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Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts
(Climate Home News, 25 Aug 2023) Abdul Nalband, head of Machutar village in western India, received shiny new cooking stoves for his community over a decade ago. Offered as a replacement for their traditional mud stoves, the cast iron devices promised to make cooking rice and rotis – the staple of the villagers’ diet – more efficient. Yet the stoves, as in the case of most of his neighbours, quickly stopped working.
Machutar is one of the several dozens of villages across the Maharashtra state where the distribution of new stoves fuelled the production of carbon credits that are still being sold to big polluters today.
Nalband was told the new equipment would consume less of the firewoodsourced from nearby trees as fuel. For villagers, this would mean fewerharvesting trips, supposedly bringing climate benefits in the process.
But, as Abdul Nalband recalls now, “the stoves broke down soon due to rusting and nobody came to follow up or repair them”. Machutar villagers reverted to cooking with traditional stoves, while the few able to afford it gradually switched to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Machutar’s experience is far from unique. Hundreds of carbon offsettingprojects distributed so-called improved cookstoves across India, and other developing countries, over the last decade. As 2.4 billion people across the world still cook with highly polluting fuels, giving them access to more efficient firewood stoves can aid the transition to clean cooking.
Climate Home News, 25 Aug 2023: Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts
