The Romance of ‘Chulhe Ki Roti’ May Be Choking Delhi

Clean Cooking Forum 2017 highlights the environmental and health hazards of traditional ways of cooking

Have you ever drooled over the earthy fragrance of a roti fresh out of a tandoor or chulha? You may be part of the current pollution problem in the national capital, even if obliquely. As per the UrbanEmissions data, one of the most surprising sources of Delhi's air pollution is the smoke coming from the millions of cooking and space heating fires outside of the city limits.

Health hazards that traditional ways of cooking pose was at the heart of the Clean Cooking Forum 2017, a three-day-long global conference featuring speakers including Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, and CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Radha Muthiah.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan stressed the importance of clean cooking in his address on the second day of the three-day long global conference which is the world’s largest gathering on clean cooking and household air pollution.

India has taken the lead in providing clean cooking solutions to rural masses through PMUY, a unique program that is the biggest of its kind in the world. We have already provided more than 30 million connections, greatly impacted rural livelihoods, and we’ve made immense impact on health and livelihoods.

Dharmendra Pradhan, Petroleum Minister

Pradhan also said that India must drive innovation in cooking areas to find clean cooking solutions, and we must include women in the process of designing products.

Over the past decade, research has shown a dramatic drop in the amount of household air pollution coming from inside Delhi.

Since 2007, the contribution of household air pollution to ambient air pollution has fallen around 40-50 percent. The improvement is in largely due to people switching from traditional, solid fuel-burning chulas to cleaner, more efficient cooking fuels such as LPG and electricity, which are used by more than 80 percent of households and commercial entities.

Despite this progress, however, the levels of ambient air pollution within Delhi have continued to worsen during the same period. Multiple sources contribute to this increase, according to data from UrbanEmissions.info, including industry, transport, dust, waste burning, seasonal crop burning (outside Delhi), power plants, and diesel generator sets. Yet, one often overlooked source is coming from the homes of people living beyond Delhi's city limits. That source is cooking and space heating.

While millions of households in Delhi now cook with cleaner stoves and fuels, most rural households have not made this same transition.

The continued reliance on chulhas and unprocessed biomass fuels such as wood and animal dung results in high levels of harmful emissions. These emissions not only impact the air quality in rural areas, but, ultimately, impact the ambient air quality in Delhi as well, contributing to 10 percent of ambient air pollution on an average and higher during the winter months when space heating is at its peak as temperature drops.

Data like this demonstrates that if household air pollution is not addressed across all regions of India, together with other major sources of air pollution, Delhi will never achieve its ambient air quality targets, let alone WHO guidelines.

Remaining optimistic, however, Radha Muthiah, CEO, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves said, “India a fitting example of what is possible when government policies move from the computer screen to the assembly line and into the family kitchen.”

(With inputs from Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves)

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