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babylonsister

(171,070 posts) Mon Aug 15, 2016, 09:57 PM Aug 2016

US Saves Lives by Pledging Clean Cooking Stoves for 100 Million

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/cookstoves-cooking-food-hunger-india-smoke/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=global&utm_campaign=action-journey-3&linkId=27651931

US Saves Lives by Pledging Clean Cooking Stoves for 100 Million
Brought to you by: Caterpillar Foundation
By Joe McCarthy on Aug. 14, 2016

Cooking is pretty simple for most people. You buy your groceries, do some prep work, then turn on the stove. Soon your rice and beans are cooked and you have a healthy, inexpensive meal.

For millions of people around the world, this series of events is way, way more difficult.

Cooking can be a day-long affair that involves young girls searching for wood, coal or dung and other materials during the day (missing school in the process) and culminates with a stove spewing toxic fumes as a person tends to the meal.

snip//

Fortunately, this reality has motivated the US government to team up with the UN and the Global Alliance for Clean to bring clean cooking stoves and fuels to 100 million people in places like "China, Guatemala, Kenya, and India by 2020."

This was preceded by the Indian goverment promising to bring clean cooking stoves to 50 million people over the next three years.

Together the efforts underscore how precious and precarious food can be. In a world of abundance, food should be a source of nourishment and contentment, a way to be in harmony with the world. It shouldn't cause stress and drive people to early deaths.

When everyone will be able to cook a simple, healthy meal, then the world will be much closer to ending poverty.

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6 replies

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US Saves Lives by Pledging Clean Cooking Stoves for 100 Million (Original Post) babylonsister Aug 2016 OP

It's nice to get good news once in awhile. anamandujano Aug 2016 #1

I hope they give a stipend for electricity which can be expensive if you cook daily yeoman6987 Aug 2016 #3

I learned recently that rural Cambodia Nevernose Aug 2016 #4

Win Win JonathanRackham Aug 2016 #2

They're called rocket stoves OxQQme Aug 2016 #5

would be interesting for camping dembotoz Aug 2016 #6

anamandujano

(7,004 posts)

1. It's nice to get good news once in awhile.

Reply to babylonsister (Original post)

Mon Aug 15, 2016, 10:20 PM

Aug 2016

yeoman6987

(14,449 posts)

3. I hope they give a stipend for electricity which can be expensive if you cook daily

Reply to anamandujano (Reply #1)

Mon Aug 15, 2016, 11:06 PM

Aug 2016

Nevernose

(13,081 posts)

4. I learned recently that rural Cambodia

Reply to yeoman6987 (Reply #3)

Mon Aug 15, 2016, 11:56 PM

Aug 2016

The electricity rates are 75 cents a kWh (I think I pay about 8 cents in the states). Even on urban areas like Siem Reap and Phnom Penh the rated are 25 cents a kWh. I'm also told that things are no better in Laos (I guess I'll find out for myself in a few days).

The people I spoke to blamed it on a lack of domestic supply, necessitating all energy imports from Thailand and Vietnam. Of course, I also discovered that there's some truth to this: Cambodians claim that, at best, they are a Vietnameseclient state and at worst a Vietnamese colony.

Even still, you can see people cooking with coal and wood in any major city in Asia, from Bangkok to Beijing, including places like China with dirt cheap electricity (although occasionally the buckets of burning charcoal are just a Buddhist thing, like super-incense).

It's a much more complicated problem that people realize, and even with cheap electricity, cultures need to change as well.