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DEVELOPMENT: Lights Out - World's Poor Remain in the Dark
By Rajiv Fernando
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 24, 2009 (IPS) - With the flip of a switch, a light comes on or an electric toothbrush revs to power. If service is cut, either for repairs or because of a natural cause, there will most likely be much fuss about how quickly power is restored - to people who live in the developed world.
But ask a person living in any of the least developed countries (LDCs) and they would be glad to have even at least a few hours of electricity each day. Access to reliable energy is a major factor in human welfare, climate change, health care and environmental sustainability.
As the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) in Copenhagen draws near for negotiations over emissions cuts whilst maintaining energy security, an expansive new report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) brings to light those who are being left in the dark.
According to the report, access to energy in poor countries is minimal to none at all. It focuses on electricity and household fuels and provides new statistics at the national, regional and global levels.
The report finds that the disparity is particularly pronounced in developing and least developed countries such as Burundi, Liberia and Chad, where 97 percent of people don't have access to electricity.
Normally, this kind of data would not have been made widely available, especially since the anti-poverty U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) do not specifically highlight a need for energy access.
The primary motivation behind the study was to create a 'catch-all' document for the array of energy access data available from developing countries, which has yet to be made accessible in a single publication.
There were many contributors to the report, including Minoru Takada, head of the Sustainable Energy Programme, Environment and Energy Group for UNDP. He is the originator of the concept of the publication and directed its development over a period of two years.
For energy access to be expanded in poor countries, there also has to be a political will by developed nations to help spread the technology for energy sustainability, the authors say.
"First, both at the national and global levels, there's a lack of real political commitment," Takada told IPS. "We really need political commitments at the national and global levels to tackle the energy poverty challenge within a specific timeframe. To help on making political commitment, which is my second point, we need to rectify a wrong perception that universal access to modern energy at the household level can explode greenhouse gas emissions."
According to Takada, not only is the contribution of universal access to modern energy at the household level – both electricity and modern cooking fuels – to global CO2 emissions negligible but also, will, most likely, end up promoting low carbon pathways.
He also argued that the cycle must be broken of people being so poor that they don't have access to modern energy - and therefore they cannot escape poverty. The idea is for people to have sufficient energy to improve their livelihoods and contribute back to their own economies and raise their incomes.
The UNDP report includes an alarming figure from the World Health Organisation (WHO) - there are almost two million deaths annually from pneumonia, chronic lung disease, and lung cancer associated with exposure to indoor air pollution resulting from cooking with biomass and coal. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in developing countries.
The report also says that about 1.5 billion people in developing countries lack access to electricity and about 3.0 billion people rely on solid fuels for cooking. These solid fuels are traditional biomass such as firewood, charcoal, dung and crop residues and coal. This is especially visible in rural areas.
Modern fuels can reduce the emissions from open fires and traditional stoves while also reducing the health hazards caused from indoor air pollution. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas, kerosene, ethanol and biofuels are some of the examples of modern fuels that should be supplied to the affected people.
Takada told IPS, "[Properly allocating] public resources is critical to create enabling conditions – policies, institutions, end-user training, arranging micro-financing, the 'how' to use modern energy for income generating activities".
"These are necessary conditions to eventually bring private capital to start flowing in. It's really not a lot, for example, if just a few percentages of the energy subsidies currently spent [about 300 billion dollars annually] is directed towards energy access for the poor, it will make a huge difference. "
The intent of the UNDP report is to provide a global picture of the energy access situation in developing countries in an accessible fashion for ease of reference. While the report ultimately draws attention to the prevailing energy access situation and gaps in energy access data, it may also be useful for policy makers and development practitioners as they develop policy and programmatic responses to energy poverty challenges.
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