Scaling Clean Cookstoves in Displacement Contexts: Reasons for Limited Success

 This is part 1 of our building food, water and climate security in fragile and conflict setting series.  

In displacement settings, something as ordinary as cooking is an extraordinarily complicated matter. Refugees often rely on firewood or charcoal, exposing them to health risks, environmental degradation, and even violence. For these reasons, increasing the adoption of “clean” cookstoves among displaced populations has long been a goal of the humanitarian sector. Clean cookstoves run on environmentally and climate friendly sources of fuel such as solar, LPG, or electricity, while traditional cookstoves use firewood or charcoal.  

Procure and provide model 

However, as humanitarian actors can attest, scaling clean cookstoves has largely been an unattainable goal in displacement settings. Limited funds and capacity are spent on interventions that fail to sustain the use of clean cookstoves after the project ends. The dominant “procure and provide” model of scaling involves pre-selecting an “ideal” cookstove, often based on the perceived values of a certain technology rather than its actual impact (solar cookstoves are a prime example). The cookstove and fuel source are then handed out to beneficiaries at extremely subsidized prices or for free, and accompanied by awareness and training programs. Impact is measured by the number of people that have received cookstoves or participated in programs.  

The approach is obviously not sustainable. Once funding for the project ends, beneficiaries are forced to abandon their clean cookstove, lacking the capacity to sustain use, and resort to traditional ones. Concerningly, the procure and provide model can also lead to market distortion or suppression, limiting the emergence of a functional private sector. 

However, it is difficult to envision alternatives to this model. This is partly due to difficult operational contexts in displacement settings. Refugees often cannot work and do not have freedom of movement, hampering their ability to run businesses, earn incomes, and obtain appropriate technologies and fuels. Tensions between refugees and host communities or generalized conflict, combined with a lack of infrastructure or services, limited supply chains, and clearly defined rules and regulations, severely curtail the growth of the private sector. State presence is often limited and policies unable to provide adequate guidance for the development of clean energy sources.  

Another reason is the very DNA of humanitarian organizations, ill-designed for managing successful scaling programs. Their dominant mandate for providing immediate relief, coupled with annual funding cycles and high staff turnover, limits long-term engagement and adaptive planning necessary for achieving scale.  

Continued scaling efforts 

Yet efforts to increase the uptake of clean cookstoves remains high on the humanitarian agenda. This is because cookstoves are a technology uniquely positioned to tackle a number of pressing problems.  

The right cookstove has the potential to: 

• resolve food insecurity (by reducing consumption of undercooked food or old food, increasing frequency of meals, and enhancing intake of more nutritious foods);  

• improve environmental conditions and limit contribution to climate change (by reducing deforestation for wood fuel);  

• enhance security and protection of displaced communities (by limiting gender-based violence that occurs when women search for and collect firewood, and lowering fire-related accidents);  

• improve people’s health (by decreasing indoor pollution and risk of burns);  

• and create livelihood opportunities (by saving time that would otherwise go to fuel collection and cooking and enabling engagement in other activities).  

Given these benefits, several initiatives are guiding alternative scaling efforts. These include the UN-led Global Platform for Action on Sustainable Energy in Displacement Settings (GPA) and UNHCR’s Clean Energy Challenge (CEC), and a number of inter-agency and private sector initiatives. 

These initiatives have led to some desirable redirections in scaling efforts. Now, rather than promote a pre-selected “ideal” cookstove, humanitarian organizations are more likely to consider a range of cookstoves and, using participatory methods, choose one most suited to the context. Instead of relying on globalized supply chains linked to a single company or manufacturer, organisations try to engage well-established local companies in the private sector to supply the cookstoves. Organizations might also help set up refugee-led enterprises to provide last-mile support. Then scaling efforts try to align with national policies and engage with governments to increase long-term support.  

Maintaining dependence 

However, even with these renewed efforts and revised scaling approaches, adoption continues to be limited. Conditions in displacement settings remain extremely challenging, of course. Yet the other major issue is that humanitarian organizations inadvertently create governance structures that sustain rather than reduce dependence on external interventions. Organizations still take on the responsibility of choosing and promoting a single cookstove-fuel combination and directing overall scaling efforts. The involvement of selected private sector companies and the development of value chains is still dependent on incentives and subsidies that organizations provide. Even efforts aimed at developing more innovative financing solutions, such as carbon credits, are steered by and therefore reliant on organizations’ engagement. This means that when projects end, or funding ceases, clean cookstove adoption is likely to decline.  

Instead of trying to stimulate the scaling of a specific, pre-selected cookstove within time-bound projects, which maintains dependence on their presence, engagement, and funding, humanitarian organizations could play a facilitating and coordinating role to support the creation of a clean cookstove “ecosystem”. Organizations could use their influence to connect different actors, networks, infrastructure, organizations, policies, etc., with the aim of supporting a diversity of clean energy options. This would encourage the growth of resilient supply chains and markets that are more responsive to changing circumstances and needs of customers. It would also be a feasible and responsible goal given the mandate and modus operandi of humanitarian organizations.  

Author: Radhika Singh, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Edited by Ibukun Taiwo, Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT. Photo Credit: Eugene Sibomana 

This work is carried out with support from the CGIAR Climate Action Science Program (CASP) and the CGIAR Food Frontiers and Security (FFS) Science Program. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund: https://www.cgiar.org/funders/