Near-term climate protection and clean air benefits – actions for controlling short-lived climate forcers
Standardized techniques for monitoring and evaluating (M&E) changes in indoor air quality and
stove fuel performance were developed and deployed in two NGO-led programs to disseminate improved
cookstoves (ICSs) in India and one in Mexico. This paper describes the objectives and
characteristics of these monitoring and evaluation methods and how they were deployed.
The results showed major and mostly statistically significant improvements in 48-hour indoor
air pollution concentrations in those households using the stoves one year after introduction. Kitchen
levels of carbon monoxide reduced 30-70 % and concentrations of small particles reduced 25-65 %.
Results for stove performance were mixed, with some stoves achieving improvement in one or
another of the short-term metrics that are part of the water boiling test (WBT) used to evaluate
stoves in laboratory (controlled) settings. The kitchen performance test, which measures fuel use
in households under actual use, was less easily conducted because of high variation and difficult
field logistics. The results are more promising, however, with statistically significant reductions in
fuel use per person ranging from about 20 to 67 %. From the results, it also seems clear that
several indicators of stove performance derived from the WBT are not good predictors of actual
fuel use and thus should be confined to evaluations during the design stage of stove development.
