Read Mark Witt's article, "TACKLING THE SILENT KILLER": Eliminating smoke in kitchens from wood- and biomass-burning stoves.

Harvesting the Power of the Sun
Tibetans benefit from eco-friendly cookers

By Josiah Ramsay Johnston
This article was printed in Abroad View magazine fall 2006

A Tibetan woman boils water on her solar cooker.
Photo by Kevin Stuart

In the remote, windswept Qinghai province of the People’s Republic of China—traditionally known as the Amdo region of the Tibetan Plateau—solar cookers are changing the way of life of the Tibetan minority inhabiting the rural areas of the region.

The solar cooker is simply a concave cement disc equipped with a layer of small mirrors capable of directing concentrated solar energy into the base of a cooking vessel held by a thin tripod at an angle above the disc. The sun’s rays then heat the vessel to temperatures suitable for cooking or boiling water. In this way, one of the primary consumers of energy in many of the less-developed regions of the world—the preparation of food—can become environmentally friendly.

The solar cooker is just one example of a homespun alternative energy design that I have encountered in my travels. As the world’s resources have been consumed over the course of the last century, individuals and corporations have begun to combat the exploitation of natural resources by introducing sustainable alternatives. While many of these innovations are celebrated by the international public, there are also grassroots substitutes—like the solar cooker—that are slowly changing people’s lives on the local scale and ensuring a sustainable future.

In Xining, the capitol of Qinghai, I met the man responsible for the solar cooker. Kevin Stuart started an English training program almost 20 years ago in the region to teach Tibetans English so that they could communicate with the outside world. Over time, the program grew to include a number of projects the students were initiating and managing themselves, ranging from linguistic and cultural preservation to the distribution of second-hand clothes, and from the production of documentary movies and the compilation of Tibetan literary anthologies to the solar cooker project.

The solar cooker, which costs roughly $20, is a manifold blessing to those who receive it. The Tibetans have traditionally used fuels such as yak dung and wood for heating, boiling, and cooking. However, these have been more difficult to acquire as the population of Qinghai has increased and industrialization in the region has continued. The environment has been depleted progressively and numerous nomadic groups have been caught in a cruel cycle of abject poverty.

Traditionally Tibetan women have gathered firewood to cook the meals that feed their families. This process can take anywhere from a few hours to an entire day, depending on the proximity of woodland to the place where they live. As time passes, less wood is available and the trips take longer. After the wood is gathered, the women return to the village with the loads strapped on their back—an arduous task for even the healthiest individuals. Wood gathering is repeated every two days, since the women can only carry so much.

Once home, the women will begin burning the wood to cook. Traditional Tibetan housing is poorly ventilated so, over time, this can lead to serious health risks, especially to the lungs. The solar cooker positively contributes to the lives of the Tibetans through its reusability and health benefits, its liberation of the time formerly used to gather other forms of fuel, and its environmentally friendly nature.

The solar cooker is self-sustaining; it uses the sun’s energy, decreasing the need for firewood and thus helping prevent the deforestation that has been endangering the scattered woodlands of Qinghai.
Tibetan women who have acquired solar cookers through Dr. Stuart’s organization can use their free time producing handicrafts to sell, obtaining an education, or supporting their family in a number of other ways. But the advantages associated with the solar cooker do not end there.

Approximately 1,700 households have received solar cookers so far, with an estimated 10,000 people reaping the benefits—this means 10,000 people not collecting and burning organic material from the environment nor causing soil erosion, air pollution, and deforestation. It means that thousands of girls are able to acquire an education since their function as fuel collectors has been made obsolete. It also means the health of thousands of women has improved due to less exposure to smoky kitchens and less contact with yak dung.

The solar cooker is a fine example of the changes alternative energy designs can impress upon the future of humanity.

At the time this article was written, Josiah Ramsay Johnston was a senior in the Friends World Program (now called Global College) at Long Island University.