Inefficient cooking practice in rural areas
In-efficient cooking practice – rural suffering!
Impact on climate change due to old kitchen practice andimportance of clean efficient cooking practice in way forward….
Food is one the basics and must neededdaily necessity of human race. Healthy and positive food concepts and cookingpractices are foundation for good health. Cultural factors play an importantrole in dietary practices. As per global statistics nearly 3 billion peoplestill depend on solid fuels for their daily energy needs. And a major portionof world’s population still relies on wood stoves to cook their food. These stoves are cheap, provide warm mealsand heat homes throughout the world. However, wood stoves come with a number ofnegative consequences that affect global health and the global environment.According to the ‘World Health Organization’, emissions from inefficient cookstoves kill around 4.3 million people annually through indoor smoke inhalationand respiratory disease, and the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’reports black carbon – produced by a number of sources, including inefficient cookstoves (such as open firing, inefficient stoves etc.) – isthe second most important climate-forcing anthropogenic pollutant.
The use of inefficient cooking stoves (i.e.primarily three-stone fires practice) in homes causes considerable disease anddeath, particularly among women and children. The World Health Organisation hasfound that 40% of all childhood pneumonia can be attributed to exposure tosmoke from fires in homes, and exposure to smoke has been found to causechronic lung disease in women. Approximately 1.5 million people die from smokeinhalation each year; most are women and children in low-income countries. Moreover,ill health can result in loss of productivity and costs associated with healthcare. Similarly, the in-efficient practice demands more fuel (i.e. firewood),hence going and collecting firewood itself is a difficult tasks as it consumesnot only time and energy, but also keep the women in rural households under continuousdrudgery, creating a social gender imbalance very significant way. So this is anegative social suffering in fact for people leaving in such rural areas,especially women.
Thus, because of such negative health,ecological and climate change related effects of the use of inefficient cookingpractices, wood stoves, etc. the necessity of clean and energy efficient stovehas become a key concern. Also, replacement of inefficient stoves or cookingpractices with cleaner and efficient stoves has proven to be a great way tomitigate negative effects of climate change including GHG emissions anddeforestation etc. The inefficient use of wood also places considerable andunnecessary pressure on local ecosystems and biomass resources, leading todeforestation in long run. Therefore, saving in consumption of firewood canreduce such risk as compared with the lag time to plant and manage trees to aharvestable age.
Such inefficient cook-stove usages arepredominantly across the rural communities, especially in African, Asian andPacific Island countries, though not restricted to. Such rural areas arealready under the burden of livelihood due to lack to financial upliftmen. Therefore,it’s not a priority for such rural households to think about better kitchenpractice that involves money, which directly and indirectly propels them tocontinue their existing habit of open firing or in-efficient cooking practiceand thus negative impacts on deforestation, degradation and climate changecontinue to be there. Moreover, other means of fuel for household energy iseither scare/unavailable or unaffordable for rural communities. Thus, we cansense that Socio-Economic factors prevailed at ground level restrict use ofmodern, clean and efficient cook stoves among the most disadvantagedhouseholds.
This is also the backbone for differentclimate investors to come forward and develop programs towards implementationof clean cook stove programs, primarily in African region where ruralpopulation and at the same time rate of deforestation are both are equallyhigh. However, the long term sustainability of such programs are largelydependent on financial support as the entire cycle of such program involves lotof time, efforts and resources that essentially includes awareness building,capacity building, knowledge sharing, demonstration and training, distributionand monitoring, regular follow up etc. In this regard, revenue from carboncredits is one of the best hope and motivation for investors. Even though climatefunds are there to support many such activities and programs, but long termsustainability is practically based on financing model like carbon credits. Therecent development of many carbon projects in Africa, Asia regions is going tocreate a way forward for a better rural kitchen practices, for sure.
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