-effective benefits of clean cookstoves and fuels. We applaud DFID for its
leadership in helping to raise awareness of this “silent killer”
and to mobilize much needed donor resources around clean cooking solutions. We
look forward to working closely with the United Kingdom to scale market-based
solutions that address the devastating health, gender, and environmental toll
that the use of solid fuels for cooking takes on families in the developing
world.
Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh,
Regional Director for WHO’s South-East Asia Regional Office, which
represents some 11 countries where rudimentary, smoky cookstoves are still
widely used, including India, Bangladesh and Nepal, said:
Women and children pay a heavy
price from household air pollution since they spend more time at home breathing
in smoke and soot from cookstoves. Cleaning up household air pollution will
significantly prevent non-communicable diseases among these vulnerable
groups.
Over 100 people including
academic experts, civil society, NGOs, development and private sector
practitioners and donors working in the clean cookstove, low carbon, energy and
health sectors attended the conference which examined what combinations of
cooking practices, improved stoves and fuels can be used in the future to
achieve better health and social outcomes for people in developing countries,
and how these can be best scaled-up.
Notes to
editors:
-
The Department for International
Development (DFID) recently won the “Best Initiative by a Government
Body” at the 2014 Climate Week Awards, for efforts to support the Global
Alliance for Clean Cookstoves to reach its goal of enabling 100 million
households to adopt clean and efficient cooking solutions by
2020.
-
In November 2013, DFID announced
increased financial support to the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves for research into improved evidence of the business models
and social dynamics that could take the clean cookstove market to
scale