FIRE IN THE KITCHEN: COOK STOVES, HEALTH AND GLOBAL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BANGKOK 003072 SIPDIS STATE FOR OES; EAP, S/SECC STATE PLEASE PASS TO EPA/OIA, DOE/PI, NOAA, NSF, USDA/FS STATE PASS TO NSF/MMcAuliffe,PMazumder USAID ANE/AA,ANE/TS,EGAT/AA,EGAT/ESP,EGAT/I&E,GH/AA , GH/MCH PACOM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY UNIT E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EAID ENRG EAGR KGHG KGCC SENV ASEAN SOCI TH SUBJECT: FIRE IN THE KITCHEN: COOK STOVES, HEALTH AND GLOBAL WARMING REF: A) Ndjamena 0460; (B) Geneva 0367, 0360, 0349; (C) 08 Jakarta 1973 BANGKOK 00003072 001.3 OF 003 ¶1. SUMMARY: The US/ASEAN Next Generation Cook Stove Workshop was held at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok November 16-20. Old cook stoves are a source of considerable indoor pollution and accompanying health problems in the developing world, and the new technologies showcased may offer good opportunities for future U.S. development assistance. With interagency sponsorship, the workshop brought together academics, inventors, manufacturers and donors to discuss the state of the art in improved cook stove design, performance, testing and distribution. Inventors and engineers exhibited new features of the cook stoves, such as reduced fuel use, cleaner burning mechanisms and appealing designs for marketing to poor households in developing countries. Workshop discussions focused on stove design, emissions testing protocols and new approaches to scaling up programs that are aimed at improving health locally and improving the environment globally. END SUMMARY. -------------- BACKGROUND: HEALTH RISKS -------------- ¶2. More than three billion people use traditional cook stoves to meet cooking and heating needs. Up to 95% of the rural population in poor countries relies on solid fuels, including biomass and coal for fuel. Biomass accounts for about 70% of total household fuel use in Asia and coal accounts for 10%. While traditional stoves produce air pollutants, improved cook stoves aim to increase fuel efficiency while decreasing pollution. Smoke emission from traditional cook stoves is the fourth highest health risk factor in poor countries. According to the WHO, acute respiratory infections cause 17% of deaths among children under five. Indoor air pollution caused by burning biomass fuels and coal is linked to approximately one-third of these fatal acute respiratory infections. About 500-600 million improved household cook stoves are needed to replace the traditional stoves currently in use. -------------- BACKGROUND: ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS -------------- �00A;¶3. Greenhouse gas emissions from traditional cook stoves are increasingly significant. The incomplete combustion of biomass fuel from traditional cook stoves releases black carbon, or soot, which contributes to global warming. Globally, household combustion is responsible for as much as half of all black carbon emissions from human sources. In regions with mountain glaciers, such as the Himalayas, black carbon emitted from burning biomass increases glacial melting as black carbon settles on glaciers. A recent estimate found that black carbon may account for as much as half of Arctic warming. -------------- COOKSTOVE WORKSHOP -------------- ¶4. Attendees at the U.S./ASEAN Next Generation Cook Stove Workshop included climate scientists, engineers, cook stove manufacturers, donors, and US government agencies, including State, USAID, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),Department of Energy (DOE), National Science Foundation (NSF)and various USG-sponsored laboratories. EAP/RSP and the joint USAID/State-supported ASEAN-U.S. Technical Assistance and Training Facility organized the workshop with funding support from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Laboratory, and sponsorship from Penn State, UC-Berkeley, Clarkson University and the Asian Institute of Technology. Various NGOs and firms that design, build and distribute stoves came from Latin America, Africa and Asia - South, East and Southeast. The four-day workshop focused on discussing new technologies and bringing scientists together with donors and non-governmental organizations. -------------- IMPROVED COOK STOVES PROGRAMS -------------- ¶5. Cook stove interventions in the past aimed to improve health by reducing indoor air pollution through decreasing smoke quantity, diverting smoke outdoors, or reducing the length of human exposure BANGKOK 00003072 002 OF 003 to smoke. India, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and other countries have undertaken national improved stove programs. With the exception of the Chinese effort (1983-1998) that resulted in the distribution of 183 million stoves, most of those efforts resulted in distributions that were well below the necessary saturation levels. More recently, cook stove emissions were identified as a contributor to climate change. ¶6. Although past programs did not aim to mitigate black carbon emissions, new stove technologies can lower such emissions, some even down to those equal to clean fuels emissions. There are now many stove types, constructed from adobe, tin, and metal alloys, and powered by wood and compressed biomass with more locally appropriate designs. Improved cook stoves range in price from US$1 to several thousand dollars, depending on functions, size and materials. Manufacturers and inventors aim to increase adoption of improved stoves by including beneficiaries in the design