Listen to Voices Unheard.

More than 3 billion people worldwide own an indoor cookstove. Each year, smoke from these stoves kills more than 2 million people, mostly women.

Peter Scott is an unabashed tree hugger and founder of BURN Manufacturing Co. that has sold over a million clean cookstoves. His company has conserved 4 million tons of wood from African forests; offset 7 million tons of carbon; and created nearly 400 jobs for under-represented groups such as young women. He has little time for activism these days, but Peter sees a clear path to lifting people out of poverty while saving Africa’s forests. Peter’s story is one that exemplifies the critical importance of my principle of ‘listening to voices unheard’.

BURN was born more than 20 years ago after an exhausting day of trekking in the beautiful but shrinking forests of Uganda. Peter drank dirty water that sickened him to the point of collapse. More vulnerable than he’d felt in his lifetime, he told me:

“I got down on my knees and wept for the existence of humanity, and I decided: Yes, I’m going to spend my life to save the forests of Africa.”

While researching the causes of deforestation, Peter discovered that the sheer number of people burning wood or charcoal for heat and cooking was one of its biggest drivers. If we could reduce the amount of fuel required in each cookstove, Peter reasoned, the world would see a dramatic improvement in forest conservation. 

For the next decade, Peter focused on designing fuel-efficient stoves, but uptake was slow.

 It was particularly striking how humble Peter was as he described an entire decade when he wasn’t listening to the people he wanted to help. 

“I spent ten years trying to get people not to use charcoal. I was completely not listening,” he said. “I also learned how ineffective using shame or sentences that start with ‘you should’ or ‘you must’ are when changing behavior, especially at scale.” 

So, what does work?

Peter, whose words reflect his straightforward, pragmatic yet still optimistic worldview, argues that markets work if you use them as a listening device—observing where and when customers spend their money teaches you what they value and what they feel they can afford. 

In urban areas, people were spending a large percentage of their incomes on wood and charcoal. It was this market observation that helped Peter realize that quality or efficiency mattered less than a 50 percent reduction in fuel that saved his customers time and money.

“The economic proposition was a no-brainer. It’s not like a stroke of genius or anything,” he said. “It’s just having your eyes open.”

Learning what matters to customers becomes a lens through which further innovation and growth is possible. For BURN, this opportunity came in the form of carbon credits, which expanded BURN’s social and environmental impact by using voluntary carbon markets.

“One of our stoves can reduce 2-5 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere,” he said. A company looking to mitigate the impact of its own pollution can buy credits from BURN in ways that would subsidize the price of cookstoves from $40 per stove to $8. At this significantly lower price point, a BURN cookstove could be an affordable option for even the poorest rural households. 

Another advantage that BURN has is its growing force of sales agents who love the product and understand its customers.

“Our very first customer, Hilda, is still one of our best sales agents. She would go to the supermarket and someone would come up with a trolley full of goods and tell her they couldn’t afford the stove. Hilda would say, 'Well, put all the items back already in your trolley and you can!'”

Peter’s story of Hilda reminded me of one of Acumen’s first investments in bed nets—a company called A to Z Textile Mills in Tanzania. I shadowed an A to Z sales agent as she convinced village women to purchase a net. First, she focused on the way the nets kept mosquitos and other insects away. She referred to the beauty of the nets and how they would signal that you care about your children. Only then did she reference the fact that they prevented you and your children from dying of malaria. Beauty, status, comfort. Too often we overlook these basic human drives when designing or distributing essential products to low-income people. Failure to listen is a failure to see their full humanity, and that is to the detriment of us all.

“The biggest challenge right now on the planet is a colossal failure of imagination and disempowerment. There needs to be a new dream that is viable and attainable for people.” 

“Saving the world, saving a piece of forest, protecting the climate, making someone’s life incrementally better. It’s a dream that they can put their hands into. It’s not political, it’s not theoretical, it’s not abstract. It’s a roll up your sleeves and make something kind of dream.” 

Building sustainable, inclusive solutions in our interconnected world will require all of us to listen with all of ourselves, including listening to our critics without being cowed by them. Builders like Peter Scott, who listen to markets, to customers, to partners and to the earth are the ones who will create the change we all need.

This is part two in Jacqueline Novogratz's monthly series on Moral Leadership, featuring a new generation of leaders for a new economy. The photos in this piece were created by Esther Ruth Mbabazi, a grantee of the Magnum Foundation, as part of a partnership to invite readers into the stories that are shaping our shared future.

About Acumen 

Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. We invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives. 

About Magnum Foundation

The Magnum Foundation is a nonprofit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new ideas through the innovative use of images. Through grant making and fellowships, the Magnum Foundation supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers, and experiments with new models for storytelling.