MaximsNewsNetwork: 13 January 2011 -- Nairobi, Kenya -- United Nations Environmental Programme: UNEP: On her first official visit to Africa, UNEP Goodwill Ambassador and iconic face of fashion, Gisele Bündchen, went to the grassroots level in Kenya to experience the reality of energy poverty and to see how Kenyans are transforming their lives by accessing sustainable energy.
Gisele, who has recently been named the 'world's greenest celebrity', told a press conference at the UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi that access to adequate fuels for cooking is also a major challenge, with many families still dependent on wood which produces toxic smoke, impacting the health of women and children.
Around half the world's population cook on open indoor fires and each year over 2.5 million people die prematurely as a result of breathing in emissions from these cook stoves, primarily from a substance called black carbon, also known as soot. Many more are blighted by ill health, such as chronic bronchitis.
Gisele spoke about the advantages of slow burning cooking stoves.
While gains have been made in accessing electricity in the past two decades, huge gaps still remain. One in every five people on the planet do not have access to electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa some 70 percent of the population have no electricity, while in Kenya only 18 percent of households have power.
Gisele said that this amounted to injustice.
UN Under Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner who gave Gisele a tour of the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in Nairobi, expressed hope about a photo voltaic and solar revolution.
UNEP has worked to realize and to accelerate the use of renewable energies within the overall theme of a Green Economy, with a special emphasis on Africa, and Kenya in particular. The UN's new office facility in Nairobi, which houses UNEP and UN-HABITAT, has 6,000 square meters of solar panels and generates as much electricity as its 1,200 occupants consume.
Up on the roof, Steiner showed Gisele the solar panels installed to provide energy for the headquarters complex. Kenya is increasingly developing its geothermal, wind, solar and hydro power resources at the local level.
Gisele visit to Kenya also took her to Kibera, East Africa's largest slum, to look at biogas centres (turning human waste into power), to Kisumu, in western Kenya, where she took part in collecting firewood and learned about fuel-efficient cook stoves and to the Mount Kenya area where micro-hydro power is bringing electricity to over 2,000 households.
UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME: UNEP ...
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