Every day, inside small homes and huts throughout the developing world, billions of people strike matches, light fires, prepare meals, heat their homes.
The rudimentary stoves they use burn biomass like firewood, crop residue, charcoal, and animal dung, releasing dense black soot into their homes and the environment.
Every part of this process — from the hunt for fuel to its daily burning — has staggering consequences.
To understand such a vexing problem, what must we know?
Where must we go?
To whom must we listen?
This first-of-its-kind book, forthcoming from Oxford University Press, explores the complex nexus of energy, poverty, ecology, environment, gender inequality, and technology in rural India. With compelling photography, richly illustrated scientific data, and research and commentary from respected academics in their field, the volume is at once a stunningly visual chronicle of five communities and a research-rooted primer on a massive global problem.
Written by Gautam N. Yadama, Dean and Professor at the Boston College School of Social Work. With photographs by Mark Katzman, one of the world's leading commercial photographers.
