A Statement by Dymphna van der Lans, Chief Executive Officer, Clean Cooking Alliance
The Clean Cooking Alliance was established ten years ago to work together with a global network of partners to build an inclusive industry that makes clean cooking accessible to the three billion people who live each day without it. As CEO of the Alliance, I often speak about how unacceptable it is that the lives of millions of families across the world are limited by how they cook, and of the significant health, climate, environment, and livelihood impacts that cooking with polluting, open fires or inefficient stoves has on people’s lives.
As the United States has experienced profound pain, anger, and grief in the last week over the latest killing of a black man, George Floyd, I am compelled to speak up that this too, without question nor qualification, is unacceptable.
The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and far too many others are unacceptable. The long-standing reality of persistent racial oppression, inequality, and injustice in the United States is unacceptable.
The urgent work of the Alliance is one of climate justice, which at its heart links human rights with development. The impacts of climate change are often felt profoundly and disproportionately by the world’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities.
The Clean Cooking Alliance is committed to ensuring that the principles of climate justice extend to our work closer to home as well. Climate justice and racial justice are closely connected, and the Alliance can and must do more to foster an inclusive, equitable, sustainable future for communities around the world, including in the United States, where many of our global team are based.
To all our Alliance partners and, most importantly, the Alliance team, I stand with you in acknowledging the anger and anguish of the Black community, and in committing to do more. The Alliance stands firmly against racism, discrimination, and hatred. And we stand united in demanding safety, dignity, reform, justice, and peace.