Cookstoves and Climate at COP21
The Alliance is working with its partners to ensure that clean cooking is a central part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, also known as COP21. The Alliance is working with partners to ensure that clean cooking is a central part of this marquee moment for climate action. In addition to co-hosting official and unofficial side events and speaking on panels in Paris, the Alliance will continue to contribute expertise from the clean cooking sector to the climate discourse and implementation efforts.
The following points are key to the success of collective climate action and increasing the adoption of clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels.
- We need to recognize the contribution of clean cooking to addressing climate change. Residential cooking and domestic heating with solid fuels accounts for up to 25% of global black carbon emissions and contribute a significant share of ambient air pollution in the developing world, including pollution that contributes to atmospheric brown clouds that affect regional weather patterns. A number of recent studies demonstrate that wide-scale adoption of clean and efficient cookstoves, heatstoves, and fuels can mitigate climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions from non-sustainable harvesting of biomass, specifically fuelwood, and lowering emissions of short-lived climate pollutants such as methane and black carbon.
- We must end energy poverty to simultaneously address climate change and reach other health and development objectives. Global action to combat climate change must take into account the critical needs of vulnerable populations in developing countries around the world – the people that are living on the front lines of this growing challenge. An important component of such action is ensuring that those without access to clean energy, are provided with affordable, accessible, and acceptable energy resources to meet their household energy needs.
- We know what works and we need to act now to scale it up. Policymakers and implementers must utilize proven approaches and take concerted action to expand sustainable energy access at a household level, specifically cooking energy. The Alliance has demonstrated that its market-based approach to creating a thriving market for clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels works and we have put together and employed financing mechanisms, toolkits, curricula, online tools and catalogs, and other resources that have proven to be effectively bolstering the capacity of the clean cooking sector and enabling sustainable adoption.
- We must integrate clean cooking into programming and financing mechanisms. We urge countries, implementing organizations, investors, and companies to ensure that programming and financial mechanisms that support economic development, health, women’s empowerment, and environmental and climate protection are aligned with efforts to expand energy access and include provisions on clean cooking. Financing must be flexible and accessible and it must match the needs of organizations that have the ability to reach the last mile and make sustainable impact.
COP21 presents a once in a lifetime opportunity that cannot be missed. We must work together to ensure that collective action is taken to address climate change and advance sustainable development. It is imperative that this action includes accelerated action on clean cooking.