Leslie Cordes, April, 2011
It is with great pleasure that I send you the first newsletter of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
The Alliance’s mission is to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. Since our launch last September, we have made important strides toward advancing these goals.
Through our Working Groups and Cross-Cutting Committees , we have convened the global stove sector – more than 350 experts – to identify the key actions needed to create a thriving global market for clean cookstoves and fuels. The groups’ topics range from health, climate research, and finance and investment to standards and testing, gender issues, and more. They recently submitted Early Action recommendations for the Alliance to consider undertaking in the next year. We look forward to supporting as many of these recommendations as funding will allow.
Another objective of the Alliance is to raise public awareness of the need for clean cookstoves. Through increased global press coverage and feature segments on programs, such as the Martha Stewart and Oprah television shows, we have begun to engage the general public in supporting clean cooking solutions.
Lastly, we are actively engaging with donor and implementing country governments to encourage the establishment of national policies that will ensure that clean cookstoves reach the millions of women around the world who need them.
We look forward to sharing our successes through future newsletters and working with you to promote improved cookstoves and fuels around the globe.
Sincerely,
Leslie Cordes
Interim Executive Director
Upcoming Events: Cookstoves on Oprah!
On May 7th, Oprah Winfrey will host a special television show called “Extraordinary Moms” in honor of Mother’s Day. The show will feature an interview with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talking about cookstoves and the impact that they have on women around the world. The Alliance’s new Global Ambassador will also be revealed on the show! We ask you to publicize this event on your website, Facebook page, or on Twitter, and make sure to watch what is sure to be a very inspirational show!
In May, the U.S. Government’s National Institutes of Health will lead a workshop in Washington, DC, to discuss what is known about the health impacts of harmful cookstove smoke and to determine critical research gaps that, if addressed, can help identify strategies for improving the health of poor women and children globally. We look forward to sharing the outcomes of this conference with our Partners and Donors when they are available.
For other Upcoming Events of interest, please click here.
Global Forum in Peru
In February, the Alliance was pleased to participate in the 5th Biennial Forum on Clean Indoor Air in Lima, Peru, hosted by The Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA). With over 350 attendees from more than 40 countries, it was the largest cookstove conference ever held. In the next year, we plan to integrate PCIA and the Alliance, building on existing initiatives and engaging the current network of over 460 organizations around the world to achieve our goal of 100 million households adopting clean stoves by 2020. In 2010, PCIA partners disseminated more than 2.5 million stoves, a great point from which to build. The Forum afforded us a terrific opportunity to meet many of the PCIA partners in person and begin the integration process.
The Forum also yielded a number of significant outcomes, including the Lima Consensus, an agreement to establish an interim cookstove rating system “that reflects the varying tiers of performance in the areas of fuel efficiency, indoor air quality, emissions of particulate matter and carbon monoxide, and safety.” This agreement is an important step along the path toward developing voluntary global cookstove standards. We hope it will lead to a formal interim rating system that can be used by household energy stakeholders. The proposed rating system, which is fuel- and stove-neutral, will enable our community to have a better understanding of the performance of existing stove models and drive innovation to improve performance.
Another exciting outcome of the Forum was the establishment of the African Alliance for Clean Cooking, a consortium of African organizations that are working to address regional stove issues and collaborate on effective solutions to the challenges they face. For more information on this group, please contact David Mukisa , the AACC’s coordinator.
It was a great pleasure to have the Peruvian Government welcome our Forum participants to Lima and showcase its National Cookstove Program. As the first developing country to join the Alliance as a National Partner, Peru’s commitment to the distribution of clean cooking solutions to its citizens is a model we hope many other nations will adopt. We were honored to have First Lady Pilar Nores de Garcia attend Forum events, present PCIA’s Global Leadership Awards, and host a visit to a village in the Lima highlands where efficient stoves have been installed.
The Alliance looks forward to hosting similar global events in the future.
New Partners Joining the Alliance
We are delighted to announce that in the last few months the Governments of Malta, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom have joined the Alliance as Donors. In addition, we are excited to welcome Honduras, El Salvador, and Tanzania as new National Partners; we welcome their commitment to support clean cookstoves and fuels within their borders.
We strongly encourage all organizations involved in the manufacturing or distribution of stoves to enroll as Implementing Partners. This includes all current PCIA members. This will not happen automatically, so we need updated information! Please join .
Finally, we are actively pursuing additional Donor Partners from the foundation and private sectors to join so they can participate in and support the work of the Alliance and our Implementing Partners. Click here For a , full listing of all our current Partners .