Clean Cookstoves
Adokpo Wazam
‘cookstoves that make my life easy’
Currently, about one-third of the world’s population, 2.7 billion people, depends on solid fuels including firewood and crop residue, for cooking. These traditional cooking practices not only contribute to high levels of global carbon emissions but also to the health of rural populations due to household air pollution and localised deforestation.
Women and children under five years old are the ones most at risk from respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia and bronchiolitis, caused by exposure to the black smoke created by traditional three-stone fires.
The burden of collecting firewood disproportionately falls on women and children who often must sacrifice their income-generating activities and education to walk many miles for many hours each day. The task of collecting wood from remote places can be dangerous, particularly for women, exposing them to gender-based violence, and delays in collecting firewood can also lead to the risk of violence within the home.
This year we have established a new partnership with Carbon Kind. In the first year, we aim to bring 33,000 clean, fuel-efficient cookstoves to rural communities. The Adokpo Wazam cookstoves use half the amount of wood than the traditional three-stone fires.
Providing families with a clean cookstove not only reduces the pressure on surrounding forests, but they also burn more efficiently which reduces the carbon emissions being released into the atmosphere, and as a result, they reduce the amount of household air pollution which causes respiratory disease, particularly in women and young children.
With less time spent on daily wood collection, households are able to spend more time on income-generating activities, and children have more time to spend on their education.
By working with our sister organisation Carbon Kind, all cookstoves are manufactured and distributed locally, which has created 40 new jobs for local potters, metal workers, and a sales team, and income from carbon credits will be re-invested back into the communities we work with.
