This article is part of “Resurrect This Bill!”, a series of articles highlighting bills that have “died in a previous Congress.” These bills, if passed, would enable America to make great progress in the fight against global poverty and help ensure American national security.
SILVER SPRING, Maryland — Even a stove for cooking food can be a luxury.
For nearly three billion people, this is a fact—a fact that lead to the deaths of roughly 3.5 million [1] people in 2010, according to a 2012 Global Burden of Disease report cited in the Clean Cookstoves and Fuels Support Act.
And this fact may have not changed for the better. A 2014 World Health Organization fact sheet states an analysis of 2012 data found that “4.3 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution caused by the inefficient use of solid fuels.”
Elaborating on its claim, the fact sheet says, “[I]nefficient cooking fuels and technologies produce high levels of household air pollution with a range of health-damaging pollutants, including small soot particles that penetrate deep into the lungs. In poorly ventilated dwellings, indoor smoke can be 100 times higher than acceptable levels for small particles.”
Furthermore, the fact sheet corroborates findings in the 2010 Global Burden of Disease report that household air pollution was a significant risk factor in people suffering from “chronic respiratory diseases,” “cardiovascular and circulatory diseases” and “cancer.”
To address the root cause of these deaths, Rep. Susan Collins introduced the Clean Cookstoves and Fuel Support Act on March 10, 2014.
The bill’s stated goal is “[t]o promote the use of clean cookstoves and fuels to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions.”
It attempts to do so by having the U.S. government further collaborate with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which describes itself as a “private-public partnership” launched in 2010 by Hillary Clinton and a “range of leading international public and private actors.”
Now led by the U.N. Foundation, the Alliance aims to “save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change, with a goal of spurring the adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels in 100 million households by 2020.”
To help the Alliance accomplish this goal, the U.S. government has already pledged up to $50 million to the Alliance through the fiscal year of 2016 and $125 million to the clean cookstoves and fuels in general.
The $50 million to the Alliance is intended to support “debt financing or insurance that meet [the Alliance’s]credit and lending standards,” while the $125 million (which includes the $50 million to the Alliance) is intended to fund “research” and “field implementation activities.”
To further support the Alliance, the bill seeks to appropriate funds from the various U.S. departments and organizations that will work with the Alliance, “as may be necessary…to work with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.”
These groups include the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Peace Corps.
Funds for the bill would be devoted to several measures meant to address the concerns the Alliance has identified as obstacles preventing the increased usage of clean cookstoves.
First and foremost, the bill would fund research to “spur [the]development of low-emission, high-efficiency biomass fuels.” This measure would address one of the Alliance’s most significant challenges: the “difficult[y]for consumers to cover the higher initial cost of clean cookstoves.”
Second, the bill would “dedicat[e]resources for research on household air pollution to ensure adoption of life-saving interventions and policy formulation” and help establish “regional network research and training hubs in global environmental health and occupational health with a household air pollution focus.”
Policy formulation is particularly important because, according to the Alliance, there is an “absence of internationally-recognized clean cookstove standards and limited in-country testing capabilities.” Because of this absence, the cookstove industry has had limited success supplying potential consumers with reliable cookstoves and equally reliable information about them.
Third, the bill would help the Department of Agriculture “provide technical expertise on policy questions facing the cookstoves sector and to help align the Alliance with ongoing international efforts.”
These questions include adjusting cookstove designs for varying consumer needs in different parts of the world and a lack of coordination in the cookstove industry on both the local and international level. The failure to properly address either has “resulted in missed opportunities and a failure to achieve the economies of scale that come with a more cohesive and strategic approach.”
Fourth, the bill would also help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “partner with scientists in other countries to monitor global black carbon emissions and assess climate impacts and benefits of switching to clean cookstoves.”
According to a report by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, black carbon emissions have been a major problem for developing countries that use “in-door cooking stoves…in confined quarters.” Not only is black carbon a health hazard, it is also an environmental hazard. Unlike developed countries, developing countries do not have the technology to curb black carbon emissions. Thus, not only do developed countries rely more on black carbon, but they also suffer more from it.
Fifth, the bill would fund the Peace Corps’s effort “to train community members to select, construct, and maintain clean cookstoves and fuels, provide ongoing support to sustain their use, and help families, schools, and others access grants to lower the cost.”
The Clean Cookstoves and Fuels Support Act is a good first step in addressing a shamefully preventable problem. It views the multiple reasons behind why three billion people across the globe cannot have stoves that will not contribute to their deaths, and pursues collaborative strategies that emphasize prudence and practicality.
– Dean Delasalas
Sources: Govtrack, The Lancet, Copenhagen Consensus on Climate Change, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, WHO
Photo: Flickr