Sunita Narain: The politics of particles

Chulhas - cook stoves of poor women who collect sticks, twigs, leaves and every other biomass material they can find to cook meals - are today at the centre of failing international action. The concern is that women are breathing toxic emissions from the stove and that these same emissions are also adding to the world's climate change burden. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 established that indoor air pollution from cook stoves is a primary cause of disease and death in South Asia. As many as 1.04 million premature deaths and 31.4 million disability-adjusted life years - a measure of years lost owing to ill-health, disability or early death - are related to exposure to biomass burning in poorly ventilated homes.

But what has really spurred action is the science that there is a connection between local air and global air pollution. The particles formed during incomplete combustion either from diesel cars or from cook stoves are seen to be powerful climate forcers, because they absorb light and convert that energy to heat. These particles or aerosols have also been found to interact with clouds, affect rain patterns, and fall on snow or ice surfaces and make them melt faster.

This is not to say that science is completely agreed on the matter of how serious the contribution of particulate or black carbon in global climate change is. This is because there are good aerosols (which cool the planet because they reflect light) and bad aerosols (which warm the planet). But what is emerging is that aerosols could be good or bad depending on the source of pollution. While open burning or biomass burnt in cook stoves has a higher proportion of organic carbon that scatters sunlight, emissions from fossil fuel have a higher proportion of black carbon, which absorbs light and forces heating. In this way, diesel used for road transport and for non-transport purposes, with low sulphur, has the highest net positive radiative forcing - it warms, not cools.

So the politics of particles differentiates between the cook stoves of the poor (survival emissions) and the diesel SUVs of the rich (luxury emissions).

But this is where action on cook stoves is failing so badly. Currently, the world cares about cook stoves because it sees them as low-hanging fruit in its fight against climate change. Therefore, action is based on the need to improve cook stoves by introducing more efficient equipment in homes that will reduce emissions. The models mostly involve new cooking contraptions, which use briquettes and other raw processed biomass material. This is not bad per se, because it will also reduce deadly exposure to toxic particles that is the cause of poor health in poor households. But the problem is that these solutions are half-baked and even counterproductive, because action is primarily driven by the global climate change agenda and not local health concerns.

The fact is that, however much countries like India - and many parts of China and Africa - may have modernised, the bulk of cooking in villages is still done using firewood and twigs. In India, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) collects data on energy sources in Indian households for cooking and lighting. Its 66th round of data collection during 2009-2010 was the eighth such survey and its findings are shocking. In 1993-94, as many as 78 per cent of households in rural India used biomass for cooking fuel; in 2009-10, 76 per cent still did. Therefore, in this period, while urban India moved to liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG (from 30 per cent to 64 per cent), rural India remained where it was - cooking on highly inefficient and dirty stoves.

There is a definite correlation between wealth, availability and cooking methods. The NSSO data reveal that only in the highest class of monthly per capita expenditure does the household make the transition to LPG in rural India. In urban India, in contrast, even households at the lower level of monthly per capita expenditure make the LPG-grade. This is because LPG is highly subsidised and available in these areas.

Therefore, it is poverty that is at the root of the chulha conundrum. This is where the knots on climate change get tangled.

The fact is that LPG is a fossil fuel, available in vast parts of the world as a clean cooking medium. Therefore, advocating the use of this fuel to meet the needs of poor women in vast parts of the world will only add to greenhouse gas emissions. The other problem is that any programme to reach the poor will necessarily require subsidies. The world frowns on a subsidy for fossil fuel - which is partly why our governments are scrambling to remove it from kerosene and even LPG. So, what is the way ahead?

Clearly, the option would be to recognise that the transition from dirty fuel for cooking is a huge health benefit and so it must be supported and subsidised. If LPG is subsidised and available for urban populations, then it should be so for rural households as well. And if we want double gains, then the option would be to increase subsidies for cleaner methods of electricity - from biomass gasification to solar energy - to provide clean benefits to health and climate. But these are not cheap options. That is what needs to be loud and clear.