INTRODUCTION
The goal of this article is to put forth the most critical considerations regarding cookstove adoption that were identified at a meeting of the Working Group to Address Increasing Adoption of Improved Cookstoves. The meeting was hosted by the environmental health project WASHplus (funded by the United States Agency for International Development [USAID]) and the research project Translating Research into Action (TRAction) in Washington, DC, in October 2013. In this article, we use the term improved cookstoves (ICS) to mean those that demonstrate more efficient fuel use and more reductions in the emissions of carbon monoxide and particulate matter than traditional biomass stoves. At a time when new ICS programs are being created and implemented, it is important to disseminate the latest knowledge about effective ICS adoption and use.
There are numerous examples in the developing world of products whose potential benefits far outweigh their costs but are not readily adopted. As there is no commonly accepted definition for adoption of a technology, we loosely define it as the acquisition and substantive use of a technology by the user. Some products known to suffer from this adoption puzzle include insecticide-treated bed nets, safe-water products, toilets, and ICS. Of these, ICS adoption faces some of the greatest challenges as less than 30% of biomass stove users globally cook with some form of an improved cookstove.1 Furthermore, access to high-efficiency, low-emission, low-cost stoves, while expanding, is still limited. Importantly, in households with an ICS, there is often incorrect, inconsistent, and non-exclusive use, a fact that can curtail the benefits to be gained.
At the household level, the benefits of …
