We seek to reduce our emissions as far as possible and then offset the impact we have. We design our services as locally rooted and led by people who have direct experience of the challenges we seek to address amongst our communities. This enables us to reduce carbon emission from transport. Whenever possible, we try use community buildings that have plans to reduce carbon emissions. In 2020, we implemented plans to reduce our emissions by 43% relative to our 2019 benchmark.
We offset our carbon emissions by funding measures to reduce the use of wood fuel in India. This is particularly important to us partly because most of our beneficiaries descend from South Asia.
In parts of rural India, cooking is responsible for 90% of household energy consumption and 75% of that is met through fuel wood and agricultural waste. The World Health Organization estimates that 400,000 women and children die each year from exposure to smoke generated by burning this type of fuel. So, we offset our carbon emissions by funding new cooking stoves.
This program helps improve living conditions for some of the poorest people in India, reducing the cost of cooking and the need to collect firewood. It also create employment opportunities for people involved in the manufacture, distribution and maintenance of stoves in India. The fuel efficient stoves provided as part of this program also reduce cooking times, enabling women in project households to invest more time in productive and capacity building activities.