The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG)

 

The UN Millennium Development Goals are the world’s time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty. There are eight categories of development need and solar cookers address all eight.

 

The statements below come from Solar Cookers International (SCI) the international hub of the global solar cooking movement. This is only a synopsis of the fit between solar cooking and the reduction of extreme poverty. Other benefits, such as the positive impact on deforestation and climate change have been mentioned elsewhere.

 

Perhaps you doubt the validity of carbon offset trading. However, if you have traveled the impoverished corners of the world or contemplated the daily hardship and suffering of the poor, you will recognize the benefit and important potential of this technology- in human terms, in daily living and quality of life.

 

 

Solar Cookers Support All of the UN Millennium Development Goals

 

Compiled by Solar Cookers International

 

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Many families living on less than one dollar a day spend 1/3 of it for cooking fuel. This cost often means less food to eat. Solar cookers typically reduce fuel needs by 1/3 and pay for themselves in two months of fuel savings. The gentler temperatures of box and panel types of solar cookers also preserve more nutrients.


Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Girls start helping collect wood at a young age. Wood is now scarce for two billion people, and about half live in sun-rich areas. Long journeys to gather small brush, crop residues and dung for cooking fuel take time from school attendance and studies. Solar cookers need only sunlight, freeing girls to spend more time in school.


Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Women and girls spend hours on fuel-gathering, cooking food, tending fires, and suffer the extra health hazards of smoke.  Solar cookers require no fuel-gathering, no smoke, and no attention while cooking meals, freeing time to pursue education, increase food production and generate income. The European Commission and solar cooker experts estimate that 165 to 200 million households could benefit from solar cookers.


Goal 4: Reduce child mortality  
Waterborne and smoke-related diseases are the primary killers of children. When fuel is scarce and expensive, it is hard to heed public health messages about boiling water. Every solar-cooked meal is smoke-free and solar cookers easily pasteurize water and milk.


Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Smoke from cooking fires is also the major killer of young women in developing countries and is linked to low-birth weight and infant mortality.  Fuel-gathering in some areas expose women to violent assaults. Solar cooking is clean and smoke-free, and benefits the health of all family members.


Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Caring for a sick family member and orphans takes time away from livelihood activities. Solar cookers cook meals unattended, and are user-friendly for children and the sick as well as for caregivers. Water pasteurization protects whole families. Larger solar cookers reach temperatures of 150?C (300?F), enough to sanitize dry materials in rural clinics and households for those with weak immune systems.


Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
One-third of humanity has only wood, charcoal or poor substitutes to cook daily meals. When wood becomes scarce, cooking is done by burning dung and crop residues, which should be returned to the soil. A solar cooker saves about one ton of wood per year thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1.8 tons per year.


Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
Creating widespread access to solar cookers involves mutually beneficial participation of government, commercial and humanitarian sectors, and complements broader local, national and international activities toward all of the MDGs.

 

 

Save a tonne, Save a life.