Why cook stoves are changing rural women’s lives

Indians have grown up with images of squatting rural women working wood sticks in their chulhas (cook stoves) to make food for their families. This image often has a rustic feel to it and many of us dismiss it without giving it a second thought.

The cook stove is most often fueled with wood, coal or dung and generates a lot of smoke. Most of these women die every year due to indoor air pollution (IAP). As per a World Health Organization (WHO) report (2006), 1.5 million people die because of IAP annually. Though, IAP has been an old phenomenon, it did not feature in most development budgets across the world. Only in recent years, has the WHO declared IAP has one of the 10 most global health risks.

The burning of solid fuels in the cook stove generates poisonous fumes which are health-damaging and can potentially cause pneumonia among children and chronic respiratory disorders among adults. A positive trend since 1940’s has been the invention of smokeless cook stoves using different technologies to replace the traditional cook stoves. As the traditional cook stoves burn a vast amount of wood affecting climate change, in recent times, several agencies are distributing and producing improved cook stoves to village households as a movement to curb climate change. These cook stoves are not only energy efficient but have improved lives of several women and children across India. Carbon offsetting funding like what atmosfair provides in Lesotho for their efficient wood stove project can be used to reach out to more lives. For more information on different cookstove projects, visit Partnership on Clean Indoor Air.

Other related links: Better burning, better breathing: Improving health with cleaner cook stoves, Environmental Health Perspectives Vol: 18 Issue: 3 pp: A124-A129

What is carbon offsetting anyway?

The average cheeseburger requires about 6.8 pounds of carbon dioxide to produce. This includes raising, slaughtering, transporting, storing, and cooking the food. Surprising, isn’t it?

If we consider all our daily activities and calculate our carbon footprint, we will realize that we do little about global warming other than contributing to it. If you are an active member against climate change which means that you are using green energy and reducing emissions, then carbon offsetting is the next thing that you should do.

Carbon offsetting is a method of countering damage done through the release of carbon emissions from activities such as driving a car, flying or heating a building. For every tonne of CO2 emitted in one place, an equivalent tonne is supposedly removed elsewhere. While it does not undo the harm to the environment, it does become an efficient way to offset future emissions. But we should remind ourselves, offsets are not an excuse for people to continue current emissions.

While it is very difficult to calculate CO2 emissions precisely for every event, one of the best ways of carbon offsetting is to offset flights. It is relatively more effective simply because of the ease of calculating the amount of CO2 released. However, even this can be a challenge and agencies are expected to comply with the strictest measuring adherences.

 Offsetting has a bright future with growing globalization. Yet, it covers only a fraction of the total CO2 emitted. More efforts to reduce emissions are still required. Every time you are going to take the car, think of taking the public bus instead. Climate Change needs your help!

Other related reads: Cheeseburger footprint, Calculate your carbon footprint

Liability and Compliance in Climate Change

While there is no doubt that Climate Change is a global problem, in order to overcome it, it needs to be broken into blocks. However, that is easier said than done. In attempting to accomplish this, a lot many aspects of Climate Change are ignored and do not receive adequate funding or research. Two of the many such pertinent yet ignored aspects are compliance and liability.

Even within these domains, it is has been difficult to achieve harmonization - international versus national versus local being the main spectrum of difference. Sovereignty issues lead to most international agreements having a weak and flexible compliance system. This has its advantages but non-compliance results in countries’ losing faith in the agreement itself. Such is also the case with liability risks and related insurance.

Keeping this in mind, the Centre for Science and Environment(CSE) has organized the International Conference On Compliance And Liability In Climate Change Negotiations which will bring forth the cross-sectoral nature of compliance and liability issues and at the same time, generate discourse around these issues.

CSE 'brings experts from across the globe to discuss these challenges and illuminate upon solutions that we must work towards. The panel comprises renowned environmental lawyers, professors and climate negotiators who will be facing NGOs, campaigners, researchers and together will try to find answers to one of the most challenging quandaries that climate change harbingers.'

Sea change?

There was a week in the beginning of January when Delhi was colder than London!! And in Europe, train services and airport operations came to a grinding halt because of a prolonged freezing weather. Climate change? Perhaps.
What comes as a sea of change is in the attitude of many emerging economies towards this issue, the blow-hot blow-cold opinions on Kyoto protocol notwithstanding. There is a very interesting story in a recent edition of The Economist on the seriousness with which the world's largest economy presently views this topic.
The fact that the world order is perhaps shifting from being acutely unipolar has never been more evident that at Cancun, where largely due to India’s efforts, references to “equity” and “equitable access to sustainable development” were included in the “Shared Vision for Long-term Cooperative Action” to mitigate climate change. Also, a Cancun Adaptation Framework was agreed upon. It exhorts developing countries to prepare and implement national adaptation plans and at the same time, calls upon developed countries to provide finance, technology and capacity building support for the same. The objective of the Cancun Adaptation Framework is to enhance action on adaptation, including through international cooperation and coherent consideration of matters relating to adaptation under the Convention. Ultimately enhanced action on adaptation seeks to reduce vulnerability and build resilience in developing country.
The best way any country can build resilience and reduce its carbon imprint is to find alternate energy options that are scalable that would offset the increasing energy consumption.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol draw a clear distinction between the respective obligations of developed and developing countries. Since developed countries are primarily responsible for causing climate change, the protocol lays down binding emission reduction commitments for each developed country party. Quite appropriately, developing countries are not required to accept such commitments. Their mitigation actions are of a purely voluntary nature (and rightly so) and they are not accountable to any international authority, except in regard to projects that receive financial support from such an authority.
But we have an opportunity to make a big difference through small changes. Question is how fast will these changes happen?

Wake up to Climate Change

The Cancun climate talks resulted in some progress especially in the area of financial agreements made to preserve forests. However, in 2010, the world saw another drought strike the Amazon forests. The forests currently form the lungs of the earth absorbing more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon, making them critical to the discussion about global warming.

Scientists and researchers have estimated that 8.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ will be released into the earth’s atmosphere due to the absence of the trees which were once part of the Amazon. What is worrisome is that there was a similar drought that occurred in 2005. Climatologists claim that the droughts of 2005 and 2010 are consistent with the idea that global warming will cause more droughts in future, emit more carbon, and potentially lead to a climate change crisis.

Though this news has appeared in through several channels and in mainstream media, the enormity of the situation does not strike till our own experience of extreme weather conditions, unavailability of crops and extinction of local plants and animal species. An interesting graphic (given below) by InfographicWorld (representing the deforestation of the Amazon), provides a stark wake up call.