Energy costs are reshaping cooking—and conservation—across Africa and South Asia
Before sunset, Brenda Obare would light her stove quickly in Nairobi’s Kibera, one of Africa’s largest informal settlements. When the Iran war disrupted energy markets, her cooking routine increasingly changed: her stove is often cold, and she instead crouches over a charcoal burner outside her home because cooking gas is too expensive and can be hard to find.
Obare’s account matches a broader pattern described by aid workers, conservationists and energy-industry and policy experts: governments had promoted cleaner household fuels such as LPG for health and environmental reasons, but rising prices are now undermining efforts to shift families away from charcoal and firewood.
The push for cleaner cooking fuels was driven by concerns that air pollution from biomass burning has lethal effects. The story also ties the policy to conservation: cutting trees faster than they regrow accelerates deforestation, and deforestation can worsen habitat loss for wildlife.
Conservationists say the pressure from fuel shortages is now showing up in the field. As more people search for fuel in forests, they encounter wildlife, and economic stress can also contribute to higher demand for bushmeat. The cluster reporting also links those dynamics to risks that diseases can spread from animals to people, while falling tourism can reduce the funding available for protected areas.
“There is a direct, first-step link,” Kahumbu said, describing the pathway from energy disruptions to environmental harm. “The first conservation risk from an energy shock in Africa is not abstract. It is household fuel switching,” she said, referring to the shift back to polluting biomass when households cannot afford LPG, kerosene or reliable electricity.
Kahumbu said rising demand for biomass fuels also degrades watersheds and wildlife habitats as people go deeper into areas that previously saw less disturbance. She added that experts fear other cost pressures tied to the broader economic shock—including rising diesel prices and higher fertilizer costs—could reduce farm productivity, which can increase food insecurity and indirectly raise pressure on wildlife resources.
In Nairobi, charcoal sellers described rising demand in low-income settlements. One seller, Munyao Kitheka, said charcoal is widely used and that customers in those neighborhoods increasingly turn to it, while the household-level shift is also described as part of a wider regional pattern.
A similar reversion is described in India, which imports LPG and whose supply depends in part on the Gulf region, according to S&P Global. The reporting describes Rama, a social worker who has worked with waste-picking families in the outskirts of New Delhi to adopt LPG, saying that with incomes below $3 a day, many families can no longer afford LPG cylinders. Rama said many are “very, very bad,” and described how families revert to stoves that burn firewood or return to villages where wood is easier to find.
Fuel costs also shape who bears the burden of collecting energy. Neha Saigal, a consultant with Asar Social Impact Advisors, said the shift places a heavier burden on women and girls, who spend hours each day seeking fuel—reducing time for school or work. She warned that “Years of work went into making LPG aspirational. But a global issue like this can reverse some of those gains,” as households fall back on more affordable fuels.
Officials and conservation specialists say the consequences can be broader than forests and habitats. The reporting describes how air travel disruptions can reduce access and tourism, and said that in countries that rely on wildlife tourism, even a modest drop in visitor numbers can affect how protected areas are managed. Tourism support is described as underwriting park operations, anti-poaching patrols and community conservation initiatives.
Kahumbu linked lower tourism to less income for conservation work and said that can mean fewer rangers and more opportunistic poaching. She added that rising food and fuel costs can push more people toward bushmeat as a protein source, increasing pressure on wildlife populations.
Chatterjee also described how conservation work in remote areas depends on frequent travel. Higher fuel prices can disrupt movement, and in areas where conflicts between wildlife and people can arise, rapid deployment of forest staff and conservation teams is described as critical to secure areas, manage crowds and safely guide or tranquilize animals before situations escalate.
In response to the pressures, Kahumbu said governments have options to cushion the impact, including subsidies to protect households from reverting to polluting fuels, stronger local supply chains, and backing local energy sources such as biogas, solar and geothermal. “Treat conservation as essential infrastructure during economic shocks,” she said, framing the issue as not only an environmental concern, but a practical risk to the ability of conservation programs to function.