Want to be inspired? Then be sure to read about Anil Kumar Raut and his efforts to tap world markets for carbon to ensure clean, renewable energy is affordable for all Nepalese. You’ll quickly understand why he is our HEDON Subscriber of the Month Anil Kumar Raut embodies action. Just under thirty years old, he has already published numerous papers, participated in multiple advocacy roles, and educated many on the impact of, and related policy for, both indoor and outdoor air pollution, including everything from the burden of indoor air pollution on rural households to the role of electric vehicles on air pollution control. Yet, this is just a taste of the many aspects of his devotion to mitigating the harmful effects of indoor and outdoor pollution, especially that on the household and from cooking.
To aid such, Anil is currently working for Winrock International, Nepal, where he is responsible for indoor air pollution monitoring as part of a joint research project on indoor air pollution and child health. (See below for a full list of those institutions and organizations involved.) Begun in May 2006, the project involves monitoring indoor air pollution in 560 households in the Bhaktapur district to study the effects of indoor air pollution as one of the risk factors in acute lower respiratory infections in children under three years old. Watch out for the study findings, which will be published in early 2007.
Not content with ensuring that both the Nepalese and the world understand the detrimental impact indoor air pollution has on both households and the environment, Anil is also intent on seeing solutions enacted. To do so, Anil has begun to tap into world markets for carbon through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Part of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM allows signatories to meet their national emission targets (set so emissions of GHGs would fall to an average of roughly 5.2% below their 1990 levels over the period 2008-2012) by investing in projects which not only reduce GHG emissions in developing countries, but also further sustainable development; one such investment option is improved household energy.
As Anil sees it, this is a perfect way to ensure households, whom he notes are both aware of indoor air pollution as well as the potential for more improved fuels/stoves to reduce smoke and its associated health damage, to afford the solutions. This is due to Anil’s overall work in both climate change mitigation and the household energy sector, where he has recognized the potential for synergy between the two sectors as a means of simultaneously addressing problems in both.
As he summarizes of his quest to mitigate the health damage caused be indoor air pollution at the household level, ‘there are technologies, clean fuels available. But our challenge is to make these technologies and fuels affordable and acceptable to the poor households who are still compelled to use the biomass fuel in traditional stoves.’
If his past efforts are anything to go by, we know he will succeed.
To contact Anil, e-mail him at ankraut@....
If you are interested in learning how you, too, can use carbon markets to improve health and spur sustainable development through the dissemination of improved cookstoves, be sure to join HEDON’s new Special Interest Group on Carbon and Cooking. For more information, visit:
http://www.hedon.info/goto.php/CarbonSIG
Organizations involved in the above mentioned research project on indoor air pollution and child health: - Institute of Medicine at Tribhuvan University, Nepal
- The Centre of International Health in Bergen, Norway
- The Department of Epidemiology Research, The Statens Serum Institute, Denmark
- The University of California, Berkeley
- Winrock International, Nepal
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