WUNRN
Stanford Social Innovation Review
CLEANER COOKSTOVES - RESEARCH IN
BANGLADESH SHOWS WOMEN VALUE FOR LESS FUEL, SHORTER COOKING, LOWER PRICE VS.
HEALTH
By Corinna Wu | Spring 2013
Clean cookstoves, such as this, reduce household air pollution, a major cause of death among the world's poor. (Photo courtesy of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves)
Half a
billion people around the world depend on rudimentary cookstoves to prepare
their daily meals. Although such traditional stoves have been used for
generations, policymakers now recognize them to be a major health hazard. The smoke
emitted from traditional cookstoves contributes to household air pollution,
which is responsible for the deaths of four million people each year, according
to a December 2012 study in The Lancet.
In
In rural
The researchers
found that the women did not think it was important to know about the health
hazards posed by the traditional stoves. Rather, they valued more highly the
ability of new cookstoves to reduce fuel consumption and cooking time. Women
spend a great deal of time each day collecting fuel for cooking.
Mobarak and his
colleagues also found that the demand for new cookstoves depends heavily on
price. It’s difficult for a new cookstove—even a very inexpensive one—to
compete with the free one a family already owns. “People seemed well-informed
about the problems that [traditional] cookstoves might bring, but they don’t
prioritize those problems,” Mobarak says. “There are lots of other needs
competing for their funds.”
What’s more, men
and women value the new cookstoves differently. “Women are more interested in
improved stoves, because they’re the ones who are breathing in the bad smoke,”
Mobarak says. “But they are often not the financial decision maker.”
“The results of
the study from Bangladesh underscore the efforts to seek more input from and
better understand the preferences of cookstove users, who, by and large, are
women,” says Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation.
The
Although improving
public health is the primary goal for policymakers, the study authors say,
reducing the cost of clean cookstoves might be the most promising way to
encourage their adoption.