FOOD is a very important part of human life. The nutrients and energy we need for our daily activities come from the food we eat. However, for many persons, preparation of their food puts their lives at risk. In many parts of the world, persons still use traditional stoves and open fires to prepare their meals. Although these methods are usually polluting and inefficient, yet, they are used by approximately three billion people around the world to cook their food each day. To fuel the fire, primitive sources such as wood, and animal and agricultural waste have to be used. Persons who utilise these methods are exposed to smoke which puts their lives at risk. Daily exposure to the harmful smoke from traditional cooking practices is one of the world’s biggest – but least known – killers. In fact, smoke from traditional stoves and open fires causes 2 million premature deaths annually, with women and young children the most affected. When persons use these traditional stoves, they can be affected by a range of deadly chronic and acute health effects such as child pneumonia; lung cancer; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; heart disease; and low birth-weight. Open fires also mean persons are more readily exposed to burns and other injuries.

Personal risk
Reliance on biomass, i.e., sawdust, bark, wood chips and scrap wood for cooking and heating forces women and children to spend hours each week collecting wood. This takes away crucial hours of schooling from children and prevents women from exploring other opportunities to develop themselves, confining them to a life within the home.
In addition, women and children face severe personal risks as they search for fuel, especially near refugee camps and in conflict zones. When searching for firewood women can be attacked and raped or even murdered.

Environmental impact
A major effect of using these inefficient, traditional stoves is their contribution to climate change through the emissions of greenhouse gasses and black carbon.
Using traditional stoves also increases pressures on local natural resources (e.g., forests). In many countries, much of the native forest cover has been stripped to support charcoal production, and in others reliance on wood fuel for cooking can lead to increased pressures on local forests and natural resources. The unsustainable collection of wood for charcoal production can contribute to mud-slides, loss of watershed, and desertification, which places further pressures on regional food security and agricultural productivity.
In many nations, the increasing loss of forest canopy for charcoal production also brings devastation to local biodiversity, while the construction of logging roads damages the environment and further degrades the dwindling habitat of endangered species.

The solution
As part of 2012 being the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, one of the initiatives being pursued by the United Nations is the development and use of clean cookstoves. The use of clean cookstoves can dramatically reduce fuel consumption and more importantly, exposure to cookstove smoke.
There are many different types of clean-cooking solutions. The cookstoves that are being developed range from the most basic cookstoves that burn raw, unprocessed solid fuels such as biomass or dung to much more advanced cookstoves that burn ultra-clean fuels such as ethanol or liquid petroleum gas, and those that use fuels with no environmental or health impact such as solar.
•    Advanced Biomass Cookstoves
These use raw or processed biomass and burn biomass fuel more efficiently with reduced emissions and offers cleaner cooking energy solutions. Lab tests have shown that these stoves reduce black smoke and other pollutants from traditional cookstoves by as much as 98%. Additionally, when CO2 is considered, it was found that its warming impact is reduced by 40 to 60 percent.
•    Alcohol Cookstoves
Alcohol cookstoves utilise either ethanol or methanol in liquid or in gelled or waxy forms. Ethanol and methanol burn very cleanly. Studies conducted in a number of countries, both in the laboratory and in household field tests, have shown the benefit of alcohol stoves in dramatically reducing indoor air pollution as compared to wood, charcoal and kerosene stoves. Alcohol stoves tend to produce significantly less CO (carbon monoxide) than stoves using kerosene or solid fuels.
Greenhouse gases released in the production and consumption of ethanol fuel are reabsorbed during the growth cycle of the plant material used to make the fuel. Black carbon aerosols, a potentially potent climate forcer, are essentially not produced by the combustion of ethanol and methanol.
•    Biogas Cookstoves
Domestic biogas plants convert animal manure and human waste at the household level into combustible methane gas. This biogas can be effectively used in simple gas stoves for cooking.
Like alcohol cookstoves, biogas cookstoves leads to reduction in indoor air pollution. Individual studies have found that biogas plant installation can significantly reduce respiratory diseases, including decreases in respiratory illness, asthma and lung problems.
•    Solar Cookstoves
Solar cookstoves, often called solar cookers, can be used in areas where solar energy is abundant for most of the year. There are three types of solar cookers: panel, box and parabolic, all of which generate heat by directly capturing the sun’s solar thermal energy. Solar cookers produce no smoke and do not contribute to any health impacts associated with cooking. Most importantly, solar cookers emit no greenhouse gasses and do not contribute to climate change.
For more information on clean cookstoves, log on to: http://www.cleancookstoves.org/

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