Carbon Credits Could Finance Improved Wood-Fired Cookstoves in Mexico Emilio Godoy - Inter Press Service
go to original April 25, 2013

A woman prepares corn tortillas on a fuel-efficient wood stove. (Ecoders)

MEXICO CITY - Environmental organizations in Mexico are hoping to finance the promotion of fuel-efficient wood-fired cookstoves, which reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, through the sale of carbon credits on the voluntary market.

Two non-governmental organizations are working in the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the southern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, to develop and promote these improved cookstoves, which would also reduce wood consumption as well as the incidence of respiratory problems caused by the smoke from traditional stoves.

“The majority of rural families in the region cook with firewood. We began with a series of workshops to find out what kind of stoves there are in the country,” said Dulce Magaña, the ecotourism and ecotechnology coordinator at U’yo’olché (“tree shoot” in the local Mayan language), which is leading up the initiative in conjunction with the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature (FMCN).

U’yo’olché, founded in 1999, works in the areas of community forest management, ecotourism and biodiversity monitoring in Quintana Roo and the neighbouring states of Yucatán and Campeche.

... In terms of design, the stove is basically a brick and cement structure with a combustion chamber where the firewood is placed, two or three metal burners, and a pipe through which the smoke is released.

More than 2,000 improved cookstoves have now been distributed, half of them based on this new model. A solar power cooker is included with each one.

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