$400m pledged at Summit to crank up clean cooking

NEW YORK, Nov 21: Donors and private sector players have pledged $400 million to promote clean cooking at the Cookstoves Future Summit in the US.
The Summit, organised by the UN-led Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, ended on Friday in the city known as the world's financial capital.
The Summit received a record $400 million in pledges from donor countries, international banks and investors to help the Global Alliance execute its target of deploying 100 million clean and energy-efficient cookstoves by 2020.
Commitments from bilateral donors, including policy pledges, amounted to $286 million, including those made by Summit co-hosts Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The private sector promised to mobilise an additional $127 million, including a $100 million fund created through a partnership between the Alliance, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, other development finance institutions, and private investors, which will support the scale-up of social enterprises that advance and deploy clean cookstoves and fuels.
However, a top U.S. official speaking at a media roundtable in the Summit has commended the role of Grameen and BRAC in paring back extreme poverty in Bangladesh.
Dr Raziv Shah, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said his agency has witnessed progress in reducing extreme poverty in Bangladesh, thanks to the "outstanding work of Grameen and BRAC for decades."Grameen, where the government controls a quarter of its stakes, doles out collateral-free tiny loans to more than eight million borrowers, who are also its shareholders.
Under the leadership of Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, Grameen enterprises have blossomed into an empire having interests in telecom, food, and IT with a combined asset value of $1.6 billion.Grameen Shakti, a clean energy affiliate, sells solar panels, bio-gas plants and clean cookstoves in areas outside the network of national energy grid.
Speaking at the pledging session, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, also a Summit co-host, placed emphasis on making cookstoves affordable, readily available and culturally sensitive backed by right technology and cleanest fuel.
She said dirty stoves and open fire cooking sicken millions of women and girls and "They take them away from schools and other work. Apart from health and environmental challenges, it's an issue of economic opportunity."
The World Health Organisation has estimated that as many as 3.0 billion people in poorer and developing countries lacked access to clean or modern energy services for cooking, resulting in roughly 4.3 million premature deaths worldwide.
Although the WHO labelled indoor air pollution as a serious health issue facing the world today, Ms Clinton said "it doesn't get headlines."
She said 3.0 billion people cook meals every single day on inefficient stoves that release super-pollutants such as black carbon.  "We have to redouble our efforts to get more clean and efficient products in the hands and homes of families everywhere," said Ms Clinton.
"We can rededicate ourselves to doing everything we can to help more people in more places to breathe more easily, work more safely and live healthier lives," she added.
The UK's parliamentary under secretary of state for international development Lyne Featherstone, administrator of USAID Dr. Raziv Shah, Norwegian foreign minister Borge Brende, and minister of foreign affairs and regional integrations Hanna Tetteh and executive director at the Alliance Radha Muthiah also spoke at the session.  The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has grown into 1,000 partners, from just 19 in 2010.

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