Clean Cookstoves for the Mamize Nature Reserve with WWF
Country: China
Technology: Efficient cookstoves
Price: 21.6 EUR/t CO2
Description
The project is distributing 400 affordable fire-saving cookstoves to rural families living around the Mamize Nature Reserve in southwestern China. The cookstoves are reducing the amount of wood-fuel needed and smoke produced when cooking by adding an additional chimney and proper air supply system, which enables the fuel to fully burn and extracts the smoke out the room. The project was designed following stakeholder consultations with the local community to ensure their needs were met.
Context
With high electricity prices and limited alternatives, many people in rural China still rely on traditional wood-fired stoves for their daily cook needs. However these cookstoves require large amounts of wood, driving massive deforestation in some of China’s most important wildlife areas – such as the Mamize Nature Reserve – and producing large amounts of harmful indoor air pollution, causing eye and respiratory problems.
Benefits
Switching to efficient cookstoves significantly improves the health and life-expectancy of those in the local community - particularly the elderly, women and children who are often responsible for the cooking. Not only is cooking safer and quicker, but the time saved collecting less firewood empowers families to do other activities. The new cookstoves are lowering GHG emissions at the same time as reducing local deforestation by 50-60%, protecting the Mamize Nature Reserve – part of China’s dwindling giant panda habitat.
