Fortunately, advancements in clean cookstove technologies and fuels, robust standards and testing, the evidence base regarding health benefits of using improved stoves, innovative financing tools (e.g., carbon finance), and a range of new business models are demonstrating increasing success and present an enormous opportunity to address this issue at an unprecedented scale. Yet financial and in-kind resources are desperately needed to translate these opportunities into a comprehensive strategy and achieve a tipping point that could literally save millions of lives, while improving countless others, empowering women, creating opportunities for the poor, and reducing damage to the environment. The scope and severity of cookstoves’ impacts on the health of almost half the world’s population provides donors and investors with a unique opportunity to play a leading role in addressing one of the world’s greatest, but least known, health and environmental risks.
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is leading an ambitious ten-year effort to convene the sector around a common strategy for engagement and to build a strong Secretariat to support these efforts. The Alliance’s three pillars of activity - enhancing demand, strengthening supply, and fostering an enabling environment - form the framework for our strategy to achieve universal adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels. However, developing a suite of enabling activities can be prohibitively expensive for any one of the sector’s stakeholders to undertake, and is best suited for a collaborative process involving a range of partners with complementary skills and resources. This is where the Alliance’s role is so critical – donor support will allow us to continue our efforts to convene the sector around a common strategy to promote clean cooking, as well as mobilize the grant and investment resources to make a meaningful and sustainable difference in the market for clean cookstoves and fuels.