Solar Cookers Support All of the UN Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set quantitative objectives to be achieved by 2015.  They also drive international development policy by spelling out the responsibilities of rich countries to support poor countries through aid, debt relief, and improved market access.  World leaders have pledged to provide the resources necessary to achieve the Goals.  Reducing poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality have always been at the forefront of the United Nations agenda.

 

Here are some of the ways that Kyoto Twist solar cooker projects meet the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals.

 

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Many families living on less than one dollar a day spend 1/3 of it for cooking fuel. This cost often means less food to eat. Solar cookers typically reduce fuel needs by 1/3 and pay for themselves in two months of fuel savings. The gentler temperatures of box and panel types of solar cookers also preserve more nutrients.


Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Girls start helping collect wood at a young age. Wood is now scarce for two billion people, and about half live in sun-rich areas. Long journeys to gather small brush, crop residues and dung for cooking fuel take time from school attendance and studies. Solar cookers need only sunlight, freeing girls to spend more time in school.


Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Women and girls spend hours of fuel gathering, cooking food, tending fires, and suffer extra health hazards of smoke.  Solar cookers require no fuel gathering, no smoke, and no attention while cooking meals, freeing time to pursue education, increase food production and generate income. The European Commission and solar cooker experts estimate that 165 to 200 million households could benefit from solar cookers.


Goal 4: Reduce child mortality  
Waterborne and smoke-related diseases are the primary killers of children. When fuel is scarce and expensive, it is hard to heed public health messages about boiling water. Every solar-cooked meal is smoke-free and solar cookers easily pasteurize water and milk.


Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Smoke from cooking fires is also the major killer of young women in developing countries and is linked to low-birth weight and infant mortality.  Fuel-gathering in some areas expose women to violent assaults. Solar cooking is clean and smoke-free, and benefits the health of all family members.

 

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Caring for a sick family member and orphans takes time away from livelihood activities. Solar cookers cook meals unattended, and are user-friendly for children and the sick as well as for caregivers. Water pasteurization protects whole families. Larger solar cookers reach temperatures of 150C (300F), enough to sanitize dry materials in rural clinics and households for those with weak immune systems.


Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
One-third of humanity has only wood, charcoal or poor substitutes to cook daily meals. When wood becomes scarce, cooking is done by burning dung and crop residues, which should be returned to the soil. A solar cooker can easily save one tonne of firewood or its equivalent per year of family use, and sometimes as much as four tonnes.  Each tonne of wood saved also saves 1.8 tonnes of greenhouse gas from entering the environment.


Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
The Kyoto Twist is very much about partnership and cooperation. We invite you to look at the organizations we have partnered with: The Kozon Foundation in the Netherlands, CEDESOL in Bolivia, and Ananda Marga worldwide. They are doing grassroots development with local people, while reaching out to governments, institutions and other NGOs for their support and cooperation. The Kyoto Twist invites you to join this worthwhile global movement.


Excerpts thanks to Solar Cookers International

 

The solutions to the challenges of climate change and extreme poverty are many and varied.  Solar cooking and other low tech alternative cooking technologies will not be appropriate for every situation of poverty and energy demand.  A goal of fifty percent reduction in conventional cooking fuel usage is realistic in millions of households, but not all.  The potential savings in greenhouse gas emissions is not (near) enough to slow the onslaught of climate change, but it is a significant contribution to airborne pollution and (disease).

 

Widespread access…saves millions of lives.

 

The statement and references below come from Solar Cookers International the international hub of the global solar cooking movement.  This is a good synopsis of the fit between solar cooking and the reduction of extreme poverty.  Perhaps you doubt the validity of carbon offset trading.  However, if you have traveled the impoverished corners of the world or contemplated the daily hardship and suffering of the poor, you will likely recognize the benefit and important potential of this technology- in human terms, in daily living and quality of life.

 

Participation of women is vital to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals, yet difficult or impossible for many poor, rural women and girls because of time-consuming fuel gathering and cooking.  The time women and girls and spend on routine tasks can be reduced dramatically …with efficient sources of energy – especially new forms of fuel for cooking and heating.


Widespread access to improved, low-cost solar cookers to pasteurize water and cook food with free sunshine is a proven ‘quick win’ as defined in the Secretary-General’s Report: Relatively inexpensive, high impact initiatives with the potential to generate major short-term gains and save millions of lives.


In Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso solar cookers are manufactured for US $3-5 and compete commercially with unhealthy, unsustainable alternatives. They address indoor smoke, high costs of scarce cooking fuel and related environmental problems, while lessening needless burdens for women and girls. Institution-sized solar cookers for hospitals, orphanages and schools are also cost effective.


In new areas modest funding for 3-5 years 1) creates public awareness, 2) provides initial consumer education and follow-up, 3) starts up local production, and 4) trains local women to start small businesses.

 

Save a tonne, Save a life.