Expanding Access to Modern Energy Services: Replicating, Scaling Up and Mainstreaming at the local level
The theme of this report, scaling up, replicating and mainstreaming micro-level energy initiatives, is fundamental to the UNDP commitment to 'Energizing the MDGs’. Whether for economic growth, education, equality, health care, or protecting the environment, energy is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving the millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
At the United Nations World Summit in September 2005, the international community confirmed its universal commitment to reaching the MDGs. Although energy is not including in the MDGs, there is considerable literature illustrating that modern energy enables development across a broad range of socioeconomic conditions. The way in which energy services are produced and consumed affects all three pillars of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental.
Worldwide, 2.4 billion people still rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating. Another 1.6 billion lack electricity. Without access to reliable and affordable energy services, substantial social and economic development simply cannot occur. This is particularly true for women and children, as they are disproportionately burdened by a lack of modern energy services.
To achieve the MDGs, developing countries require considerable scaling up of quality and quantity of energy services. As such, ensuring access to modern energy services for those unserved is paramount to achieving the MDGs. This publication, Expanding access to modern energy services: Replicating, Scaling Up and Mainstreaming at the local level, demonstrates the importance of scaling up, replicating and mainstreaming micro-level energy initiatives by linking them to the national development priorities.
The UNDP hopes that this publication will draw attention from both national governments and donors, to the potential of replicating, scaling up and mainstreaming community-based initiatives that show the potential of improving effectiveness of reaching out and responding to human development needs of developing countries through increasing access to modern energy services.
Given the fact that these micro-energy initiatives are owned, managed and operated by the communities and tend to be more pro-poor and gender-sensitive as well as responsive to local priorities, they ensure long-term sustainability. It also provides an example of how these micro-level energy initiatives can be mainstreamed in the national development planning and policy formulation by drawing evidence from energy projects in the Dominican Republic, Kenya and Nepal. It is also observed that without coordinated action by the national governments, community organisations, bilateral and multilateral development agencies and multilateral financing institutions, it is unlikely that the community-based initiatives will be able to facilitate the achievement of national development goals like the MDGs.
Download the full report below.
