Clearing the Air

The problem doesn't seem that big: a small fire, over which dinner is cooked, in billions of homes all over the world. But these domestic cooking fires, which burn in hearths as far away as Nepal and as nearby as the Navajo Nation, fill homes with smoke, increasing health issues and fueling millions of deaths worldwide each year. And when that smoke does disperse outside, it causes still further problems for air quality and climate change.

One Taos-based nonprofit is among those taking this bite-sized chunk out of climate change, a few cookstoves at a time. The Himalayan Stove Project donates fuel-efficient, clean-burning cook stoves to homes in the Himalayas that previously saw people cooking over rudimentary stoves or open fire pits in their homes.

"Globally, one of the biggest contributors to climate change, or global warming…is small particle soot, and that comes from diesel engines —thank you Volkswagen— and from primitive cooking," says George Basch, managing trustee of the Paul Basch Memorial Foundation, which supports the Himalayan Stove Project, and "chief cook" for the project itself. "Three billion people cook over primitive stoves, so this is a global issue, not just in Nepal where we work, but it's uniform."

In a report released this year on black carbon—soot, basically—the World Bank's Climate Business Department urged increasing utilization of tools to reduce black carbon from transportation sources and residential cooking spaces as a short-term win while longer term solutions, which might still need technology and infrastructure adjustments, catch up in efforts to curb climate change.

The US Environmental Protection Agency calls cookstoves and the indoor air pollution they produce "the world's leading source of environmental death." Indoor air pollution from cooking fires contributes to 2 million premature deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. It fuels deaths from lower respiratory infection, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

Replacing firepits with cookstoves has the potential not only to clean air in homes, according to the EPA, but also to reduce black carbon that finds its way to nearby snowfields and accelerates snowmelt, making it a significant contributor to climate change, particularly in the Arctic and Himalayas.

The Himalayan Stove Project provides Envirofit Clean CookStoves and chimney systems, which can reduce household air pollution by 90 percent. It still burns wood, just less of it, and it can boil water in six minutes. They've delivered more than 3,000 domestic stoves so far.

"Clearly with 3,000 stoves that we've distributed, that's not going to show up on anybody's meter, but if other people are doing that, then it will make a difference," Basch says. And other people are doing it. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership hosted by the UN Foundation, has gotten on board, and in their annual report, the Global Alliance stated that the multiple organizations working on this issue have collectively installed nearly 30 million clean cook stoves in the last five years.

"It's a small part of a bigger solution, but it's a legitimate point to make," Basch says.

This summer Verve's Cause and Effect show, which opened in July and a portion of which remains on display in a smaller viewing room, investigated the effects of climate change and human impact on landscapes.

"We felt we needed to do this for the community," says John Scanlan, partner in the gallery with his son Wilson, in a press release. "We feel this is something we can do to raise awareness."

Paired with that exhibit, the Scanlans ran a series of events to bring in about 10 environmental organizations to speak on their work, and Himalayan Stove Project joined that list.

Since the earthquake in Nepal, in addition to cookstoves, now targeted to families displaced by lost homes or, in some cases, obliterated villages, the project has sent water purification and solar lighting systems, 20 big cook stoves that can prepare meals for 300 people at a time, and tarps for making temporary shelters.

"We're trying to help out where we can in a small way," Basch says.

Santa Fe Reporter