How changing the cooking habits can have a major impact on deforestation, the air quality and climate change.

Of course everybody knows that there is only one solution to fight climate change and for better air quality and that is cleaner, alternative and renewable energy sources. Cleaner energy resources for our industries, cleaner energy resources for our transportation and last but not least cleaner energy resources for our households.

Carbon credits and other “green” taxes to compensate the CO2 emissions is big business in Western countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. The companies offering carbon offset services help finance and build new clean and renewable energy projects that help create sustainable economic benefits or use the money to finance the planting of new forests.

On the other hand we forget that hundreds of millions of poor household around the world still cut down trees, every single day, for cooking and/or heating. For the majority of households around the world wood is their only energy source because commercial fuels, kerosene, L.P. gas and electricity, are not only unaffordable but also inaccessible to them. Even though they know the devastating impact the cutting of trees has on their environment and to their health they have no other alternative to cook their meals and boil their water.
Cooking with wood has many disadvantages. It doesn’t burn efficient and a lot of energy is lost and wasted. It is the main cause of indoor air pollution, creating severe illnesses to the eyes and lungs to the women cooking and to their young babies and infants.
The cutting of trees or even the illegal logging to produce fire wood is one of the main causes of deforestation. Deforestation of course is the main cause for serious consequences such as erosion, landslides, desertification, decrease of water levels and even climate change.
Fortunately there is a very simple, cheap and renewable solution to help these hundreds of millions poor families world wide, to stop the devastating rapid deforestation and to break the vicious circle – the answer is FoST.

FoST – Foundation for Sustainable Technologies - is a small non-governmental, non-profit Nepali organization whose aim is to provide low cost, low tech yet highly applicable and locally built sustainable technologies to the people of Nepal. By providing a wide selection of products for cooking, drying, heat retaining and water purification using both solar and other environment-friendly sustainable technologies they are not only helping to fight indoor air pollution, but are also fighting deforestation in rural areas. One of their biggest successes are the fuel briquettes made of locally available waste materials such as paper, carton, agricultural residues or crop leftovers, bagasse, dried leaves, banana stalk fiber, ash, saw dust, straw… These special briquettes burn so much more efficient than wood and create hardly any smoke. As runner up in the global competition World Challenge 2007 and due to their success and to the exposure in Newsweek and on BBC World, FoST has received many requests from countries around the world interested to replicate FoST’s technologies, projects and ideas. Sanu Kaji Shrestha, founder and chairman of FoST has already been invited to Cambodia and Afghanistan to teach his skills and share his knowledge. If given the opportunity and support needed, FoST could make a very important change to the many million poor families around the world.

I have a lot of personally photographed pictures showing the need to use alternative cooking methods. Here are some of them: