Air Quality

How the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves manages 700 partners

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Andrea Useem
Rahda Muthiah, left, talks with a woman using an improved cookstove in Gujarat, India. Photo: Romana Manpreet, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
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In the partnerships-for-development arena, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is one of the largest and most complex. It launched with fewer than 20 partners and now has 700 around the world. Devex Impact asked the Alliance’s executive director, Radha Muthiah, how the small secretariat manages such a complex alliance and what other “mega partnerships” can learn from the alliance’s experience.

Tell us about how the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves came to life?

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China: The electronic wastebasket of the world

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Ivan Watson
Where your used electronics go in China
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Did you ever wonder what happens to your old laptop or cellphone when you throw it away?

Chances are some of your old electronic junk will end up in China.

According to a recent United Nations report, "China now appears to be the largest e-waste dumping site in the world."

E-waste, or electronic waste, consists of everything from scrapped TVs, refrigerators and air conditioners to that old desktop computer that may be collecting dust in your closet.

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China and Australia top list of 'carbon bomb' projects

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Oliver Milman
guardian.co.uk
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China and Australia top a global list of planned oil, gas and coal projects that will act as "carbon bombs" and push the planet towards catastrophic climate change, a Greenpeace report warned on Tuesday.

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Air pollution scourge underestimated, green energy can help: U.N.

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Alister Doyle
Artist Matt Hope adjusts the helmet linked to his air filtration bike in front of the China Central Television (CCTV) building on a hazy day in Beijing, March 26, 2013. Photo: Petar Kujundzic
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Air pollution is an underestimated scourge that kills far more people than AIDS and malaria and a shift to cleaner energy could easily halve the toll by 2030, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

Investments in solar, wind or hydropower would benefit both human health and a drive by almost 200 nations to slow climate change, blamed mainly on a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from use of fossil fuels, they said.

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Environmental threats could push billions into extreme poverty, warns UN

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Claire Provost
A Filipino boy washes his face in murky waters in Manila. Inaction on the environment will accelerate global poverty, warns the UN. Photograph: Francis R Malasig/EPA
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The number of people living in extreme poverty could increase by up to 3 billion by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to tackle environmental challenges, a major UN report warned on Thursday.

The 2013 Human Development Report hails better than expected progress on health, wealth and education in dozens of developing countries but says inaction on climate change, deforestation, and air and water pollution could end gains in the world's poorest countries and communities.

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China burns half of coal consumption worldwide, figures show

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Adam Vaughan
China consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined Photograph: US Energy Information Administration U.S. Energy Information Administration
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China now burns nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined.

The country's appetite for the carbon-intensive fuel rose by 9% in 2011, to 3.8bn tonnes, meaning it now accounts for 47% of worldwide coal consumption.

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Michael Russell

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Michael Russell

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4 percent of Chinese cities report clean air

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Zhu Ningzhu
Forty-eight percent of days last year in Beijing had clean air, while 16 percent of days suffered heavy air pollution.
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BEIJING, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Only three out of the 74 Chinese cities that were monitored for air quality last year reported clean air, while the large majority suffered various degrees of pollution, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Tuesday.

The three cities to meet government-set air quality standards are Haikou, capital of south China's Hainan Province, Zhoushan in east China's Zhejiang Province, and Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

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