Our Improved Cookstoves
Esther Salazar Ventura and family (Image: C. Flores, November 2020)
Most of Pacasmayo’s residents rely on wood and charcoal for cooking, and high demand has spurred illegal deforestation in the nearby dry forests of Cañoncillo, La Yuca, and Tronco Prieto. In 2018, A Rocha Peru began working in the Pacasmayo area to make fuel-efficient cookstoves. These stoves cut fuel consumption in half, reducing the need to cut down trees, and offer better air quality, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Our improved cookstoves have a range of positive impacts, not only for the dry forests and to the project beneficiaries who receive the stoves, but to those who, through support from the La Libertad Dry Forest Project, make and construct the cookstoves.
LOCAL MATERIALS. Local community members like Oscar Ruiz and Yover Vigo Muñoz, make the mudbricks for the improved cookstoves. The mudbricks are made from locally sourced materials in the communities that are then dried in the sun. In one day, they can make around 700 mudbricks.
FABRICATED MANUALLY. The improved cookstoves installed by the Dry Forest Project have chimneys that help expel and reduce exposure to toxic and harmful smoke and improves wellbeing, especially for women and children. The metal chimneys are fabricated by metal workers like Roberto Ruiz Cubas and Giancarlo Vílchez Ramos who produce the chimneys in Campiña de Moche, Trujillo.
LOCALLY EMPLOYED. José León de la Cruz is one of our local bricklayers who constructs the ecological cookstoves in beneficiary households for the La Libertad Dry Forest Project. Jose uses 100 mudbricks per kitchen. In one day, Jose and his assistant can install 3 improved cookstoves for local beneficiary families in the Pacamayo area. .
GLOBAL IMPACT. Our Project Officer, Ciro Flores, coordinates and manages the data collection, installation and ongoing monitoring of the improved cookstoves ensuring efficient installation and troubleshooting problems as they arise. By the end of this year, A Rocha Peru will have installed 50 cookstoves. Our project has been so successful that we are hoping to continue the construction of more cookstoves next year. The project contributes to many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals which is a global call to action to end poverty and protect the planet, in particular:
