How clean cookstoves can help save the world

Hillary Clinton traveled to India yesterday to promote what I consider her most important and inspiring initiative as Secretary of State: the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.  This $50 million public/private partnership is working to make clean, efficient household stoves affordable to families in developing countries.

In the developing world, 3 billion people use open fires and traditional wood-burning stoves as their primary means of cooking and heating.  Exposure to the smoke from these practices leads to many chronic and acute illnesses (including emphysema, lung cancer, pneumonia, and heart disease) that result in the premature deaths of 1.8 million people every year.  The vast majority of these victims are women and children, since they are the ones performing most household tasks.  In conflict areas, women's safety is threatened by having to search for wood for hours each day in dangerous war zones.  Efficient stoves would keep these women safer as well as free up all of that time for other activities that could improve their families' lives.  This will empower women by allowing them to pursue educational and/or income opportunities for themselves and their children.

The carbon dioxide, methane, and soot (or 'black carbon') from these dirty stoves and open flames is also a major contributor to climate change.  Carbon dioxide and methane release contributes to worldwide greenhouse gas levels.  The soot from the flames travels through the air and settles on various surfaces; the most damaging settling sites are glaciers and snowpack.  Many people using these forms of heat live in India and China, which is near enough to the Himalayan Mountains that large amounts of soot settle on these snowcapped mountains.  The black color of the soot translates into increased heat/light absorption from the sun, which in turn melts the underlying snow and ice much faster than the natural white color of the snow and ice would.

The clean stoves utilize a wide array of technologies, including solar electric power and fuel pellets made from agricultural waste.  Stoves cost between $10-100 and are made affordable to those in need through micro-lending programs.  The goal of the alliance is to get these efficient stoves into 100 million homes by 2020.  Clinton's visit included an announcement that two major Indian trade federations have signed on to the project, which will increase the visibility and  implementation of the program -- making their goal that much more feasible.