UNEP Goodwill Ambassador Gisele Bündchen visit Kenya

Europa Mewswire

Photos By Luiz Rampelotto

United Nations, January 13 2012

On her first official visit to Africa, UNEP Goodwill Ambassador and iconic face of fashion, Gisele Bündchen , went to the grassroots level in Kenya to experience the reality of energy poverty and to see how Kenyans are transforming their lives by accessing sustainable energy.

Gisele, who has recently been named the ‘world’s greenest celebrity’, told a press conference at the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi that access to adequate fuels for cooking is also a major challenge, with many families still dependent on wood which produces toxic smoke, impacting the health of women and children.

Gisele Bündchen, UNEP Goodwill Ambassador: 
“More than 1.4 million lives are lost each year because of inhalation of smoke from cooking and it is quite shocking and most of them are women and children. This is basically 50 percent more than malaria.”

Around half the world’s population cook on open indoor fires and each year over 2.5 million people die prematurely as a result of breathing in emissions from these cook stoves, primarily from a substance called black carbon, also known as soot. Many more are blighted by ill health, such as chronic bronchitis.

Gisele spoke about the advantages of slow burning cooking stoves.
“The slow burning cooking stove is quite an effective solution for rural areas because it kind of reduces up to 70 percent of the smoke in the houses and also uses 50 percent less firewood for it to work.”

While gains have been made in accessing electricity in the past two decades, huge gaps still remain. One in every five people on the planet do not have access to electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa some 70 percent of the population have no electricity, while in Kenya only 18 percent of households have power.

Gisele said that this amounted to injustice.
“Just as many women and men and children will be living in energy poverty in twenty years time. That is not development; that is injustice. But there is hope, you know, there is always hope and energy for all is achievable.”

Source: UNifeed