Creating a global cookstove alliance – beyond headlines: Hillary Clinton

An India-US project to help create a market for cleaner-burning cookstoves in developing countries is having a “tremendous payoff” beyond the headlines, according to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

“It’s one of those, you know, long-term projects that I think has tremendous payoff. But it’s not in the headlines,” she told a Senate panel Tuesday when asked about the initiative’s impact in India.

“We are actively driving an initiative we helped to put together called the global cookstove alliance – or the alliance for global cookstoves,” Clinton said.

“We are working with dozens of other countries, with the United Nations and organizations to help create a market for cleaner- burning cookstoves in developing countries, because this has tremendous benefits,” she said.

The US, Clinton said, was also “working with some Indian universities that are actually taking measurements of the pollution that goes into women and children’s lungs and also up into the atmosphere.”

This is part if an initiative the United States has joined with five other countries in setting up a new coalition to fight the climate forcers, the short-term climate forcers: methane, soot, black carbon, she said. “And cookstoves, obviously, are part of that.”

Describing it as “the kind of initiative that I think is worth investing in,” Clinton said: “It’ll pay dividends down the road. It’s not a quick fix, but it’s something that we’re able to do with public- private partnerships.”

(IANS)