The benefits of action to reduce household air pollution (BAR-HAP) model: A new decision support tool.

Journal Article (Journal Article)

Cooking with polluting and inefficient fuels and technologies is responsible for a large set of global harms, ranging from health and time losses among the billions of people who are energy poor, to environmental degradation at a regional and global scale. This paper presents a new decision-support model-the BAR-HAP Tool-that is aimed at guiding planning of policy interventions to accelerate transitions towards cleaner cooking fuels and technologies. The conceptual model behind BAR-HAP lies in a framework of costs and benefits that is holistic and comprehensive, allows consideration of multiple policy interventions (subsidies, financing, bans, and behavior change communication), and realistically accounts for partial adoption and use of improved cooking technology. It incorporates evidence from recent efforts to characterize the relevant set of parameters that determine those costs and benefits, including those related to intervention effectiveness. Practical aspects of the tool were modified based on feedback from a pilot testing workshop with multisectoral users in Nepal. To demonstrate the functionality of the BAR-HAP tool, we present illustrative calculations related to several cooking transitions in the context of Nepal. In accounting for the multifaceted nature of the issue of household air pollution, the BAR-HAP model is expected to facilitate cross-sector dialogue and problem-solving to address this major health, environment and development challenge.

Full Text

Duke Authors

Cited Authors

  • Das, I; Lewis, JJ; Ludolph, R; Bertram, M; Adair-Rohani, H; Jeuland, M

Published Date

  • January 2021

Published In

Volume / Issue

  • 16 / 1

Start / End Page

  • e0245729 -

PubMed ID

  • 33481916

Pubmed Central ID

  • PMC7822293

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1932-6203

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1932-6203

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1371/journal.pone.0245729

Language

  • eng