Families turn to dirty fuels such as firewood, bringing fears over air pollution and fragility of energy transition…“When prices rise, it’s the poorest who are forced to switch back to biomass,” said Harjeet Singh, the director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. “Biomass burning is a major source of fine particulate pollution. In dense urban areas, the impact is even more severe because of how closely people live and how poorly ventilated these spaces are.”
Aakash Hassan and Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi, Guill Ramos in Manila and Rebecca Ratcliffe in Bangkok
In the ramshackle lanes of a south Delhi slum, Afshana Khatoon crouched wearily on her haunches and began lighting a small pile of firewood. She had only just returned from six hours spent trudging through the urban forests and dry parks of India’s capital looking for kindling to turn into a makeshift stove. As the unforgiving summer heat soared above 40C, she had walked for miles, piling the sticks and fallen branches into a bundle on her head while sweat ran down her face.
Just a few weeks ago, the 35-year-old had been preparing meals for her four children on a small gas stove with little fuss. But as the crisis in the Middle East has choked India’s vital supplies of imported liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) – used by more than 60% of the country’s population for cooking – refills have been scarce and prices have risen far beyond what is widely affordable.
Khatoon, like growing numbers of people in India and more widely across Asia, has been forced to cook with crude, dirty fuels such as firewood and coal in order to survive. “It already feels like hell,” she said, as she bustled about, filling a pot with water. “I’m not eating properly, and I have to work much more than before. My whole day now is about collecting firewood and cooking.”
The return to fuels such as firewood and coal is not only deepening the economic strain of the war on ordinary civilians in countries across Asia, but raising concerns about public health, air pollution and the fragility of the energy transition.
India imports about 60% of its LPG needs, of which about 90% usually comes through the strait of Hormuz, the critical shipping route still blockaded amid the ongoing conflict between Iran and the US. Official data shows India’s LPG consumption fell by 2.2m tonnes in April, the sharpest decline in years….
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After the truth-shower 