Open-Fire Stoves Kill Millions. How Do We Fix It?
Open-Fire Stoves Kill Millions. How Do We Fix It?
Making dinner shouldn’t be fatal. But millions of people in the developing world die each year from illnesses linked to smoke spewing out of crude stoves—a scourge that has frustrated experts for decades. Now a Washington, D.C.-based group with a new approach hopes to place “green” stoves in 100 million homes worldwide by 2020.
Part aid organization, part venture-capital broker, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has raised $158 million to help develop, market and distribute clean-burning cookstoves. Championed by celebrities such as Julia Roberts, the initiative is ramping up in Bangladesh, China, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. “Cooking kills, and it doesn’t have to,” says Alliance director Radha Muthiah. “It’s the fifth-biggest killer in developing countries.”