Timor-Leste Improved Cookstoves Project

Typically rural families in Timor-Leste cook with firewood using open flames in cooking pits. This way of cooking is incredibly inefficient and has a huge impact on the environment (both in terms of carbon emissions and deforestation), people’s health and well-being and the time needed to collect firewood from nearby forests and habitats which typically falls to the women of the household.

Switching to energy efficient cookstoves through this program will help 200,000 households over the next 3 to 4 years to reduce their carbon emissions, significantly reduce indoor air pollution and particulate emissions, as well as free up time for women and girls in the family to work or attend school as they don’t need to spend hours searching for fuel – thereby improving incomes and gender outcomes. In addition, the use of these cookstoves will also indirectly conserve the forest environment as the cooking practice will require less wood consumption.

This transformational project to improve rural cooking practices is supported the government of Timor-Leste and will leverage carbon finance generated through the sale of over 2 million carbon credits over the next 10 years to fund the distribution and use of these cookstoves as well as a the implementation of programs to help improve the livelihoods of the local communities.

Cookstove projects deliver maximum impact for communities as they are extremely cross cutting when it comes to delivering for people and planet, contributing to at least 8 of the UNSDGs (3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 15 and 17).