Title of Event:

Name of Organisation:

Date and time of the session:

Reducing smoke – The Killer in the Kitchen

Practical Action

Friday 23rd June, 8h30 – 10h30

Key Highlights

1. Estimated no of participants: 35
2. Stakeholder group representation at the event: NGO, Academic, International Agencies (UN-Habitat)
3. What were the expected objectives:
1. To raise awareness of the problem of indoor air pollution, and possible solutions in different socio-economic and environmental conditions.
2. To explore whether international funding should subsidise technologies to tackle indoor smoke. This debate has relevance to other kinds of urban infrastructure.
4. What did the networking event achieve:
1. A debate on the motion ‘This house believes that direct subsidies for improved technologies to reduce the 1.5 million deaths caused by indoor air pollution are always misguided’.
2. Recognition that there are different issues for those who are willing and able to pay compared with those living in extreme poverty.
3. The debate’s outcome was consensus on the need for indirect subsidies in the form of technical support, loans to producers to kickstart businesses, demand creation and infrastructure development. The motion was narrowly defeated.
4. A call for more good quality research into the problem, into appropriate and affordable technologies, and into the market for them. Monitoring and evaluation is needed after projects have finished – perhaps for 10-20 years.

2. What were the core issues identified in your event as they relate to the theme and sub-themes of WUFIII?

Theme: Energy – Local Action, Global Impact
Core issues:

• The importance of indoor air pollution to global health. 
• The sorts of participatory approaches needed when working with communities, and identifying, implementing and monitoring the effectiveness of solutions.
• How participatory approaches can help to create sustainable solutions, which will continue to be taken up by more and more people long after the project has finished.
• In creating this type of ‘local action’, whether and what kinds of subsidies should be used, and whether they create barriers to continued scaling up once projects have ended.

3. What were the main points raised by panellists and participants in relation to these different issues? What new ideas have been generated as a result of the discussion?

Examples were presented from Nepal and Sudan. In Nepal, interventions (smoke hoods) have been subsidised. In Sudan, the introduction of LPG gas stoves has been on a fully commercial basis without any subsidies, despite high levels of poverty among the internally displaced people with whom the project has worked.

Speaking against the motion (arguing that direct subsidies can be positive), Don O’Neal of HELPS International argued that well-placed subsidies could be seen as an investment in a more stable world. They help alleviate extreme poverty: quoting Kofi Annan ‘A world where millions still live in desperate conditions will not be a world at peace’. Very often the real cause of the problem is badly targeted subsidies that are used to prop up a badly designed project.

Speaking against the motion (arguing that direct subsidies are always misguided), Keith Openshaw (Energy Consultant) showed how subsidies often reach all the wrong people and lead to failures due to market distortion. He cited many instances where fuel subsidies had reached the poorest least. The majority of successful stoves have been introduced through commercial approaches. Subsidies should not subsidise the products themselves, but are better used indirectly to support training, capacity-building, research and so on.

There was a brief discussion on the appropriateness of three other technologies:

• Solar: good where it is appropriate, but usually too expensive and may not suit lifestyle
• Biodiesel, jatropha oil, methanol from wood. Biodiesel has waste-water issues where produced on a large scale.
• Fireless cookers: generally well-received by all where they fit with local cooking practices.

4. What process steps have been identified in your event that could help turn ideas into operational reality? n/a

back to top