Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Clean Cookstove Support Act. This legislation addresses a serious global public health and environmental issue, and I am very pleased to be joined in this effort by my friend and colleague, Senator Durbin.

Nearly half of the world's population cooks over open fires or with inefficient, polluting, and unsafe cookstoves using wood, agricultural waste, dung, coal, or other solid fuels. Smoke from these traditional cookstoves and open fires is associated with chronic and acute diseases and affects women and children disproportionately.

Alarmingly, the Global Burden of Disease Study of 2010 doubled the mortality estimates for exposure to smoke from cookstoves referred to as household air pollution from 2 million to 4 million deaths annually in the developing world. The GBD indicates this is more than the deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined. The GBD ranks household air pollution as the fourth worst overall health risk factor in the world and as the second worst health risk factor in the world for women and girls. Millions more are sickened from the toxic smoke and thousands suffer burns annually from open fires or unsafe cookstoves.

Traditional cookstoves also create serious environmental problems. Recent studies show that the emissions of black carbon or common soot from biomass cookstoves significantly contribute to regional air and climate change. In fact, cookstoves account for some 25 percent of black carbon emissions. Each family using a traditional cookstove can require up to 2 tons of biomass cooking fuel, and where demand for fuel outstrips the natural regrowth of resources, local land degradation and loss of biodiversity often results.

Moreover, the collection of this fuel is a burden that is shouldered disproportionately by women and children. In some regions of the world, women and girls risk rape and gender-based violence during the up to 20 hours a week they spend away from their families gathering fuel.

Replacing these cookstoves with modern alternatives would help reverse these alarming health and environmental trends. This would be relatively inexpensive. In fact, there are stoves that are coming on the market now that cost as little as $20 and are 50 percent more efficient than the traditional cooking methods. It also could be done quickly. It is what scientists call the low-hanging fruit of environmental fixes.

Through the leadership of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the United Nations Foundation, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was formed in 2010. Recognizing the serious health and environmental issues posed by traditional cookstoves, the alliance aims to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat pollution by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. Alliance partners are working to help overcome market barriers that currently impede production, deployment, and use of cookstoves that are clean in the developing world.

To assist in this important endeavor, several Federal agencies and departments have committed a total of up to $125 million to the sector for the first 5 years of the alliance. These include a wide variety of departments, including the Departments of State, Energy, and Health and Human Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, NOAA, and the Peace Corps have also made commitments to provide technical assistance in the developing world.

To help advance the alliance's goal to spur the adoption of clean cookstoves in 100 million households by the year 2020, the U.S. Government has focused its commitments on applied research and development, diplomatic engagement to encourage a market for clean cookstoves, and to improve access, international development projects to help build commercial businesses, and development efforts, including humanitarian and empowerment programs for women and girls.

The legislation Senator Durbin and I are introducing today reinforces this commitment and would require the Secretary of State to work to advance the goals of the alliance. In addition, the bill authorizes the existing funding commitments made by our government to ensure that these crucial pledges toward preventing unnecessary illness and reducing pollution around the globe are met.

By supporting the work of the alliance and the commitments of the U.S. Government to replace traditional cookstoves with modern versions that emit far less soot, this bill aims to directly benefit some of the world's poorest people and to reduce harmful pollution that affects us all. It offers a way for us to address the second leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in a way that is inexpensive, not burdensome to the people of this country, and will benefit poor people living in developing nations.

There is yet another reason for my colleagues to support this initiative. Addressing persistent global issues of poverty and underdevelopment makes our country more secure by undercutting some of the key drivers of extremism and militancy around the world.

I urge my colleagues to join Senator Durbin and me in supporting the Clean Cookstoves and Fuel Support Act.

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