Smoke - the killer in the kitchen
Campaigning and advocacy
Practical Action is working with communities to reduce the threat of indoor smoke. But this is a global crisis, affecting millions of people across the developing world; we need a global solution to match the scale of the problem. That's why Practical Action is also campaigning for international action to tackle the Killer in the Kitchen.
The international community is slowly gearing up to tackle indoor air pollution, with initiatives from the World Health Organisation, the launch of the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air and the United Nations Development Programme's LPG Challenge. However, compared with the international community's response to hunger, HIV/AIDS, dirty water, poor sanitation and malaria, there has been extremely limited funding and insufficient high-level political backing for such initiatives. Without concerted action on indoor smoke, the international community will fail to meet its own targets for poverty reduction - the Millennium Development Goals.
Practical Action is campaigning at both the national and international level for a Global Action Plan to be established to tackle indoor smoke and help save millions of lives. We work closely with experts from the World Health Organisation and other agencies to raise awareness of the problem with decision-makers, and mobilise our supporters to campaign for change.
Practical Action delivered over 1,500 campaign postcards to the International Development Secretary, calling for the British government to mobilise international action to tackle indoor smoke.
 "The overall figures look appalling. Compare the annual death toll to the recent tsumani tragedy; it's five times as much. This is a silent killer, repeated year after year. Because it does not occur in one place at one time, it is liable to be largely unnoticed."- extract from Hilary Benn's speech made at a parliamentary reception organised by Practical Action on 23rd February 2005. |
Recent events
Reducing smoke: the killer in the kitchen
23 June 2006, World Urban Forum, Vancouver
A lively, interactive debate to explore whether international funding should be used to subsidise the price of technologies to tackle indoor smoke.
Household energy, indoor air pollution and health at the UN Commission for Sustainable Development
New York, 11 May 2006
On 11 May, WHO, GTZ, the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air, Practical Action and the US Environmental Protection Agency organised a joint side event to make the case for the urgent need to improve access to household energy among the poor by drawing attention to the severe risks of using biomass and coal for cooking and heating in developing countries.
More smoke campaign events ...
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