In September 2010,
U.S. Secretary of State Clinton announced the Global
Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership
led by the United Nations Foundation to save lives, improve
livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by
creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient
household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by 20 goal
calls for 100 million homes to adopt clean and efficient
stoves and fuels by 2020.
On the heels of
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to Africa
this week, seven African nations have joined the Global
Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. The governments of Burkina
Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda and Tanzania,
together with the Nigerian Alliance for Clean Cookstoves,
committed to join the public-private partnership to help
save lives around the world.
These new Alliance
partners have set goals to collectively reach nearly 20
million African homes with clean stoves and fuels by 2020,
and ultimately help achieve the Alliance’s 100 by 20 goal,
which calls for 100 million homes to adopt clean and
efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.
The new African
members join the nearly 100 partners which include national
governments, UN agencies, private companies and
non-governmental organizations already mobilized to overcome
market barriers and achieve global-scale production,
deployment, and use of clean cookstoves in the developing
world.
Encouraging the
development and use of clean cooking solutions in cultures,
communities, and countries throughout the developing world
is consistent with the core principles of U.S. foreign
policy and development efforts, which focus on improving the
lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations. The U.S.
government has committed more than $50 million to the
Alliance over five years. With the help of more than six
federal agencies, the U.S. government is mobilizing
financial resources, providing top-level U.S. experts, and
leveraging research and development tools to help the
Alliance achieve its 100 by 20 target.
The Problem:
Nearly half of the world’s population – about 3 billion
people – cooks their food each day on polluting, inefficient
stoves. Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and
open fires is the fifth worst health risk factor in poor
countries and leads to nearly 2 million premature deaths of
mostly women and young children each year (more than twice
the mortality from malaria).
More than 70% of
Africans burn solid fuels such as wood, charcoal or crop
residues for their home cooking needs. The World Health
Organization (WHO) estimates that each year more than one
quarter of the worldwide deaths associated with exposure to
cookstove smoke occur in Africa – that equates to more than
550,000 deaths in Africa attributable to cookstoves. Also
according to WHO, out of the 23 countries in the world where
cookstoves represent more than 4 percent of the national
burden of disease*, 21 are in Africa.
|
New
Alliance Countries By The Numbers** |
|
Country |
Percent of population
cooking with solid fuels |
Deaths per year |
Percent national burden of disease
attributable to solid fuels |
|
Burkina Faso |
More than 95 |
21,500
(6th highest figure in Africa) |
8.5
(highest in the world) |
|
Ethiopia |
More than 95 |
56,700
(2nd highest figure in Africa) |
4.9 |
|
Kenya |
63 |
13,000 |
2.9 |
|
Lesotho |
83 |
400 |
0.8 |
|
Nigeria |
67 |
79,000
(highest figure in Africa) |
3.8 |
|
Rwanda |
More than 95 |
8,100 |
5.8
(7th highest in the world) |
|
Tanzania |
More than 95 |
27,500
(4th highest figure in Africa) |
4.9 |
A Global Alliance:
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Cleancookstoves.org)
is working with public, private, and non-profit partners to
help overcome market barriers and achieve large-scale
production, deployment, and use of clean stoves and fuels in
the developing world. The Alliance comprises a rapidly
growing list of nearly 100 public, private, philanthropic,
NGO, academic, and other partners, including the governments
of Norway, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Germany, Ireland,
Malta, Peru, and the United Kingdom. The Ethiopian
Government has an ambitious national effort to address the
risks associated with cookstoves, and many leading partners
of this sector are active in Ethiopia, including: UNHCR,
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ),
the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), Project
Gaia, and Bosch-Siemens. World Vision is piloting other
improved stoves in Ethiopia.
U.S. Government
Commitment: The United States Government has committed
more than $50 million to the Alliance over five years.
Participating U.S. agencies include: The State Department,
Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy,
Department of Health and Human Services (National Institutes
of Health; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and
the U.S. Agency for International Development. The U.S.
