http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/5836
Wed, 09/22/2010 - 3:26pm
By: Terri Hathaway
Bravo for the spotlight on access to modern energy - the "missing MDG" -
at this week's United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit
in New York. The global energy poverty epicenters are Africa (affecting
550 million people) and South Asia (affecting 600 million people). A new
report released today at the MDG Summit, Ending Energy Poverty,
calculates that it will take $41 billion a year, $205 billion total, to
meet the MDGs by providing electricity to 395 million people and access
to clean cooking facilities to 1 billion by 2015. That's an average of
$30 per person per year for electricity (395m) and another $30 per
person per year for gaining access to modern cooking fuels or improved
cookstoves (1b).
According to Ending Energy Poverty, the key challenge is shifting
cooking from traditional biomass to modern fuels and improved
cookstoves. In sub-Saharan Africa, 80% of the people, including those
with electricity, depend on wood, charcoal and dung to fuel fires to
cook their food. Bravo to Hillary Clinton's $50 million pledge during
the MDG Summit for improved cookstoves in Africa. Although the funds are
a drop in the energy poverty bucket, it is a call to arms for world
leaders to put African women and their kitchens on the global energy agenda.
The UN Secretary General's Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change
report, Energy for a Sustainable Future is also calling for universal
energy access by 2030. Calculations outlined in Ending Energy Poverty
require $36 billion each year between 2016 and 2030. This would give the
world's remaining 800 million people access to electricity and the
remaining 1.7 billion people access to modern cooking fuel. The
investment required per person reduces to $15 per year for each of the
world's remaining people without access to electricity (800m) and
without access to modern cooking fuels (1.7b).
Africa's Two Energy Crises
Africa's widespread access crisis has long lived in the shadow of the
continent's other energy crisis: it's fragile electricity sector with
limited access. Large power projects have long dominated Africa's
traditional energy investments. And the focus continues to be on supply
and transmission with a growing budget gap for distribution, the grid's
way of addressing energy access. Big, and increasingly regionalized,
power projects lack accountability, making them highly vulnerable to
vested interests, corruption, and disrepair. Africa's chronic
electricity crisis is very real, but limited in its overlap with the
continent's access crisis.
Increased international attention to the energy access crisis is vital
and welcomed. But the crisis is being addressed with virtually no
accountability to the most important stakeholder: the targeted
recipients. The discourse is dominated by donors, experts, international
agencies and, too often, unaccountable governments. Amidst the
challenges of implementation, oversight and political will, the critical
missing factor is public accountability. Programs to improve access to
modern energy are laborious to implement and challenging to oversee,
particularly without political will. International donors and agencies
have been loathe to hold their "clients" accountable or to leverage
funds for pet energy projects as a tool of persuasion to meeting access
targets.
Accountability to Government Targets
Last November, just prior to the climate talks in Copenhagen, the WHO
and UNDP released a comprehensive review of existing government targets
for access to modern energy in the least developed countries and all
African countries. The targets include access to mechanical power,
modern cooking fuels, and improved cookstoves in addition to
electricity. For example, the report states that the Democratic Republic
of Congo has set a national target to achieve 67% of the population
having access to electricity by 2025, from its current rate of 11%.
Ironically, over $1 billion has recently been invested to rehabilitate
the Congo's degraded power grid which benefits Congo' mining sector, a
few major cities, and is exported to South Africa. The funding doesn't
address existing access targets. The funding and the rehabilitation work
both seem to be disappearing into an unaccountable black hole of
corruption. There's no public accountability for addressing the
electricity sector, and no budget for achieving its access target.
Africa's Citizen Power
The bridge between targets and success can be paved with citizen powered
accountability. Women's groups, NGOs, churches and faith based groups,
youth movements, healthcare providers, students, farmer associations,
entrepreneurs, journalists, traditional leaders, and local governments
should work together to publicize and hold their national governments
accountable for energy access targets. Congratulate your government for
successes in meeting targets. Offer to work with government to achieve
targets. And hold your government publicly accountable if it is not
fulfilling its targets. Who knows - maybe a citizen's movement demanding
fiscal and development accountability could eventually lead to greater
success in Africa's other energy crisis, too.
What You Can Do
Find out: What is the government's concrete plan to meeting the targets?
Find your country's targets in the 2009 WHO/UNDP report The Energy
Access Situation in Developing Countries
Investigate: Work with your government and other agencies to make sure
that there is a realistic road map to meet targets. Do results on the
ground match budgets and spending reports? Learn about how to conduct
citizen-led social audits and other accountability tools from
International Budget Partnership.
Demand Accountability: If targets are not being met, call national and,
if necessary, international attention to help hold your government
accountable. Call for a halt to pet energy projects which don't support
access goals until governments get back on track to meeting their access
goals.
If you take this information to heart, please tell me and others about
it. Together, let's start Africa's citizen powered energy revolution!
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