First let me say that for one year I did experiments in my back yard in Bangalore India and think that someone needs to follow up on this. It is both feasible and urgent. The Problem: cooking with wood by millions all over India has at least four negative results:

1) kids breath the smoke
2) trees get cut
3) mothers spend too much time collecting wood
4) The smokes add to global warming

The Solution: I have tested a parabolic solar cooker in rural India with some success. The solution is 1/3 technology and 1/3 overcoming cultural habits and 1/3 creating a business so that it is sustainable and spreads. A low cost cooker can be designed so that village entrepreneurs can make money from it. In this way the market will demand improvement and a price to fit the village situation. I do not know the best business model so this needs to be prototyped. 10 million dollars applied carefully to the above project could start a global movement that proves business is a smart way to solving poverty. Because many attempts to solve poverty end up creating more problems in the long run, this project has to be done with a "searcher" approach as advocated in the book The White Mans Burden.

The photo shows a parabolic cooker in Bangalore. Note the wood burning stoves in the background. These experiments with designing a better wood stove were dropped after solar was discover to have greater potential.

Read more about Solar Cooking:

• Make Food When the Sun Shines

• A Wow Day in the Sun