A United Nations (UN) meeting has failed to agree on an action plan to deal with indoor air pollution — the range of hazards related to cooking indoors that is thought to kill more people every year in poor countries than malaria.

Cooking with fire: wood-burning stoves are a major source of indoor pollution. Credit: J. BOETHLING/STILL PICTURES

Despite two weeks of negotiations in New York, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development was unable to ratify a draft communiqué on indoor pollution and other developmental issues that were up for discussion. But activists say the very fact that the discussion took place represents valuable progress in acknowledging the scale of the pollution problem.

At the end of a fractious meeting that culminated in the election of the Zimbabwean environment minister, Francis Nhema, to chair the commission, representatives from Switzerland and the European Union (EU) rejected the draft communiqué, saying that its vacuous content would threaten past agreements and contained no goals that would spur action on a number of key issues.

The problem of indoor air pollution has been basically invisible.

“In previous discussions, the problem of indoor air pollution has been basically invisible, perhaps because it is a situation that affects mainly women,” says Maria Arce Moreira, a policy adviser to Practical Action, a British pressure group that works on poverty issues. “It's important that it is finally recognized as a problem, but the proposed actions to deal with it are not enough.”

Around half of the world's population cooks on stoves that burn biomass such as wood, crop residues or dung, development specialists say. According to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO), smoke emitted by traditional cookers kills 1.6 million people each year, most of them women and children (WHO Indoor Air Pollution: National Burden of Disease Estimates; 2007).

Researchers predict that if these trends continue, in Africa alone indoor air pollution will kill 10 million people by 2030. Of these deaths, up to 3.7 million could be saved by switching to petroleum-based fossil fuels such as kerosene (R. Bailis et al. Science 308, 98–103; 2005).

Lung cancer, pneumonia and acute lowerrespiratory infections are prevalent as a result of constant exposure to carbon monoxide, particulates, hydrocarbons and carcinogens such as formaldehyde and benzene that are contained in cooking smoke.

Activist groups, including Practical Action, have previously called on governments to adopt firm measures to halve the number of people cooking with traditional fuels. But with fossil-fuel prices at historic highs, and most of the world's poorest people using wood-burning stoves, there is little appetite for such measures.

Nonetheless, EU representatives wanted the UN commission to ask nations and regions to set appropriate targets, “because without targets you cannot easily review these issues”, says Natascha Beinker, a policy adviser at the German ministry for economic cooperation and development, who attended the meetings.

EU representatives also called for a commitment to switching to cleaner biofuels, and to delivering financial aid and addressing the health risks from indoor cooking, “but there was not total commitment for this”, Beinker adds.

“The Americans and Australians seem less willing to accept that there is a policy issue,” says Andrew Scott, policy director for Practical Action. African and South American nations, which see environmental rules as restraints on their economic development, agreed that the issue was not a political one and blocked the EU move.

Peter Davies, an energy adviser to the UK Department for International Development, who was also at the meetings, argues that progress remains possible without firm targets. “Goals and targets are not something developed countries can push on. These are issues that national governments need to decide for themselves with their own national-development and poverty-reduction plans.”

This year's meeting of the sustainable-development commission concentrated on four main issues — energy, industrial development, air pollution and climate change. The most contentious debate was fuelled by discussions on acceptable sources of energy.

“The EU and First World groups tended to be influenced by environmental issues, whereas the G77 [the developing nations] seemed to take a much harder-nosed look at what they need for their economic development,” says Davies.

The lack of consensus means that rather than producing a final summary agreed by all countries, this year's chair, Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah of Qatar, will issue a text that merely lists the points discussed.

“The final text will be very watered down now,” says Arce Moreira. “We do not envisage support for energy issues related to indoor air pollution, such as addressing access to modern energy for the poor.”

But Davies says that what matters is that the hitherto obscure issue of indoor pollution is gradually raising its political profile. “Whatever the chair's summary says will be pretty bland. It has been negotiated to the lowest common denominator. But I think it will be a mistake to look at the chair's summary and say this is it,” he says. “The process and the debate it generates has value in itself.”