Cows, Cookstoves, and Climate Change: A Non-Anthropocentric View of Household Energy Use in the Rural Indian Himalayas
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: How are cows, cookstoves, and climate change connected?How do human/non-human relations affect energy use in rural homes in the Indian Himalayas?How are these themes related to air pollution, health, and climate change?Household air pollution in the form of smoke from cookstoves in low-income homes in the Global South adversely affects the health of people exposed to the smoke, particularly women and children, and contributes to global climate change (Smith 2010;Balakrishnan et al. 2011;Lim et al. 2012).Many development actors and government organizations have attempted to transition poor families away from "traditional" cookstoves to "modern" cookstoves, many with noble energy justice intentions in mind, but have met limited success 1 .Many families continue to use their "traditional" cookstoves, which typically use a combination of solid biomass fuels such as firewood, animal dung, and crop residue.Energy studies researchers have attempted to understand the development failures in household energy, and have proposed factors such as expenses, inability of the cooktove to meet local cooking needs, and gender dynamics (Mobarak et al. 2012).Based on research in the rural Indian Himalayas, Relations -6.
Author: Deepti Chatti
Institution: Yale University
Language: English
Subfield: Pollution
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2810798564