2 million lives at stake due to inefficient stoves

What is the most primal need of energy for? Cooking. And when it comes to that, millions still do not have access to electricity. Nearly half the world's population uses biomass (wood, crop residues, charcoal or dung) or coal as fuel for cooking and heating.

Rural and poor across the world's developing nations still use smoke stoves that are bad for the environment and health. Indoor air pollution from such inefficient stoves affects about 3 billion people -- nearly half the world's population. In addition to respiratory disease caused by smoke, the fuel needed by inefficient stoves leads to deforestation, and environmental degradation. Women and children are at greatest risk for the adverse health effects posed by inefficient stoves.

An international effort to replace smoky, inefficient household stoves that people commonly use in lower and middle income countries with clean, affordable, fuel efficient stoves could save nearly 2 million lives each year, according to experts from the National Institutes of health.

The study authors cited a recent report by the World Bank, which noted that, in addition to improving public health, clean, efficient stoves could have benefits to the environment and the climate, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

In recognition of the problem, the United Nations launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. A public-private partnership, the alliance seeks to create a global market for clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels in the developing world. To succeed, strategies for replacing the world's inefficient biomass stoves with clean, efficient stoves must be market driven, the researchers rightly noted. Equally important is the need for awareness among the people on the need for a clean stove, right?