The Issue - Indoor Air Pollution
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 3 billion people – or almost half the world’s population – cook their daily meals indoors over biomass-fueled cooking fires. Traditional cooking methods cannot achieve clean combustion so the majority of the heat is wasted and up to 20 percent of the biomass is converted into toxic substances like carbon monoxide, particulates, benzene and formaldehyde. The resulting Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) kills 1.6 million people every year. Due to their increased exposure in the home, over 85 percent of these deaths are women and children under the age of five. IAP-generated illness and deaths strain already poverty-stricken families on the edge, reducing income generation capacity and adding expenses for health care and medication. But this is not just a health issue.
Cutting down trees for fuel leads to deforestation, desertification and has long been linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions. However, emerging research is highlighting black carbon (or soot) from cooking fires in developing countries one of the top contributors to global warming. Second only to carbon dioxide (40%), black carbon accounts for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Replacing traditional cooking fires in developing countries with clean cookstoves is seen as a “quick-fix” that provides developing world nations time to get a handle on CO2. Since black carbon only stays in the atmosphere for a few weeks (unlike carbon dioxide which lingers for years), replacing traditional cookstoves with clean-burning versions would have a dramatically impact, removing its warming effects almost immediately. But this is not just an environmental issue.
In many developing world countries deforestation has made biomass fuel scarce. Women and children can spend up to 4 hours each day collecting fuel for cooking. At worst, in war zones and outside refugee camps, women and girls are targets for assault as they venture far beyond the safety of their villages. At best, it is a physically exhausting trip and time spent away from the home, from educational study, from play or income-generating efforts to improve the family’s position. Alternatively, families may decide to purchase their biomass fuel. Families spend between 7-15% of their annual household income exclusively on energy costs. By reducing the quantity of biomass fuel needed, families have increased time, money, and choices about how to improve their family life.
“The cross-cutting nature of this solution with health, environmental, social and economic benefits provides a very big bang for your buck. Now it’s in everybody’s self-interest to deal with things like cookstoves — not just because hundreds of thousands of women and children far away are dying prematurely.” -- Erika Rosenthal, a senior lawyer at Earth Justice. NY Times, “Third World Soot is Target in Climate Fight” 4/16/09
