The solution is access to safer and sustainable cooking fuels and stoves than traditional biomass and open fires.

Globally, more than two billion people depend on polluting, open fires or inefficient stoves to cook their food, harming health, climate and environment (1). 40% of those people live in Sub-Saharan Africa (2). Women and girls, who often spend hours cooking and collecting fuel, are disproportionally affected.

Sustainable Development Goals

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared framework for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. It includes the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which require urgent action from all countries —advanced and emerging — in a global partnership. They recognized that ending poverty and other forms of deprivation must go hand in hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and promote economic growth — while also tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

1. World Health Organization (WHO): Household Air Pollution. 2022. 

2. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): Sustainable Renewable Energy. 2023.