Around 400,000 people in Mozambique will gain access to clean cooking fuel and thousands of acres of forest will be saved under a new initiative.

An article in Noodls reports on how Danish company Novozymes is implementing the CleanStar Mozambique project which integrates food, alternative energy, and forest protection to address poverty, biodiversity loss and health problems from cooking with smoke-producing charcoal stoves.

CleanStar Mozambique focuses on helping farmers develop an alternative to charcoal production while restoring degraded soils and improving biodiversity. Through agroforestry, farmers will grow a range of trees alongside crops that they can sell to Novozymes. The company plans to process surplus cassava into ethanol-based cooking fuel which will be sold in Maputo along with clean cookstoves.

“The company will also process legumes and grains into fortified flour, animal feed, cooking oil and other packaged products to be sold domestically,” says the article.

The project is part of the Business Call to Action initiative supported by the United Nations Development Programme and other international organizations. It encourages companies to fight poverty and achieve development impacts through innovative business models which also result in commercial success.

Novozymes estimates the project will save 9,000 acres of forest annually and enable 2,000 low-income farmers to triple their incomes through agroforestry. They expect to sell 80,000 clean cookstoves and estimate an annual reduction of 320,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the full story: Danish firm aims to improve health, environment in Mozambique