Secretary Clinton Announces the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves at the Clinton Global Initiative
Office of the SpokesmanWashington, DC
September 21, 2010Global Effort to Address One of Worst Overall Health Risks in Developing World
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a new public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation (UNF) to create a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions that will save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change. The Alliance will work to tackle the severe health, economic, and environmental consequences associated with smoke from traditional cook stoves and open fires used by over half the world’s population. According to the World Health Organization, toxic smoke from cookstoves is one of the top five health risks in poor developing countries and prematurely kills nearly 2 million people each year.
In an unprecedented and coordinated effort by the United States and our partners to address this challenge, the Department of State, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will mobilize key financial resources, top experts, and research and development tools to help the Alliance achieve its “100 by 20” target -- 100 million households adopting clean cookstoves by 2020. The initial U.S. financial commitment to the Alliance is $50.82 million over the next 5 years.
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves will work in cooperation with other leading international nonprofit organizations, foundations, academic institutions, corporate leaders, governments, UN agencies, local NGO’s, women’s civil society groups and community members to help overcome the market barriers that currently impede the production, deployment and use of clean cookstoves in the developing world.
For more information on the Alliance, go to www.state.gov/s/partnerships/cleancookstoves or www.cleancookstoves.org.
Included are quotes from each of the U.S. Government’s founding partners of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
"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. By upgrading these dirty stoves, millions of lives could be saved and improved. Clean stoves could be as transformative as bed nets or vaccines. " – Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State
“EPA is proud to partner with the State Department, our Administration colleagues, the United Nations Foundation, and the other Alliance partners to address one of the greatest environmental health risks facing the international community today. As a first step in this new partnership, 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. For more than eight years, EPA has been a leader in this field, and we will bring our expertise, our lessons learned and our global network to launching and leading the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves." – Lisa P. Jackson, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
“As part of the cookstoves alliance, the Department of Energy is lending our scientific and technical resources to develop practical solutions that are clean, safe and affordable. Pursuing concrete steps towards more efficient stoves makes good financial sense, good public health sense and good environmental sense.” – Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy
“The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recognizes that improved cookstoves can contribute to many important development goals, such as improving the health of women and children by reducing indoor smoke, promoting environmental stability through more fuel efficient models, and fostering economic growth. As a founding partner of the new Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, USAID seeks innovative, sustainable, and evidence-based solutions for these issues to improve the lives of the billions of people still relying on traditional fuels and stoves.” – Dr. Rajiv Shah, United States Agency for International Development Administrator
“Indoor cookstoves are a serious health concern in developing countries. The toxic emissions from these cooking fires cause low birth weights, pneumonia in young children, and heart and lung problems in adults, and kill nearly 2 million people each year, mostly women and children. Our research efforts will focus on reducing the impact of these cookstoves while evaluating new, cleaner technologies to improve human health.” – Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., National Institutes of Health Director
“Cleaner cookstoves save lives. Members of the Alliance have partnered to bring this safer, more efficient, and feasible intervention to low-income countries. CDC will work with our public health partners around the world to develop and implement strategies to deploy this important solution and to track, document and assure resulting improvements in health.” – Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, Centers for Disease Control Director
“Millions of people around the world suffer daily from the harmful health and environmental impacts caused by indoor cooking fires and inefficient cookstoves. Together with the Global Alliance on Clean Cookstoves, we are taking action to address this critical problem and to promote a cleaner, healthier environment. I am pleased to celebrate the launch of this Alliance and proud to say that agencies from across the U.S. Federal Government will continue to play an important role in this initiative.” – Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality
For more information on the United States’ commitment to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, click here. To learn about the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, click here.
The United States and the Global Alliance for Clean CookstovesGlobal Alliance for Clean Cookstoves: The United States Commitment By the Numbers
