Cooking is an essential part of life, asides from cultural and traditional values; it meets the basic survival needs. For thousands of decades, cooking methods have evolved from wood fuels – firewood and charcoals to cleaner fuels, LPG, LNG, electricity, and biogas. Clean cooking is the transitioning from fossil fuel-aided cooking mechanisms to renewable energy. This is the transition from wood and LPG gasses to products like biogas.
Nevertheless, not everyone has gotten on board with this evolution for various reasons. The danger of cooking has made world governments adopt policies to promote clean cooking. The use of biomass cooking is a huge contributor to Household Air Population (HAP); for instance, Kenya in 2006 recorded 15,700 premature death from HAP.
Asides from the purpose of domestication, clean cooking has a lot of benefits for humanity. Most people classify it as a gender-specific need, but clean cooking can help meet 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Clean cooking is a political, economic, and environmental priority, backed by several governments seeking to ensure the development of a global sustainable environment.
According to Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, Clean cooking is a crucial driver for the success of SDG goals. This is so because clean cooking is one of the essential services required to live a healthy and productive life, and it saves time and money in the home, meeting the first SDG target. Reduced cooking smoke reduces the burden of disease-related home air pollution and enhances well-being, particularly for women and children, meeting SDG 3 needs. Furthermore, clean cooking is critical for tackling energy poverty and assuring long-term security for billions; this deals with SDG 7. Clean cooking tackles this while meeting SDG13
Clean cooking has various advantages to our societies, and to attend to these needs, several actions need to be taken. One of such actions is ensuring that government, organizations, partners, and individuals are included in clean cooking and SDG planning and implementation processes. Another is improving education and awareness of clean cooking and its benefits at the local, national, regional, and global levels.
Finally, clean cooking is included in finance mechanisms and programming to support energy access, economic growth, health, women’s empowerment, climate change mitigation, and environmental protection.