NEW YORK – The United Nations “Rio+20” Earth Summit this month will be a staging ground to chart the course for inclusive economies, social equality, and environmental protection. For that reason, it must place sustainable development at the forefront of the global agenda.
It is already clear that achieving sustainable development is not possible without sustainable energy. Indeed, access to energy spurs development on many levels – not least in terms of women and their health, safety, and autonomy.
Recognizing this, the UN has declared 2012 the Year of Sustainable Energy for All, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched a global initiative to achieve three ambitious goals by 2030: universal access to modern energy services, a doubling of the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency, and a doubling of the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
These are global issues. But, everywhere around the world, energy is a woman’s issue. It can mean the difference between safety and fear, freedom and servitude, and even life and death.
In many places, especially in rural areas, women spend long hours each day finding fuel wherever they can in the absence of sustainable energy sources. Globally, 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity, and 2.7 billion people, mostly women, rely on wood, charcoal, and dung for cooking. Whether foraging for firewood, which may expose them and their daughters to the risk of rape, or spending their scarce resources on kerosene for smoky, inefficient lighting, women make difficult decisions every day about household energy resources and usage.
It is also women who suffer the disproportionate health impacts of unsustainable energy sources. Exposure to smoke from hazardous methods of cooking, heating, and lighting kills nearly two million people each year, 85% of whom are women and children who die from associated cancer, respiratory infections, and lung disease. Millions more suffer from exposure-related diseases.
At the community level, a lack of energy at medical clinics impedes the ability of medical personnel to provide adequate treatment and care. It is estimated that 200,000-400,000 healthcare facilities in developing countries lack access to reliable electricity. This means that vaccines and blood cannot be stored safely, diagnostic equipment is often useless, and operating rooms cannot function at night.
For pregnant women, this lack of reliable electricity poses a significant risk to their own lives and those of their babies. Worldwide, 800 women die each day from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and the vast majority of these deaths could be averted by providing quality health services, for which electricity is usually required.
Today, the long hours of unpaid work that women perform each day searching for firewood and other energy sources rob them of time to engage in more productive activities. That, in turn, deprives poor families of much-needed income.
It does not have to be this way. In Kenya, improved wood-burning stoves have reduced fuel requirements by some 40%, which has not only lowered women’s burden of unpaid work and reduced deforestation, but has also freed up time that women can devote to education, training, and paid employment, which will reduce poverty.
Providing sustainable energy for all will create new opportunities for women elsewhere as well. Solar energy can provide entire villages with lighting, pumped water, refrigeration, and the electrification of health centers, schools, and other public facilities.
Moreover, renewable energy can provide a window to the outside world, via access to mobile phones, the Internet, television, and radio, and also power small, medium, and large enterprises. And availability of outdoor lighting can prevent violence against women and girls.
Achieving sustainable energy for all requires women’s full participation. Evidence from India and Nepal suggests that women’s involvement in decision-making is associated with better local environmental management. And, according to a global study, countries with higher female parliamentary representation are more prone to ratify international environmental treaties.
As the Rio Declaration, adopted at the first Earth Summit in 1992, states: “Women have a vital role in environmental management and development. Their full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustainable development.”
Twenty years later, with the stakes even higher, we can no longer afford inaction. That is why we are bringing the principle of gender equality to the forefront of discussions and partnerships to achieve sustainable energy for all by 2030.
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Nils-Göran Areskoug
SUSTAINING GENDER PREJUDICE? I read a number of related documents on the WHO homepage, including many speeches that Margaret Chan delivered to promote the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Reason was I felt worried that more than half of the population was excluded from her panorama, namely fathers, men and children. When talking about parents and the parenting role in child care, for instance, it seemed silently "implied by prejudice" that parent was equal to mother only. What had I expected? There is rarely any talk about family, much less any inclusion of fathers. I made a simple statistics by using the search function in these documents. It turned out that the gender ratio between the words for the female partition of the population versus the male one approaches 15 to 1 or more (Practically, the only instance you get "men" in her texts is in the word "women".)
I just wonder why WHO does not really want to make an effort to stand up for true gender equality in both directions - and why they fail to see its advantage to health and economic conditions globally. And why it is not first priority to work for an inclusion of both parents in the family. Because many of the WHO programs aim at achieving measurable progress by eradicating poverty and starvation one can ask why the additional resources from men (fathers, brothers and sons) that can be mobilized for the survival of the families are not counted equally. (In fact, male inclusion in family life, is often rejected, and its negative effect taken for granted - as if nothing could be done to improve such unfortunate conditions).
WHO needs to include both genders in its calculations and design a road map for measuring progress as seen from the family as a whole. It appears to be awfully misguided to apply the flaws of Western feminism as a means to combat famine and disease in the developing world. To mobilize the motivation among the WHO people to avoid such miscalculation one can ask how many children have died of starvation merely because of failure to make fathers and men feel included in the family as a shared project. Joint efforts of both parents should be expected to help bringing all family members on a trajectory towards health and relative prosperity. Especially leaders of international NPOs (and NGOs) need to ask themselves what part of their own personal gender expectations might be prejudiced before projecting these perceptions into the organization they should responsibly run.
I just want you to be attentive of the risk of gender bias and make the reader think about the implications of such imbalance. And I am surprised to find gender views outdated in a global organization that should reflect greatness in leadership, empathy and human dignity in its strategic thinking at the very root of the system.
Can anybody comment on this counterpoint and calm my worries?