Before the firewood warms a pot in rural Kenya, someone has already paid a price for it. Often, it is a woman or child who has walked kilometres before dawn, searching, bending and carrying the wood home. This is the part of energy poverty that is easily missed. In Kenya and across Africa, it rarely means having no choice. It means having too few affordable and accessible choices. Even in Nairobi, we may warm ourselves on these cold nights with an electric heater, cook a quick meal on gas, and still reach for firewood or charcoal. This is energy stacking — households combining fuels according to their needs and means.

The clean-cooking debate often treats firewood and charcoal as the enemy, yet the bigger questions are how they are produced, sourced and used. For rural women and children, collecting firewood means early starts, long walks and heavy loads, adding to the unpaid work of cooking, fetching water, tending crops and caring for children. A 2021 study by Kenyan researcher Dr Mary Njenga and colleagues, Gitau and Mendum, highlights the time, labour, health and hidden costs involved. These are challenges my mother sought to address when she founded the Green Belt Movement and engaged thousands of women in growing trees to improve access to cooking fuel, among other benefits.

For so long, discussions about firewood have framed it as something to be eliminated. In the public imagination, firewood is often associated with deforestation, environmental degradation and poverty. In effect, this has created a negative connotation in our minds. While these concerns are real, they tell only part of the story.

For millions of rural households, the story is far more nuanced than that. Firewood is the main source of cooking energy for 84.1 per cent of rural households, as established by the 2019 Population Census. The challenge is therefore not the existence of firewood itself, but whether it is produced and collected sustainably and burnt efficiently, a topic Dr Mary Njenga and I have discussed many times.

Tree-based circular bioeconomy

This distinction matters. When dead wood is removed from natural forests, it takes away organic matter that nourishes forest regeneration. But when it comes from trees grown and managed on farms, such as on boundaries or intercropped with pasture or crops, community woodlots, or as residues from government plantations, it becomes part of a renewable landscape.

Sustainable firewood systems can reduce pressure on indigenous forests while providing households with a dependable source of energy and farmers with an additional source of income, and therefore a key commodity in the tree-based bioeconomy.

Research points to growing and managing trees as one promising pathway for restoring local landscapes. Growing trees does more than improve soil fertility and strengthen climate resilience. Trees provide timber, food — fruits, leaves and nuts — and fodder, while the prunings and branches removed as part of silvicultural management are used as firewood.

This is a good example of a tree-based circular bioeconomy, where residues are purposefully used to meet human needs. Every tree grown closer to home represents fewer hours spent by women and children searching for wood, less physical strain and more time available for education, income generation or simply resting.

In addition, developing a pruning regime allows households to dry wood well, reducing wastage and emissions. The benefits are even higher when the well-dried firewood is used in efficient cookstoves or chimneys, cleaning the kitchen environment.

Sustainable firewood production

We often celebrate the number of trees planted or hectares restored, but we rarely ask whether those efforts have changed the daily lives of the people who depend on those landscapes. Has the journey for firewood become shorter? Has smoke inside the kitchen been reduced? Has a mother gained an extra hour to spend with her children? These are the questions that reveal whether development has truly improved people’s lives.

For clean cooking technologies to succeed, they must take into account the daily realities of the people they are meant to serve. Even when households have access to other cooking technologies, what we find is that households use more than one fuel — stacking, spreading out their energy sources based on their daily needs or income.

For instance, in rural households, especially in cold months, firewood provides an easy source of heat to keep people warm. Solutions succeed when they recognise local cooking practices, cultural preferences and the realities of rural livelihoods. Development is most effective when it works with communities rather than assuming one solution fits every household.

As Kenya continues its journey towards a cleaner and more resilient future, sustainable firewood production and efficient use should not be treated as a contradiction to climate and health action. It should be recognised as part of the sustainable development agenda.

Ms Mathai is the MD for Africa & Global Partnerships at the World Resources Institute and Chair of Wangari Maathai Foundation

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