Five years ago the global community came together with a common vision — to shine a light on and change the way millions of people in developing countries cook. While there have been efforts in the past to ensure the poorest among us no longer prepare their food as our ancestors did hundreds of years ago — over smoky, toxic fires — there was a growing consensus that in order to better address this silent killer, a fresh, comprehensive market-based approach was needed.

Based on this vision, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was created. With the goal of enabling the adoption of 100 million clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020, the Alliance uses a market-based approach to bring together a diverse group of actors across government, development, NGOs, academia, and the private sector to work toward a common goal.

Now, five years later, a movement is clearly building across the cookstoves and fuels sector. Just halfway through its 10-year plan, the Alliance has made tremendous strides, and we couldn’t be more pleased with its progress. The issue of clean cooking is no longer on the sidelines of development, and the sector is well on its way to becoming a healthy market, thanks in large part to the Alliance’s impressive roster of more than 1,300 partners.

Rarely does the global community have the opportunity to address a problem where the societal benefits from concerted action are so far-reaching — touching on health, environment, climate, women’s empowerment, and livelihoods. The impact of the Alliance and its partners has the potential to be nothing short of transformative, and to achieve our vision, we must remain committed to working toward universal adoption of clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels over the next five years and many more to come.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was founded on a simple belief: Cooking shouldn’t kill. In 2010, our founding partners laid out a powerful vision to save and improve lives by creating a thriving, global market to enable 100 million households to adopt clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020.

The goal was — and remains — ambitious. Despite decades of hard-fought gains, 4.3 million people still die prematurely each year from illnesses attributable to smoke from cooking.

The goal also remains achievable. In just five years, working closely with more than 1,300 public, private, and non-profit partners, the Alliance has made strong progress in developing a sector that is poised for sustainable growth.

In fact, we are on target to exceed our mid-term goals.

Serving as a connector, catalyst, and facilitator, the Alliance has helped build a solid foundation for transformative change by working with our partners to spur innovation, develop standards, advocate for enabling policies, and expand the base of evidence of the benefits of clean cookstoves and fuels.

We’ve strengthened supply through increased funding to enterprises and entrepreneurs for development, training, and capacity building. This in turn has driven tens of millions of investment dollars directly to enterprises and businesses in the sector. We are also working to enhance demand by encouraging behavior change.

The Alliance has helped raise the issue of household air pollution and the benefits of clean and efficient technologies and fuels to the highest levels of international development. As a result, financiers and implementers are integrating clean cookstoves and fuels into their work. In addition, development organizations have begun looking to the Alliance’s model as a basis for pushing their own initiatives forward. And donors, funders, and investors have expressed continued confidence in the sector and the Alliance’s model, as we clearly saw through the commitments made at the 2014 Cookstoves Future Summit.

Progress doesn’t come without bumps in the road. As in any successful enterprise, we continue to learn and adjust based on what is required to grow this dynamic ecosystem of actors into a cohesive, sustainable, healthy market that can meet the needs of households around the world.

As we look to the future, the Alliance remains committed to: supporting the sector and our partners as they grow; ensuring efficiency in the sector, lowering transaction costs for donors and aligning efforts across our partner base; and lowering risk and easing entry into the sector for private investors, implementing organizations, and new actors who wish to join this effort.

Above all, the Alliance remains committed to our market-based philosophy, to our 100 million by 2020 goal, and ultimately to the universal adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels.

We have made progress and celebrated success in the sector. But we can’t stop until we reach a world where cooking doesn’t kill. The opportunity is real, and the time is now. Our journey continues.

RADHA MUTHIAH
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER