Research Highlight: Study Says Barrier to Widespread Use of Clean Cookstoves Surmounted

Project Surya effort to improve public health and slow pace of global warming provides rural women in India access to results-based climate financing
Nov 23, 2016 1:00 PM ET
Indian family with clean-burning cookstove. Photo: Tanvi Mishra

Originally posted on Scripps Institute of Oceanography

A multiyear experiment in healthier and more environmentally sustainable cooking practices among the world’s poorest three billion people has found key breakthroughs that can substantially improve women’s quality of life and slow the pace of climate change.

Project Surya, a research endeavor led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, found that women in poor Indian villages would more readily replace traditional polluting cookstoves with new clean-burning ones if the women could be more easily compensated for using such stoves and the stoves were easier to repair.

Surya added a sensor in each clean-burning stove to monitor its use in real time.

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