To help companies design the clean cooking solution that best meets the preferences of home cooks, the Clean Cooking Alliance’s User Insights Lab (UIL) launched the People Insights Portal. This new platform translates ethnographic research into accessible insights that organizations can use to better design, market, and sustain clean cooking solutions....

The MRV frameworks for improved cookstove (ICS) projects and many other approaches to reducing harmful emissions from household energy differ from those of other sectors due to the distributed nature of the interventions involved. The purpose of this guide is to offer an introductory overview of these MRV frameworks. Companion documents including a guide to developing implementation plans for clea...

This community‐based fire integrated communication strategy is one of the strategic plans of the National Forest Monitoring and Assessment (NAFORMA) project − a collaboration between the Governments of the Republic of Tanzania and Finland and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.The purpose of the FAO‐Fin Integrated Fire Management Project (under Outcome 3: Sustainable...

Open burning of crop residues in India is a serious issue that not only impacts human health but is also detrimental to soil health in the long term. According to the estimates from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, about 500 million tonnes of crop residues are generated annually. While a portion of these residues is used for various purposes, a larger portion is burnt in the fields. The p...

The Policy Brief discusses why gender matters in the context of sustainable agricultural mechanization, what key barriers women face in the adoption and scaling-up of mechanization-based solutions and how the gender dimension can be better integrated into programmes and strategies for sustainable agricultural mechanization in the Asia-Pacific region....

Agriculture remains the backbone of national economy in most developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Agriculture is not only the producer of food and but also employer of approximately 60% of the working population in this region, according to ESCAP’s survey in 2013. However, achieving and ensuring sustained food security in the region remains a challenge. In recent years, countries acros...

Burning rice stubble is a common practice for millions of farmers across the Indo-Gangetic Plains. Though burning represents a low input, cost-effective strategy of crop residue management (CRM), it produces harmful air pollution, and it releases greenhouse gasses. Large-scale transition to no-burn CRM in northwest India will require social and technological change. Authors analyze data from 60 fo...

Crop residue burning in Indian Punjab emits particulate matter with detrimental impacts on health, climate and that threaten agricultural production. Though legal and technological barriers to residue burning exist – and alternatives considered more profitable to farmers – residue burning continues. Authors review black carbon (BC) emissions from residue burning in Punjab, analyse social-ecologica...

Crop Residue Burning (CRB) is a major contributor to air pollution in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) region during winter months, particularly in October and November. Satellite-based active fire counts and burnt area are two widely used remote sensing metrics to monitor CRB. However, these methods have some limitations. Coarser spatial and temporal resolutions, as well as obstructions due to smoke...

The Union government released the latest version of the Crop Residue Management Operational Guidelines in March 2024 to promote better stubble management, especially in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi. The government has been periodically updating these guidelines since they were first introduced after the launch of th...