The United Nations Foundation and the Shell Foundation invited stakeholders from the United Nation, the government, philanthropies, manufactures, donors, academics and other non-governmental sectors to the conference about clean cooking solutions in the developing world March 29 to 30 in Washington, D.C. These stakeholders will form an alliance and build on the work of the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air.
Primitive cookstoves are the primary tool for heating and cooking for nearly three million people in the developing world. Poor households use the classic three-stone cooker to prepare their food, while using wood as the basic fuel. These cookstoves creates a smoke that is highly damaging. The smoke causes health problems like cancer, asthma and tuberculoses and the smoke is also the cause of two million premature deaths annually. Women and young children suffer the most.
The use of wood as fuel creates black carbon that in addition to damaging people’s health also is an important driver of climate change, at both regional and global level. The use of wood as fuel also causes deforestation in many regions.
The purpose of the conference was to bring leading technical and development experts, manufacturers and donors together to collaborate on the design and implementation of large-scale, sustainable, market-based solutions to the risks posed by traditional cooking and heating practices in the developing world.
The participants discussed the health and environmental benefits of improved stoves and fuels during the conference. They also mapped out the technical, financial, and commercial opportunities to reach global scale and how to seek agreement on collaboration around an action plan to support large-scale deployment through the creation of a Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
The Norwegian ambassador Wegger Chr. Strommen held one of the opening remarks at the conferance.The Norwegian ambassador Wegger Chr. Strømmen was one of the speakers at the conference. - It is important to think about the diversity this problem. The gender issue, climate, development and finance issues. The cookstoves are used by three million people from different countries. It is important to have in mind the need of different designs for different populations. It is not only the cookstoves that needs diversity. This project also has a lot of different donors. One size won’t fit all so it is important that we use different types of models.
Norway is active in the work of reducing black carbon. Norway is co-chairing the Arctic Council Task Force as well as the regional black carbon expert group under CLRTAP (Convention on long-range Transboundary Air Pollution) together with the U.S. Norway is looking at the proposal for an Allliance with great interest and how this Alliance can contribute to the scaling-up for Clean Cooking Solutions.
The success of this initiative will lead to a global campaign to move the world’s poorest citizens toward clean, safe, efficient, affordable, and reliable cooking and heating solutions.