In the countryside of the Northern Western Ghats, wood is still the most common home fuel and about 80% of the households still rely on such fuel as energy source. This places tremendous pressure on the forests and leads to loss of biodiversity. However, satisfying the energy and livelihood needs of forest dependent communities in an environmentally sustainable manner poses the single biggest challenge while promoting conservation of forests and biodiversity. We have developed an improved cooking stove which runs on waste material as means to counter this problem. The effort has been to combine two causes within one novel solution - ‘Forest deforestation’ and ‘Women's respiratory health’. The Biomass Gasifier Stove has been developed as a near-smokeless alternative to the traditional ‘chulla’ and which runs on sustainable fuel as an alternative to fuel-wood.These stoves give off minimal smoke and have a high combustion efficiency as shown by the blue flame that they emit.