WUNRN
WOMEN SHOULD BE FOCUS OF ENERGY
EXPANSION PLANS - UN
Access to energy alone is not enough to combat poverty, says UN report, it
needs to be allied with microfinance and education programmes
Women prepare
food using a solar cooker in
Women should
be the focus of efforts to bring access to modern energy to those who lack it, a new United Nations report has found, as bringing energy to women
and girls helps lift communities out of poverty and improves health.
But the report also warned that
providing energy alone was not enough to combat poverty, and programmes to
provide energy access work best when they are accompanied by help for people to
access other key services such as microfinancing and education.
Providing energy to the poor has
long been seen as key to addressing poverty levels, and over the last 20 years
there have been scores of programmes that attempt to bring energy services for
lighting and cooking to deprived communities, particularly in rural areas. But
too many of these have focused only on supplying access to villages, towns and
homes – often a question of just putting in the cabling or generating
equipment.
Martin Krause, leader of the
climate and energy team for Asia Pacific at the UN Development Programme
(UNDP), said his study showed this was not enough. "Energy services are
often not affordable by the rural and urban poor, and on their own have little
impact. The poor need support to generate income so that energy becomes
affordable, which in turn will improve household living standards."
He called
for the provision of "energy plus" services that would provide access
to sustainable and renewable energy
sources but also assistance for people to supplement their incomes and improve
their education.
The UN has
launched a new campaign called Sustainable Energy for All, in an attempt to bring the benefits of
cleaner energy access to poor communities. Currently, more than a fifth of
people around the world have no access to electricity, and twice that many rely
on biomass – usually in the form of wood, charcoal or animal waste – for
cooking and heating. The indoor air pollution from cooking fires leads to more
than a million deaths and many more cases of ill health every year.
Focusing on women is a way to cut
this high number of deaths, and it also frees up women and children from
spending hours every day in the hunt for fuel, a time-consuming task that is
one of the reasons girls in developing countries often spend less time at
school than boys.
The soot from cooking fires is also a significant contributor to global
warming (pdf), according to a UN Environment Programme report published
last year, and cutting it could delay dangerous climate change.
As part of
the new UNDP report, entitled Towards an Energy Plus Approach for the Poor, the
authors studied 17 energy access projects in the Asia-Pacific region to find
what was successful. They found that energy access programmes should be set up
in conjunction with other development initiatives such as microfinance, transport
infrastructure, telecommunications, schools and health facilities, and that
giving people access to renewable forms of energy could also help to lift them
out of poverty.
They pointed to success stories
such as a solar lantern rental scheme in
But the authors also found a
clear role for regulation, pointing to measures such as