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00:00 Next we turn to an issue regarding renewable energy and the environment as well as pollution
00:06 and health. Everything all encompassed in the Clean Cooking Summit which has just happened
00:11 today in Paris. A core ingredient of that event was examining renewable energy. This
00:16 is of course particularly concerning to Africa where many families still cook over open fires.
00:21 Now there's a menu of problems that come from that traditional practice. I'm here to tell
00:25 us more about that and the possible solutions are two of the main characters from the summit.
00:31 Guests if you like around our table to continue that food analogy. Joseph Nganga is the CEO
00:37 interim of the Global Energy Alliance People and Planet. Joseph great to see you and thank
00:41 you for coming in. Opposite Joseph but by no means against him is Hanan Mawa Chief Strategy
00:46 Investment Officer at Cocoa Networks. Thank you both for coming in. We appreciate your
00:50 time. Hanan would you like to start about the issue that we're talking about here. Tell
00:55 us about the problems that are caused by open fire cooking in Africa. Thanks Mark. It may
01:02 not seem like a problem but it turns out that the fuels which are used for open fires, charcoal,
01:09 firewood and dung are actually toxic and the particulate air pollution caused by cooking
01:14 over those open fires it kills people and it actually kills more people every year than
01:20 AIDS malaria and tuberculosis combined according to the World Health Organization. And most
01:25 of the people affected are women and children. So it kills more people than all those pandemic
01:30 style illnesses combined. Combined and most of your viewers probably wouldn't have heard
01:34 of it. And really this is down to this being a very strongly gendered issue. And as we
01:38 know gendered issues are typically ignored. Joseph can I bring you into to kind of build
01:44 more on what you've been talking about today in Paris. Clearly as Hanan was saying massive
01:49 issue traditional practice. But the thing is that people in many parts of Africa aren't
01:55 choosing to do this. They have no alternative. Precisely. The fact that we cook with biomass
02:02 and other fuel sources as Africans is a function of poverty. It's a function of lack of access
02:07 to cleaner solutions. And I think it's a major topic here that the world is not yet aware
02:12 of and that we must make the world appreciate particularly in the context of climate. As
02:18 you might understand the cost of eliminating pollution from aviation and maritime is a
02:25 lot higher than the cost of improving cooking and clean cooking. We need between four and
02:33 eight billion dollars a year until 2030 to get everybody in Africa on clean cooking fuels.
02:40 As opposed to hundreds of billions of dollars a year to eliminate emissions from aviation
02:45 and maritime. So from a climate impact dollar perspective supporting clean cooking is much
02:52 better for the environment than all these other industries. So there may be some people
02:57 watching this who and I might be one of them who's saying that well hang on why are we
03:01 picking on the people when in fact it's the government and the big industries and big
03:05 this and big that who are the main polluters. You know if we if we got down on them and
03:09 made them reduce what they do it wouldn't be a problem. Are you saying that what we're
03:14 seeing in individual places in Africa is actually contributing as much in terms of pollution
03:18 as say big industry. Those households are not themselves contributing to pollution.
03:24 They are doing something which is in daily active life which is cooking. It is in no
03:29 way they are not responsible for this. In fact for the energy transition and for the
03:33 climate emergency we need all of these to happen at the same time. What we're really
03:38 lacking in this around this clean cooking problem is both time and money. The leading
03:44 cause of deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa is actually cutting down trees for charcoal
03:49 and firewood specifically for cooking. Now we can't blame families for using this biomass
03:55 when they have absolutely no alternative. And in 10 20 years time those forests are
03:59 not going to be there. And in fact there's a number of sub-Saharan African countries
04:03 where this deforestation has really become a political problem. It changes the water
04:08 table. It affects agriculture. And in fact in Kenya, Joseph, maybe you can also speak
04:13 to the dramatic impact of deforestation.
04:15 Absolutely. I had an interesting statistic today that a household in Africa uses 100
04:24 square metres of forest every year on cooking. So this is not just a climate and health and
04:31 nutrition impact for the rural household. Africa has some of the best carbon sinks from
04:36 a climate perspective. If we're cutting 100 square metres per family per year, the
04:42 impact to the world in terms of elimination of carbon sinks is significant. And so from
04:48 our perspective as a global energy alliance for planet, the goal is to use philanthropy
04:53 to unlock the financing required to drive from the current fossil fuel and biomass cooking
05:01 fuels to clean cooking so that we give people access to better health, better nutrition,
05:07 but also significantly impact the climate for the whole world.
05:11 This is clearly a win-win situation. How do you unlock that potential? Because as you
05:15 described it, it's like burning the candle to both ends. You have the carbon sink of
05:19 the forest to absorb all the carbon, but you're cutting it down to cook things. How do you
05:24 then create this saving situation that saves the forest and obviously saves people's
05:29 lives and helps them live a healthier life? How do you do that? Where does the funding
05:32 come from?
05:33 Yes, that's the second aspect of it. The first is time. We don't have time. The second
05:37 is we don't have money. Moving people to modern fuels costs money. And climate finance has
05:43 really, because of the strong climate impact...
05:45 What would the modern fuels be, Hanan?
05:47 Modern fuels, the World Health Organization has a tiering system where they tier different
05:51 cooking solutions according to their cleanliness for health. And the only really truly clean
05:57 cooking solutions are electricity, gas, biogas and bioethanol. Cocoa Networks, where I work,
06:05 we have the world's largest bioethanol cooking utility serving 1.2 million households in
06:09 Kenya and Rwanda.
06:11 And I believe in addition to that, it's about the technology as well. So Cocoa, for example,
06:16 has bioethanol as a technology. You have companies, including a French company called Tefal, making
06:22 pressure cookers. So it's about the appliances. But it's also as much around the financing
06:27 of those appliances for the rural household, because at $30 to $50 an appliance, the upfront
06:33 cost is too high. But the running costs are incredibly affordable.
06:37 So using instruments such as carbon credits, you allow households to acquire these appliances
06:43 and have them at the price that they can afford to use. The world has an opportunity to support
06:48 the continent by buying African carbon credits, which lead towards better access to clean
06:55 cooking, improving individual households, but impacting the world. Very much in line
07:00 with last year's Africa Climate Summit, where we talked about the world bringing technology
07:06 and financing in exchange for Africa contributing our resources to collectively unlock the climate
07:12 challenge.
07:14 So is this different from, say, a big country moving into African states and claiming many
07:20 resources and perhaps giving some food or giving some kind of technology exchange? This
07:25 is a different kind of thing you're talking about, isn't it, I think?
07:28 Absolutely. It's not about handing over some technology in exchange for something else.
07:32 It's about sitting around the table. Who has the technology? Who has the financing? And
07:37 if you use that technology and financing, how do you unlock the carbon sinks for the
07:41 continent, for example, the health impacts, for example, the jobs on the continent as
07:47 well, economic development, so that you even mitigate things like immigration to Europe?
07:53 Because as long as you're helping build economies on the continent, including these health benefits
07:57 to clean cooking and so on, you are providing a solution to the population in Africa in
08:04 exchange for a world in which everybody's comfortable living in.
08:08 Many solutions here on the table. Thank you both for joining us. That was fascinating
08:12 to find out. Joseph Nganga of the Global Energy Alliance, People and Planet. Thank you, sir.
08:17 And Hanan Mawa of Cooker Networks. Thank you for your time and your thoughts, too. It was
08:21 great to meet you both. Fascinating stuff. The Clean Cooking Summit has taken place in
08:27 Paris today.