Igniting Change: A Strategy for Universal Adoption of Clean Cookstoves and Fuels

A Dangerous and Unhealthy Reality. In an era of cell phones, satellites, and the Internet,  it can often be hard to believe that almost half the world’s population still cooks food, boils water, and warms their homes by burning wood, dung, other biomass, and coal in open fires or rudimentary cookstoves.  Yet this is the reality facing the nearly three billion people who meet their daily household energy needs in this dangerous and outdated way.  Open fires and rudimentary cookstoves are inefficient, unhealthy, and unsafe, and inhaling the acrid smoke and fine particulates they emit leads to nearly two million deaths a year worldwide, primarily among women and children.  In addition to these premature deaths, millions more are sickened from acute and chronic lung and heart diseases while hundreds of thousands more suffer burns or disfigurement from open flames and dangerous cookstoves.