Clearing Up the Smoke: Untapping the Potential of Tailored Clean Cooking Programs in Latin America

Improving cooking technologies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) households is necessary and needs to be done immediately. In this context, well-designed policies, programs and their implementation are essential. This monograph provides policy-makers with key elements aimed at improving clean cooking strategies. These are based on: (1) an analysis of previous experiences in LAC; (2) identifying the characteristics of the population targeted; (3) estimating the potential impact of clean cooking policies; (4) identifying the policies barriers and (5) making policy recommendations. Throughout this document, we focus on three case studies. These are Guatemala, Peru and Ecuador. The reason for this selection is manifold. First, they represent very different cases with their own characteristics of the programs and transition phases. Second, we have complete household survey datasets that include our variables of interest for the empirical analysis of these three countries. These surveys were harmonized, allowing for consistent comparison of results for different countries. Finally, these are also countries where information on clean cooking programs is available and accessible. In the case of Guatemala, this was less the case than for Peru and Ecuador, but we were able to take advantage of a fieldwork carried out in February 2020 to gather complementary qualitative information, which has enriched our empirical analysis and supported several of our hypotheses.