做飯，不該危害你的健康──聯合國推乾淨爐具運動

"People have cooked over open fires and dirty stoves for all of human history, but the simple fact is they are slowly killing millions of people and polluting the environment," Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said today, as she announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a new public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation.

"Today we can finally envision a future in which open fires and dirty stoves are replaced by clean, efficient and affordable stoves and fuels all over the world - stoves that still cost as little as $25," said Clinton. "By upgrading these dirty stoves, millions of lives could be saved and improved. Clean stoves could be as transformative as bed nets or vaccines."

The partners aim to have 100 million households adopt clean cookstoves by 2020 with the long-term goal of universal adoption all over the world.

She framed U.S. participation as part of the Obama administration's "new strategy for international development, which has elevated development alongside diplomacy and defense as the core pillars of American foreign policy."

About half of the world's population relies on indoor fires and inefficient cookstoves to prepare daily meals, causing severe health, economic, and environmental consequences.

"As we meet here in New York, women are cooking dinner for their families in homes and villages around the world," said Clinton. "As many as three billion people are gathering around open fires or old and inefficient stoves in small kitchens and poorly ventilated houses. Many of the women have labored over these hearths for hours, often with their infant babies strapped to their backs, and they have spent many more hours gathering the fuel."

"The food they prepare is different on every continent, but the air they breathe is shockingly similar: a toxic mix of chemicals released by burning wood or other solid fuel that can reach 200 times the amount that our EPA considers safe for breathing," Clinton said. "As the women cook, smoke fills their lungs and the toxins begin poisoning them and their children."

The World Health Organization considers smoke from dirty stoves to be one of the five most serious health risks in poor, developing countries. Nearly two million people die from its effects each year, more than twice the number from malaria.

Daily exposure to the smoke leads to pneumonia, the number one killer of children worldwide, chronic respiratory diseases and lung cancer, Clinton said. Each year the effects of indoor smoke from wood and other basic fuels kill as many people as HIV/AIDS and more people than tuberculosis.

"And because the smoke contains greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, as well as black carbon, it contributes to climate change," Secretary Clinton said.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson confided to the CGI audience, "This is a very personal issue for me. It's about poverty, the ultimate environmental justice issue."
Jackson, who is part African-American, grew up in New Orleans' low-income Ninth Ward. As EPA administrator she has worked to elevate environmental justice to a mainstream issue and said today that she cares deeply about the people who are exposed to toxic smoke in their homes while trying to cook for their families.

Jackson said EPA will invest $6 million over the next five years to enhance efforts at stove testing and evaluation, cookstove design innovation and assessments of health benefits.

The United Nations Environment Programme is an Alliance founding partner and today UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the clean cookstoves initiative will help reduce deforestation by curbing the large quantities of wood used to make charcoal, and by households switching to alternative fuels such as solar energy.

"Inefficient cooking stoves are estimated to be responsible for approximately 25 percent of emissions of black carbon, particles often known as soot, of which 40 percent is linked to wood burning."

Steiner said black carbon is responsible for up to 40 percent of current climate change, accelerating melting rates of glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Himalayas, as the dark particles absorb sunlight and raise ice temperatures. He blamed black carbon for the dimming of cities in polluted parts of the world and for reducing sunlight available to grow crops, with implications for poverty and for combating hunger under the Millennium Development Goals.

"Cooking a meal shouldn't be hazardous to your health," Wirth said. "Cookstoves that reduce fuel consumption and operate cleanly will save lives, prevent disease, provide more time for women and girls to devote to schooling and earn money and reduce environmental degradation. That addresses almost all of the MDGs."

"While the harmful and tragic effects of traditional cookstoves have long been known, we believe the right conditions are in place to address this problem more effectively than ever before," said Audrey Choi, head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley.

"For 10 years we have been helping to deliver market-based solutions to selling clean cookstoves in India, China, Central America and Africa. The sector has made great progress," said Shell Foundation Director Chris West. Still, he said, "Stove manufacturers face numerous barriers to successfully selling clean cookstoves at scale, and just like any infant industry they need support to address those barriers."

Alliance partners will develop a business plan to address the prerequisites for large-scale adoption of clean cookstoves, identify target markets, overcome market barriers to production, deployment, and use of clean cookstoves, and implement a strategy emphasizing women's participation and market-based solutions.