Himalayan Stove Project Helps Slow Snow Melt, Reduce Air Pollution, Save Millions of Lives
TAOS, NM (March 13, 2014) – This year, as Earth Day celebrations help bring awareness to issues affecting the environment, the Himalayan Stove Project asks the public to consider one crucial, if unlikely, threat to the planet: the cookstove.
According to recent reports by The World Bank, the primitive open-fire cooking methods used by people in the remote regions of the High Himalayas are a key issue of global environmental concern. Responsible for significant deforestation, toxic air pollution, global warming, and millions of premature deaths, it says cleaner cookstoves could save millions of lives and dramatically slow down climate-change.
COOKSTOVES AND THE CRYOSPHERE
According to The World Bank’s recent “On Thin Ice” report, “Climate change is happening Sarita Laughing LRfaster and in a dramatically more visible way in the Earth’s cryosphere [frozen regions like the Himalayas, considered critical for water supply, trapping harmful greenhouse gases and keeping sea levels stable] than anywhere else on earth” (October 2013).
The article on the report emphasizes the importance of curtailing methane and “black carbon” (pollution from open fires and diesel engines that rises into the atmosphere and speeds up snow melt) in these regions. “A continued warming in the cryosphere could cause a rise in sea levels that would affect more than 100 million people globally. It would also threaten water resources on which 1.5 billion people just in the Himalayan region depend, and a loss of frozen soil (permafrost) that would then release as much as 30 percent more carbon into the atmosphere by 2100.”
STOVES THAT SAVE THE PLANET
Part of the solution is simple: “By quickly taking steps to curb emissions from cookstoves, forest burning, fossil fuel extraction and diesel transport countries could help preserve the cryosphere while at the same time saving the lives and health of millions,” the World Bank article states, noting that improved cookstove measures alone could save the lives of about 743,000 people in just the Himalayan region.
The Himalayan Stove Project, a volunteer-run humanitarian organization, is dedicated to this stove solution. Founded by “Chief Cook” George Basch with the support of key corporate sponsors such as Eddie Bauer, adidas, Kahtoola, MSR, 1% for the Planet, and Rotary International, the Himalayan Stove Project has installed more than 3,000 clean-burning Envirofit® stoves in impoverished homes across remote mountainous regions of Nepal. Vastly improving fuel efficiency, the stoves reduce the amount of bio-mass fuel (such as wood or dung) needed for cooking by 75 percent and reduce indoor air pollution by 90 percent.
COOKING SHOULDN’T KILL
In addition to helping protect the ecologically critical cryosphere region from climate change, pollution and deforestation, the Envirofit stoves improve the health and living conditions of women and children.
“Household Air Pollution, or the ‘silent killer,’ is responsible for four million global deaths each year—more even than the mortalities caused by malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, combined,” Basch says, quoting the World Health Organization’s statistics, and echoing Actress Julia Roberts, the Global Ambassador for the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, who says, “I strongly believe that cooking shouldn’t kill. Don’t you?”
“Our stoves improve air quality in the home; reduce the time and resources a woman needs in order to cook a meal; and enhance living conditions for families living on less than $20 per month in frigid, high-altitude surroundings,” Basch says. “Our stoves can literally mean the difference between life and death—for the Himalayan people, and eventually for the whole world.”
For more information about or to donate to the Himalayan Stove Project, located at 1335 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, #305, Taos, NM, 87571, visit www.himalayanstoveproject.org or call 505.363.8863. For media interested in high resolution images, further information or scheduling an audio, Skype or FaceTime interview with George Basch, contact Holly Padove at On the Horizon Communications (805.773.1000; Holly@thepressroom.com).
ABOUT THE HIMALAYAN STOVE PROJECT
THE HIMALAYAN STOVE PROJECT was founded by adventurer, photographer and entrepreneur George Basch to help bring an end to Household Air Pollution, a little-known global pandemic caused by pollution from rudimentary cooking methods in developing countries and responsible for four million global deaths each year. An implementing partner of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the Himalayan Stove Project donates and distributes free, clean-burning, fuel-efficient Envirofit cook stoves to people of the High Himalayas to reduce their cooking fuel consumption by 80 percent, thus improving air quality and protecting important environmental resources.
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Media Contact: Holly Padove, (805) 773-1000; Holly@thepressroom.com
Public Contact: George Basch, (505) 363-8863; george@himalayanstoveproject.org
