Kirk Smith, Ph.D., is probably the world’s leading authority on the public health impact of indoor air pollution caused by the incomplete combustion of biomass fuels for cooking and heating. His recent remarks help cast some light on what stakeholders can expect from the recent launch of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
We’ve borrowed the following excerpt from the good people at Indoor Air Pollution Updates and we urge you to click on the link to read the extended article.
Smith KR, What’s Cooking? A Brief Update, Energy for Sustainable Development (2010), doi:10.1016/j. esd.2010.10.002
Full-text: http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/publications/2010/ESD_whats_cooking.pdf (pdf, 89KB)
Extensive world press coverage attended the speech by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on September 21, 2010 announcing the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. The Alliance, which is coordinated through the United Nations Foundation (UNF), is a unique and innovative combination of founding partner organizations that signed up to the goal of providing 100 million clean cookstoves by 2020. Its objective is to reduce the significant health and other impacts of current use of household biomass fuels in the world’s poorest households. As of the launch, some US$60 million had been committed to the Alliance of the $250 million goal.
The range of activities that the Alliance will undertake to supportits goal has not yet been worked out in detail, but initial indications inpublic announcements and press interviews with principals indicatethat the primary focus will be to support the development of a robustglobal stove industry and market through standard setting, technicalexchange, lobbying for reductions in tariffs and duties, and potentiallyconcessionary loans and other financial incentives. The premise is thatthe private sector provides a well-tested means to achieve sustainableproduction and dissemination of household appliances, including gasand electric cookstoves, in the long term. (Read more)
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