My eyes don’t sting!
“My eyes don’t sting! This fire doesn’t hurt my eyes because there’s no smoke!”
This is what an elderly grandmother exclaimed to me and my team after we demonstrated a fuel efficient stove building technique called a ‘rocket stove’ to her and other women from her small community. I was serving with a mission team in the Mara district of Tanzania, teaching women in the town of Tarime how to build and use rocket stoves. This technology is highly efficient, meaning that it burns hotter, uses less fuel, and produces less smoke than the coal burning stoves that most Tanzanians use. Our goal in teaching the rocket stoves was to empower the women that we met to not only build their own stoves, but to pass the technology along to other community members. In this way, one simple stove building technique can do more than change one elderly grandmother’s life — it can improve women’s health and reduce consumption of wood resources throughout an entire area.
Though it wasn’t present in my mind at the time, our work with the rocket stoves in a few small, rural communities actually fit into a much larger movement towards improving our world called the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals are:
1. No Poverty
2. Zero Hunger
3. Good Health and Well-being
4. Quality Education
5. Gender Equality
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
7. Affordable and Clean Energy
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
12. Responsible Consumption and Production
13. Climate Action
14. Life Below Water
15. Life on Land
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships for the Goals
Taken together, these goals may seem a little overwhelming. However, one simple technology such as a rocket stove can actually tackle multiple goals at the same time. A rocket stove promotes good health and well-being by reducing the amount of smoke women inhale while cooking, promotes gender equality by decreasing the amount of time women have to spend cooking and gathering fuel, promotes sustainable communities by reducing pollution due to smoke, and promotes responsible consumption of resources by reducing the amount of fuel required for cooking.
Aiming to meet each Sustainable Development Goal is important because these goals will save our world. Because every person has a right to a sustainable livelihood and a sustainable future. Because for one elderly grandmother in Tanzania, her mind wasn’t focused on 17 different goals. It was focused on the fact that for the very first time, after so many years of her life spent bent over a smoky cooking stove, she was able to cook and her eyes didn’t sting.