Dried cow dung is often used for fuel in developing nations
AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh
It may sound like a sort of crazy notion, and certainly is only part of the solution to climate change, but transitioning to cleaner burning biomass cookstoves in many developing nations could have a pretty large impact. Which is why an intriguing post over at Planet Forward caught my eye.
In it Pamposh Raina says (somewhat cryptically I must admit) says,
In the coming days in Washington DC researchers are likely to discuss the prospects of funding over half a billion three-dollar stoves, across the globe. The plan entails installation of clean stoves, which will help reduce the harmful carbon emissions that not only pollute the environment but also cause several respiratory problems.
To correct a bit, it's not really the carbon emissions from biomass cookstoves which is the big problem, but the particle emissions. The black carbon soot from them--in addition to causing some serious indoor air pollution problems for the people who cook with them regularly--increasingly is being called out as a large component in global warming.
In fact, it's this soot that is accelerating melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, and has been linked with extreme weather conditions over parts on India (where 80% of the rural population uses biomass cookstoves). The good news is that this sort of pollution falls out of the atmosphere comparatively quickly once the source is removed. Hence financing three-dollar cookstoves.
Raina rightly asks some important logistical questions: "Will just half a billion stoves solve the problem? How will these be distributed across the developing and underdeveloped countries? ... What exactly do they mean by 'clean stoves'?"
These are very important and how they are addressed is the answer to the question posed in the title of this post, but just the fact that this solution is being discussed in DC is encouraging.