Government is mobilizing financial resources, providing
top-level U.S. experts, and leveraging research and
development tools to help the Alliance achieve its 100 by 20
target. Other U.S. agencies also are considering investments
in this sector.
*According to the
World Health Organization (WHO), burden of disease
quantifies mortality and morbidity due to a given disease or
risk factor.
**Numbers according
to WHO.
Africa: U.S. Government Cookstoves Activity by Agency
Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Working with the
Alliance, CDC has begun investments on health evaluation
related to clean and safe cookstoves in Kenya. This effort
will evaluate the introduction of new improved stoves in
Nyanza Province, Kenya on reducing household pollution as a
risk factor for childhood pneumonia and low birth weight. In
addition, this evaluation will provide critical information
on stove acceptability, sustainability, and scalability of
introducing new and improved stoves in rural Kenya.
Department of
Energy (DOE): DOE is partnering with World Vision on a
project in Ethiopia (FY09-FY11) to develop a modification to
the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, enabling it to work better with
Ethiopian pots and cooking methods. The modified stove is
low-cost and can be easily assembled locally in large
numbers to provide local employment. Furthermore, the
modified stove has proven to be comparable to or better than
other competing stove products, according to third party
tests conducted with Ethiopian women cooks.
Department of
State: State is leveraging diplomatic channels to engage
new partners in Africa.
These include outreach to governments
as well as private, non-governmental, and multi-lateral
partners. Several U.S. embassies in Africa are working with
local cookstoves efforts, including in Ethiopia, Lesotho,
Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania. The State Department leads
the U.S. federal interagency discussions and coordination
with the Alliance, and also coordinates diplomatic dialogues
related to global partnerships, health, women’s issues,
climate change, and the environment.
Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA): During her February 2011 visit
to East Africa, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson promoted the
use of clean cookstoves. The EPA-led Partnership for Clean
Indoor Air (PCIA) has 175 African partners that work in 21
countries and which will be integrated with the Alliance. In
2010, PCIA Partners reported selling more than 800,000 clean
and efficient cookstoves in Africa. Specific activities
include: current scale-up projects in Ethiopia and Kenya;
earlier pilot projects in Ghana, Mauritania, Nigeria, and
Uganda (more than100,000 sales reported in 2010), including
the first cookstove organization to be certified under the
Gold Standard to receive voluntary carbon credits; in-house
testing of many stoves sold in Africa; numerous stove
testing workshops in Africa; and development of a decision
support tool for choosing appropriate clean stove
technologies.
National
Institutes of Health (NIH): The National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences has begun a major 5-year study
in Ghana to quantify improvements in birth weight and
childhood pneumonia from a randomized intervention trial of
improved cookstoves during the second trimester of
pregnancy. The study is being led by Columbia University's
Mailman School of Public Health in partnership with Kintampo
Health Research Center of the Ghana Health Service.
Peace Corps:
Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa are working with
communities to promote the use of improved cookstoves in 11
nations: Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Madagascar,
Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Togo, and Zambia.
U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID): USAID cookstoves
activities in Africa include: numerous field tests to
determine local acceptance of fuel-efficient stoves in East
Africa, especially in humanitarian settings; work with UN
agencies to address household energy issues in humanitarian
settings; work with Kenyatta University in Kenya to test the
efficiency of stoves USAID hopes to promote in the Mt. Kenya
and Mara-mau regions, areas rich in biodiversity and where
local populations currently lack access to stove models
marketed in urban markets; and partnership with World
Wildlife Foundation to promote the use of efficient
cookstoves in the area of Goma, Congo to cut charcoal use in
half (most wood for charcoal production is extracted from
the nearby Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage
Site).
On September 21,
2010, Secretary Clinton announced the Global Alliance for
Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the UN
Foundation, to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower
women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving
global market for clean and efficient household cooking
solutions. In May 2011, academy-award winning actress Julia
Roberts became Global Ambassador of the Alliance.
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