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Access to Clean Cookstoves and Fuels Critical to Success of Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda

This is a critical year for setting up successful approaches to international development, women’s empowerment, and environmental and climate protection. Access to sustainable, safe energy has been left out of previous global agendas and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Alliance) is committed to helping reverse this trend.  The United Nations' Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda will set the course for the next 15 years of development. It is imperative that the international community considers the widespread problem of inefficient, harmful cooking practices and the tangible, positive impacts that clean cooking solutions provide throughout its framework, implementation, and tracking.

Cooking over open fires and traditional stoves is not only harmful on its own, it is a driver of poverty, gender inequality, and environmental degradation. Conversely, integrating clean cooking into development agendas and approaches can catalyze impacts across all of these areas.

In 2015, the international community has an opportunity to adopt an agenda and implementing framework that improves upon previous approaches and better prioritizes proven interventions, like clean cooking. To that end, the Alliance suggests a number of critical revisions to the Agenda.

The Alliance strongly supports the inclusion of Sustainable Development Goal 7:

• “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.”

To help ensure that household energy and air pollution are sufficiently recognized in the Agenda, enabling the world to better address public health, environmental protection, livelihoods, and women’s empowerment, the Alliance recommends adding a target:

• “Ensure by 2030 universal access to household energy services and devices that minimize air pollution.”

To accurately reflect the issue of cooking and align the Post-2015 Agenda with ongoing international efforts under Goal 7, the Alliance suggests revising the indicator:

• “Percentage of households primarily using clean and efficient cooking fuels and technologies”

Considering the prevalence of household air pollution in rural and peri-urban areas, the Alliance recommends revising the indicator on air pollution under Goal 3 on health to broaden its scope beyond urban settings. The Alliance’s suggested language for the indicator:

• “Mean air pollution of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5).”

Over 7 million premature deaths are attributable to air pollution every year, 4.3 million of these deaths are due to exposure to household air pollution. Therefore, the global Agenda must also measure morbidity due to air pollution under Goal 3 as well with the following indicator:

• “Number of premature deaths attributable to ambient and household air pollution.”

The uncompensated hours that women and children dedicate to cooking and collecting fuel are a key focus for the Alliance’s gender equality and women’s empowerment efforts. In support of this, the Alliance suggests including two indicators on unpaid work under Goal 5 on gender equality:

• “Average weekly hours spent on unpaid domestic and care work, by sex, age, and location”
• “Proportion of households within 15 minutes of fuel and clean water.”

Improving access to clean cookstoves and fuels is a development objective itself, while also contributing to poverty alleviation, food security, health, education, gender equality, energy access, economic growth, climate mitigation, and environmental protection.

[pullquote]We urge our partners to join us in advocating for the prioritization of clean cooking in the Post-2015 Agenda and to reach out to their networks about the importance of accurately and effectively integrating energy access throughout sustainable development efforts.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves asks our partners to:

1. Reach out to your networks about the importance of accurately and effectively integrating clean cooking and household air pollution throughout the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda using the language outlined above.
2. Let the Alliance know if you are engaging in the Post-2015 process by emailing post-2015@cleancookstoves.org with your organization’s role and positions when it comes to the Sustainable Development Agenda in order to promote coordination amongst our partner base.
3. Provide feedback on the proposed targets and indicators for the Agenda through the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service and add your voice to the call for integrating, prioritizing, and financing access to energy, specifically clean cooking interventions.

For more information, please contact post-2015@cleancookstoves.org.