Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
Programs & Initiatives
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a new public-private partnership to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance — sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, several U.S. government agencies, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), and other partners — has a goal of "100 by 20," which calls for 100 million homes in the developing world to adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020, with a long-term vision of universal adoption of clean and efficient cooking solutions.
Background
Three billion people, nearly half of the world's population, use inefficient stoves to cook their daily meals. Fueled by wood, coal, or dung, these traditional cookstoves or open fires produce smoke that causes 1.9 million deaths each year, with women and young children the most affected. Cookstove smoke contributes to a range of chronic illnesses and acute health impacts such as low birth weight and acute pneumonia in children under 5, lung cancer, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and cardiovascular disease.
Reliance on biomass for cooking and heating puts increased pressure on natural resources and contributes to climate change through emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition, women and girls face personal security risks as they forage for fuel near refugee camps and conflict zones.
NIH Involvement
As one of the federal agencies involved in the Alliance, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will commit about $25 million over five years to support ongoing research and research training projects, as well as new efforts to develop improved measuring devices and expand epidemiologic studies. The following NIH institutes, centers and offices are involved in the effort:
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
- The Fogarty International Center (FIC)
- National Cancer Institute (NCI)
- National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
- Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR)
- Office of Research of Women’s Health (ORWH)
Over the past eight years, NIEHS has invested an estimated $9 million in research related to cookstoves and their health effects, primarily in community-based intervention studies in Guatemala, Ecuador, Nepal, Pakistan, Ghana, and the U.S. with study endpoints including lower respiratory infection (LRI) and tuberculosis in children, low birth weight, COPD, and other respiratory conditions in adult women. NIEHS seeks to expand the geographic reach of its studies and research training programs, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of new cookstove technologies. NIEHS Senior Advisor for Public Health John M. Balbus, M.D., M.P.H, serves as the Institute’s representative to the Alliance.
General Information
- NIH Fogarty International Center: Indoor Air Pollution and Cookstove Efforts at NIH
- United Nations Foundation Resources
- World Health Organization: Indoor Air Pollution
- Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Fact Sheet (1MB)
- Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Frequently Asked Questions (102KB)
For more information about joining the Alliance or making a financial pledge, please contact Leslie Cordes, the UN Foundation’s Senior Director of Partnership Development for Energy and Climate, at (202) 862-6307 or lcordes@unfoundation.org .
Global Alliance Founding Partners
- United Nations Foundation
- Shell Foundation
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- U.S. Department of State
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
- Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)
- Morgan Stanley
- UN-Energy
- World Food Programme
- UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
- UN Industrial Development Organization
- U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Disease Control & Prevention)
- UN High Commissioner for Refugees
- SNV: Netherlands Development Organisation
- Shell
- Government of Peru
- Government of Norway
