Alliance to help lead new clean cooking program in Nepal
More than 75 key stakeholders gathered in Kathmandu to launch a program to promote smoke-free kitchen communities in Nepal, where household air pollution (HAP) accounts for over 21,000 premature deaths each year.
Led by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves in collaboration with the Government of Nepal, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), and the World Health Organization, the project aims to address HAP through a series of measures to promote cleaner household cooking. The project will focus on strengthening the supply of available clean cooking technologies that have demonstrably low emissions1 and creating demand through a series of behavior change communication activities. The project is being implemented by LEADERS Nepal and is supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
To overcome initial availability and accessibility barriers maximize adoption, the project will utilize technologies and fuels that are already in the market and that have proven useable for local cooking needs. In Nepal this includes LPG, biogas, and electric stoves. Project impact will be assessed through stove use monitoring and measuring reduction in personal exposure levels.
The Alliance is also helping lead the development of a Nepal electric cookstove standard and standard implementation plan. The collective results of the baseline assessments, demonstration project and results, and standards work will inform future behavior change, market development, and policy efforts to support sustained and widespread access to and adoption of clean cooking in Nepal.
1. Those consistent with International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) International Workshop Agreement (IWA) on Guidelines for Evaluating Clean Cookstove Performance[1] as Tier 4 for indoor emissions