Access to Energy: A Human Right (original) (raw)

Energy justice and development

S Bouzarovski, S Fuller and T Reames (eds) Handbook on Energy Justice, 2023

Energy systems of production and consumption in least-developed countries are poorly understood, and policy formulation frequently occurs in absence of empirical data (Baka and Vaishnava, 2020; Bazilian et al., 2014). Consequently, research in development studies often fails to account for the centrality of energy access to processes of development in poorer countries of the global South (Schiffer, 2020). For many of these countries, limited energy use creates barriers to economic growth and development (Eggoh et al., 2011). Addressing these barriers forms the basis for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. While SDG 7 foregrounds energy access and use within wider development goals (UNDP, 2015), justice issues are not explicitly included (Munro et al., 2017). In this chapter, we aim to broaden understandings of energy justice by opening a dialogue with development thinking as it has emerged, evolved and changed since the post-World War II era. We suggest this entails scrutinizing energy justice principles from multiple, situated perspectives, adjusted to the conditions that shape policy action in contexts in the global South that have been recipients of development interventions. It also involves moving beyond the economic and technological perspectives on energy that have permeated energy debates (Axon and Morrissey, 2020) and towards greater recognition of people-centred views of energy, and the politics and power relations embedded within changing energy systems (Healy and Barry, 2017).

Energy access for sustainable development

Environmental Research Letters, 2018

It is abundantly clear that adequate, reliable and clean energy services are vital for the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In essence, energy access has come to represent one of the intractable challenges in development, and therefore emblematic of the call for poverty eradication, and economic and social transformation. This focus issue on 'Energy Access for Sustainable Development' is initiated to draw broadly from the ideas and emerging experiences with energy activities and solutions that sought to enhance sustainable development through expansion of energy access. The focus issue includes several contributions from authors on some of the knowledge gaps this field, including: (i) the role of off-grid and mini-grid energy systems to meet multiple SDGs; (ii) the impacts of the evolving suite of off-grid and distributed energy services on inequalities across gender, and on minority and disadvantaged communities; (iii) the opportunities that the evolving technology base (both of energy services and information systems) plays in expanding the role of off-grid and mini-grid energy systems; (iv) energy options for cooking; (v) new insights into energy planning as well as the political economy, institutional and decision challenges across the energy system. Drawing from papers in this focus issue and other literature, this paper provides a sketch of the key issues in energy access.

Book Review: Global Energy Justice: Law and Policy

Nearly 3 billion people lack access to modern energy for cooking, heating, lighting, sanitation, transportation and basic mechanical power. 1 Concentrated in the least developed countries of Africa and Asia, the energy poor constitute one third of humanity, 2 but are largely forgotten in the international agreements that address climate change. 3 Global Energy Justice provides a comprehensive yet succinct introduction to the ways that law and policy can address the interlocking problems of energy access and poverty. Written by Lakshman Guruswamy, the book examines the plight of the energy poor and offers concrete proposals for promoting universal access to clean and affordable energy. The energy poor rely on biomass-generated fires (from the burning of wood, raw coal, animal dung, and crop residues) as their primary source of energy. 4 The inefficient combustion of biomass for cooking exposes women and children to hazardous levels of indoor air pollution, causing more than 3.5 million deaths per year due to pulmonary diseases. 5 Lack of access to modern energy also impedes the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their successor the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including poverty eradication, food security, education, health, and access to water and sanitation. 6 As Guruswamy explains:

Paradigms and poverty in global energy policy: research needs for achieving universal energy access

This research letter discusses elements of a long-term interdisciplinary research effort needed to help ensure the maximum social, economic, and environmental benefits of achieving secure universal access to modern energy services. Exclusion of these services affects the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. The research community has an important, but not yet well-defined, role to play.

A global perspective on energy: health effects and injustices

The Lancet, 2007

The exploitation of fossil fuels is integral to modern living and has been a key element of the rapid technological, social, and cultural changes of the past 250 years. Although such changes have brought undeniable benefits, this exploitation has contributed to a burden of illness through pollution of local and regional environments, and is the dominant cause of climate change. This pattern of development is therefore unsustainable at a global level. At the same time, about 2·4 billion of the world's population, disadvantaged by lack of access to clean energy, are exposed to high levels of indoor air pollutants from the inefficient burning of biomass fuels. Even in high-income countries, many people live in fuel poverty, and throughout the world, increasingly sedentary lifestyles (to which fossil-fuel-dependent transport systems contribute) are leading to chronic disease and injuries. Energy security is also an issue of growing concern to many governments in both the developed and developing world, and a potential source of international tension and conflict. In this Series, we examine the opportunities to improve health, reduce climate effects, and promote development through realistic adjustments in the way energy and food are produced and consumed.