Women and Girls Have Specific Needs in Storms and Conflicts

Accelerating an Impact Industry: Lessons from Clean Cookstoves

Giving Compass' Take: • Stanford Social Innovation Review examines the efforts of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves in the context of "acceleration strategies," which includes investment and collective action. • What did the Alliance do right and wrong, and what can other organizations learn from its efforts to get clean cookstoves in 100 million households by 2020? The main takeaway: It helps to take impact steps one by one, rather than try to tackle everything at once. • Learn more about the conundrum between cookstoves and carbon offsets. When then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, announced the launch of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (the Alliance) in 2010, she supported an audacious goal — 100 million households adopting clean cookstoves and fuels by 2020. Bringing together leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector, the Alliance aimed to harness the power of markets to build a robust and thriving industry that could help alleviate poverty and enhance sustainable development. The question then, and now, is what do organizations like the Alliance need to do to make this vision a reality? Development organizations, foundations, nonprofits, and governments have invested in a variety of programs to unlock the transformative power of business to help tackle some of society’s greatest challenges. From encouraging policy reforms and launching incubators that nurture enterprise growth, to leading awareness and behavior change campaigns that drive consumer demand, these programs have been stepping stones to building industries that generate sustainable and scalable impact — what we call “impact industries.” In 2015, five years after its launch, the Alliance reported the distribution of 53 million clean or efficient cookstoves and fuels, more than half way to its goal of 100 million households by 2020. To achieve this milestone the Alliance has had to simultaneously address the many barriers that impede the purchase and use of clean cookstoves and fuels.