process. Combined with a better understanding of private-public partnerships, there is new potential to improve household cook stoves in use today to achieve co-benefits in human health and environment. ¶7. Scale up of cook stove programs is another issue discussed at length in the workshop. Despite recent breakthroughs in developing cleaner burning, durable and affordable cook stoves, investment in scientific and engineering research for improved cook stoves and emissions testing is deficient. Capacity for stove development and manufacturing at a local level is another challenge. In parts of Asia, there is little technical manpower available exclusively for improved stove programs. Regional and national level capacity building is necessary to scale up. The manufacture of millions of improved stoves will require partnerships among scientists, the private sector and donors through a variety of innovative business models. Many workshop experts noted that to achieve global health and emissions goals, between 100 and 125 million efficient stoves would need to be distributed each year. -------------- USG EFFORTS -------------- ¶7. EPA has worked since 2002 through the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) on improving cook stove technology. PCIA aims to improve health, livelihood, and quality of life by reducing exposure to air pollution, primarily among women and children, from household energy use. The USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia (RDMA), in Bangkok, is undertaking a study on the causes and effects of black carbon in the region with a focus on possible interventions, including consideration of cook stove programs. (NOTE: the pending Waxman-Markey legislation would establish useful standards that might be helpful in future USG programming. The legislation defines "improved" as reducing fuel consumption by 50% and black carbon emissions by 60%, and reducing childhood pneumonia by 30%. Investment in technology and scale-up would be needed to reach those standards. End Note.) -------------- CASE STUDY: DARFUR -------------- ¶8. Case studies from around the world, including India, Brazil, Sudan and China were presented at the workshop; the Darfur program was particularly dramatic. In 2006, with support from the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley brought improved cook stoves to internally displaced persons (IDP) in the Darfur region of Sudan. The IDPs face severe fuel shortages for cooking and an increasingly larger denuded zone around the camps from ongoing wood gathering for fuel. Women and girls routinely risk rape and mutilation as they are forced to venture farther away from the camps to gather fuel wood, with typical trips lasting seven hours. Scientists at UC Berkeley modified an existing cook stove design to create a stove that was relevant to local cooking needs and that could be locally and rapidly assembled. The improved cook stove burned 30% of the fuel wood of the traditional fire previously used by the IDPs. With inputs from women in the camps, the team of scientists further improved the stove design, saving the refugees the equivalent of $250 per year in fuel costs and reducing their risk of rape or mutilation by decreasing the number of wood-gathering trips. BANGKOK 00003072 003 OF 003 Approximately 5000 of these stoves are in use in Darfur, out of a total need of 400,000 stoves. For this subsidized program, the stoves cost $30 delivered but the women were charged $5; although this was still expensive for IDPs in Darfur, the women bought the stoves. Through this work, scientists learned that while affordability is crucial to increasing uptake in purchase of improved cook stoves, social acceptability is the key to adoption. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶9. This multi-agency, multi-disciplinary workshop brought together the tools to make improved cook stoves feasible; new data on health and climate change impacts highlight the importance of and opportunities for addressing cook stove emissions. The combination of new designs, numerous manufacturers, new testing technology, examples of successful distribution in Brazil, China and India all suggest that the USG consider supporting cook stove programs to reduce poverty and stimulate sustainable development. The most appropriate scale and types of program interventions will require careful coordination and deliberation among all USG agency stakeholders. Future activities should take full consideration of lessons learned from prior development assistance experience associated with promoting improved cook stoves, particularly through USAID. -------------- FURTHER INFORMATION AND EVENTS -------------- ¶10. The complete set of conference materials will be available from the Asian Institute of Technology at (www.ait.th); for a cd of workshop presentations, contact regional ESTH Hub officer Hal Howard, howardhh@state.gov, who can also supply the conference report and road map when completed. The University of Iowa organizes an annual cook stove conference in January, in Seattle: contact Mark Bryden at kmbryden@iastate.edu. The Asia Regional Cookstove Program (ARECOP) has set up a regional stove testing center in Yogyakarta, Indonesia that will use the latest technology to support stove development in Southeast Asia; contact Christina Aristanti at Christina@arecop.org. For EPA's program, see (www.pciaonline.org). Reftels describe cook stove issues from the perspective of the WHO and other posts. For Darfur experiences, see (www.darfurstoves.org). JOHN