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Energy and the Household Environment in Accra
The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), together with local researchers, recently undertook a study of household environment problems in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Accra, the capital city of Ghana, which has a population of about two million. One of the problems studied, air pollution, is closely linked to energy use through the burning of cooking fuels. This can lead to personal exposures to high levels of a variety of harmful pollutants. Many of the poorer households use biomass fuels and so are particularly at risk. However, the women interviewed in the study did not generally view exposure to air pollutants, either indoors or outside, as a major environmental problem. Most households that saw the need to reduce pollution felt that these households affected should themselves take the lead. Only 15 per cent of the 1,000 respondents felt that the government needed to take action on air pollution, as compared to 78 per cent wanting action on water pollution, 61 per cent on solid wastes, 56 per cent on outdoor air, 44 per cent on insects and 42 per cent on sanitation. This probably reflects a misplaced lack of concern for air pollution and the belief that unlike most other environmental problems, it is not a public problem - the burden falls primarily on the polluting households.
Better information has a critical role to play with regard to air pollution as many people being exposed are not aware of the risk to their health. Until most people truly care about reducing smoke exposure they will not take the imitative and government programmes will remain ineffective. Planners, health specialists and policy makers have a lot more to learn about smoke and are ignorant of the problems women face in choosing their cooking fuels and changing their cooking habits. Planners, health workers and technicians (stove designers and producers) need to learn from the users about their problems. Where risks are high, it is tempting to treat smoke exposure from cooking fuels like smoke exposure from cigarette fumes and mount an anti-smoking campaign against both. In fact today, cooking smoke may be a more serious health problem than tobacco smoke but three differences must be kept in mind:
The need is for an educational approach rather than to scold women who use smoky stoves or fuels. Reproduced from SKI Newsletter August 1994 [top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 35: How Much Can NGO’s Achieve
Categories: Boiling Point 35| Ghana | ||||||||||
Page created:
20 August 2007; Last edited:
20 August 2007; Version: 0 | ||||||||||
Pagename: EnergyAndTheHouseholdEnvironmentInAccra @HEDON: ETGA | ||||||||||
