**6. Energy and sustainable livelihoods**

sources and decision-making. Women's access to decision-making within the household and community is restricted, limiting their ability to influence processes and resource allocation

Women spend more time than men on basic subsistence activities, such as gathering fuelwood, carrying water, and cooking. According to the World Bank (2001) women of all de‐ veloping countries spend between 2-9 hours a day collecting fuel and fodder, and performing cooking chores. The opportunity cost of these activities frequently prevents women from undertaking income-generating activities, which deprives poor families of much needed income. When rural women do engage in income-generating activities they are performed together with regular domestic work and are generally home-based microenterprise or piece rate projects (sewing, weaving, preparing food to sell, etc.) Home light‐ ing, agro-processing, drinking water pumping and more efficient stoves can reduce

More than half of the world's household's cook with wood, animal waste, crop residues and untreated coal, exposing primarily women and children to indoor air pollution, which ac‐ cording to the World Health Organization, is responsible for the premature death of over 2 million women and children a year worldwide from respiratory infections. In rural India, shifting from fuel wood to cleaner sources of energy, like kerosene or LPG, halves the mor‐

Gender issues have come to the forefront in many development sectors including agricul‐ ture, forestry and water but the energy sector has been slow to acknowledge the links be‐ tween gender equality, energy and development. Traditional energy policies have inadequately addressed the role of energy as an input to development and have largely ig‐ nored the critical role women play in energy systems, particularly in rural areas. Insufficient access to modern energy and existing patterns of energy use, processing, and collection af‐ fect women and men differently. Because of their socially determined gender roles, women and girls assume a higher proportion of the burden of unavailable energy services and inef‐

There is no doubt that energy plays a major role in meeting women's practical and repro‐ ductive needs (such as cooking, food processing and water hauling), but it can also be seen as a component necessary to meet their productive and strategic needs (lighting to enable evening study, street lighting for safety in attending community meetings, power for wom‐ en's enterprise development). It is remarkable that the use of gender analysis in energy plan‐ ning is virtually unknown, whereas it has been successfully used for many years in the health, water and agricultural sectors. This is evidently because the gender component in energy poverty has not been fully recognized. Energy planners have usually equated wom‐ en's interest in energy with cooking, to the exclusion of other needs, particularly of needs related to productive activities and emancipatory goals. In addition, since the main focus of

women's workloads, provide income earnings and improve women's health.

**5. Moving women and their families out of energy poverty**

tality rate of children under five (World Bank, 2001).

ficient energy use.

on many issues including energy.

90 New Developments in Renewable Energy

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 recog‐ nized the important role of energy for reaching millennium development goals. Access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy is essential to sustainable development (Hasna, 2007). An adequate solving of energy problems will contribute to achieving progress across all pillars of sustainable development; social, economic and environmental and in meeting the UN millennium goals. Although there are no MDGs on access to energy, WSSD recog‐ nized that inadequate access to energy is both a cause and an effect of poverty and recom‐ mended the following:

"*Take joint actions and improve efforts to work together at all levels to improve access to reliable and affordable energy service for sustainable development sufficient to facilitate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, including the goal of halving the proportion of people in poverty by 2015, and as a means to generate other important services that mitigate poverty, bearing in mind that access to energy facilitates the eradication of poverty*".

"Sustainable development" has been defined best by the Brundtland Commission as devel‐ opment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future gen‐ erations to meet their own needs (Hasna, 2007). Adequate and affordable energy supplies has been key to economic development and the transition from subsistence agricultural eco‐ nomics to modern industrial and service oriented societies. Energy is central to improved social and economic well being and is indispensable to most industrial and commercial wealth organization. It is the key for relieving poverty, improving human welfare and rais‐ ing living standards. But however essential it may be for development, energy is only a means to an end. The end is good health, high living standards, a sustainable economy and a clean environment (Fatona, 2011).

Much of the current energy supply and use, based as it is, on limited resources of fossil fuels, is deemed to be environmentally unsustainable. There is no energy production or con‐ version technology without risk or waste. Somewhere along all energy chains - from re‐ source extractions to the provision of energy service – pollutants are produced, emitted or disposed of, often with severe health and environmental impacts (Dasgupta, 2001;). Com‐ bustion of fossil fuels is chiefly responsible for urban air pollution, regional acidification and the risk of human – induced climate change (Dasgupta, 2001; Fatona, 2009).

common causes of enterprise failure (Grosh & Somolekae, 1996). Although there are a num‐ ber of microcredit programmes targeting women, Bangladesh's Grameen Bank being the most well known, research is increasingly questioning whether women are able to fully uti‐ lize the credit, and what degree of control they retain over the loans once disbursed (Baden et al., 1994). Women's access to decision -making within the household and community is

Viewing Energy, Poverty and Sustainability in Developing Countries Through a Gender Lens

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51818

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The role of energy in the sustainability of women's enterprises is also not well understood. In food processing enterprises it has been estimated that energy costs are 20 - 25% of the to‐ tal inputs, which would suggest that technological interventions could increase the scale

The types of enterprises that women are traditionally involved in are energy intensive and rely on biomass fuels. Even in rural areas, women may have to buy fuel wood to run enter‐ prises such as beer making (McCall, 2001). An important issue is what sort of mechanisms can assist women in gaining access to improved energy services. Grain mills, which are very popular with women, since they improve product quality as well as reducing women's la‐ bour, are typically only provided by the private sector, and are still absent in many rural lo‐

There are positive examples of women taking up energy technologies that have contributed to increasing their incomes. For example, women's groups in Ghana use LPG for fish preser‐ vation, giving them a better quality product than when using wood, and enabling them to reach export standards, and considerably improving their income (Mensah, 2001). Another example is the Multi -Functional Platform (Burn & Coche, 2001). The platform consists of a diesel engine mounted on a chassis to which a variety of end-use equipment can be attach‐ ed, such as grain mills, battery chargers, oil presses, welding machines and carpentry tools. In addition, the engine can be used to generate electricity for sale, which opens up the pros‐ pect of women becoming energy entrepreneurs and setting up their own electricity service

Energy is central to sustainable development and poverty reduction efforts. It affects all as‐ pects of development -- social, economic, and environmental -- including livelihoods, access to water, agricultural productivity, health, population levels, education, and gender-related issues. None of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) can be met without major im‐

Since there is an energy dimension to poverty known simply as energy poverty, which man‐ ifests when there is a lack of access to clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy. Energy is opportunity, and imperative to basic activities such as boiling water, storing vaccines, read‐ ing at night. Yet, more than three billion people worldwide rely on traditional fuels such as

provement in the quality and quantity of energy services in developing countries.

wood, charcoal, dung, and kerosene for cooking and light.

also restricted, reducing their ability to influence processes and resource allocation.

and profitability of these businesses.

cations.

companies.

**8. Conclusion**

Achieving sustainable economic development on a global scale will requires the judicious use of resources, technology, appropriate economic incentives and strategic policy planning at the local and national levels. It will also require regular monitoring of the impacts of se‐ lected policies and strategies to see if they are furthering sustainable development or if they should be adjusted (Arrow et al, 2004).

When choosing energy fuels and associated technologies for the production, delivery and use of energy services, it is essential to take into account economic, social and environmental consequences (Ott, 2003; Wallace, 2005). There is need to determine whether current energy use is sustainable and, if not, how to change it so that it is. This is the purpose of energy indicators, which address important issues within three of the major dimensions of sustaina‐ ble development: economic, social and environmental.
