ENERGIANet No.8 October 2003

The E-Newsletter of ENERGIA International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy

Welcome to the eighth issue of ENERGIANet.

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Please keep sending your gender and energy announcements and/or suggestions to Chesha Wettasinha

ENERGIANet is archived on ENERGIA’s website at: http://www.energia.org/resources/enews.html

Contents

• News from ENERGIA
• Forthcoming Events
• Projects/Programmes
• Publications
• Proceedings
• Internet Resources
• News from Donors
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe

News from ENERGIA

Gender Strategy and Action Plan for the Rural Electrification Board of Bangladesh
ENERGIA is presently supporting the Rural Electrification Board (REB) of Bangladesh to develop a comprehensive Gender Strategy and Action Plan for integration into the REB Master plan (up to 2020) to be ready by January 2004. The team consists of an international consultant and three national gender experts. An important part of ENERGIA’s input will also be to link this effort to related gender and energy networking initiatives in Bangladesh, and in the region.

Gender in Energy projects approved by DFID, UK Department for International Cooperation
Developing a policy-credible analytical framework for research on gender, energy and poverty is the goal of a new ENERGIA project approved under DFID’s KaR (Knowledge and Research) programme for 2003. Elizabeth Cecelski will act as Principal Investigator for the project, reviewing past concepts and empirical evidence. Partner institutions in developing countries will form a Collaborative Research Group on Gender and Sustainable Energy to carry out empirical field research and review one another’s work.
ENERGIA members will also be collaborating in another project, “Enabling urban poor livelihoods policy-making: understanding the role of energy services” to be headed by Joy Clancy. The findings of these projects will be highlighted in special issues of ENERGIA News.

ENERGIA News
ENERGIA News 6.1 focuses on Gender and Energy in South Africa, and will come out in November 2003.
ENERGIA News 6.2 is a special issue on Gender and Energy in the Oceania region, scheduled for January 2004.
The following issues of ENERGIA News are planned for 2004:

• Issue 7.1: Gender and Energy in the Water Sector (April 2004)
• Issue 7.2: Gender and Rural Electrification (August 2004)

If you wish to contribute articles to any of these issues, please contact Chesha Wettasinha
If you have subscribed to ENERGIA News, but have not received a copy, or if you wish to subscribe to ENERGIA News, please contact the ENERGIA Secretariat

Annotated Bibliography for Asia and the Pacific
This bibliography will contain the most important material on gender/women and energy, pertinent to the Asia and Pacific regions. It will be accompanied by a comprehensive overview of projects/ programmes involved in gender/women and energy activities in the two regions. ENERGIA sees this also as a capacity building activity. As such, a junior researcher under the guidance of Prof. Anoja Wickramasinghe of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, will compile the bibliography.

Gender, Energy and Water Network (GEW Net), Nepal
The fourth Steering Committee and Resource Team Meeting was held on 29 September 2003. Centre for Rural Technology, ENERGIA’s Focal Point in Nepal shared recent news from the ENERGIA Secretariat. Among the issues discussed were: the forthcoming Asia Focal Point Meeting, setting up a gender experts’ database, organisation of gender sensitisation training and the GEW Net e-newsletter.

Renewable Energy Technology for Rural Development
This conference from 12-14 October 2003 in Nepal looked at technical, policy/institutional and educational/information dissemination aspects of renewable energy technology. Environmental protection, poverty reduction and gender issues were discussed. The South and North Focal Points for the India Gender and Energy Network participated in the workshop. Their reports will be posted on the ENERGIA website in due course.

Asian Focal Point Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, November 2003
All national focal points already identified through national consultation workshops will join minds to set an agenda for future ENERGIA activities. At present, the focal points are involved in an e-discussion to agree on the key issues for discussion at the workshop. If you wish to join this e-group, please contact Sheila Oparaocha

Renewables 2004, Bonn, Germany
By being on the steering committee and participating in the preparatory process, ENERGIA is ensuring that gender and energy issues are taken up at the International Conference on Renewable Energies in Bonn, Germany, in June 2004. ENERGIA will work with other NGOs and women’s groups in preparing background material on best practices for the conference. More information on the conference can be obtained at: http://www.renewables2004.de/

ENERGIA has through its participation been instrumental in integrating gender and renewable energy issues in the outcomes of the following consultations:

1. “Renewable Energy On The Market”, a conference organised by the Danish Government, in Sonderborg, Denmark, 17–19 September 2003. Renewable energy experts and representatives of governments from 60 countries attended this event. The findings will be incorporated into the preparatory process for “Renewables 2004”. More information on the conclusions of the conference can be found at: http://www.mim.dk/reconference/conclusions.asp
2. A civil society strategy workshop in Bonn, Germany, organised by the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, German Forum for Environment and Development and WWF Germany. 54 representatives from NGOs involved in renewable energy across the global were present. The main outcomes of the workshop were:
   • the formation of Citizens United for Renewable Energy and sustainability (CURES), a network of non-governmental organisations that have joined hands in preparation of "Renewables 2004"; and
   • a declaration to support CURES inputs at "Renewables 2004".
   
   For more information on the declaration and how to sign up to it, please contact the German Forum for Environment and Development, Jürgen Maier

ENERGIA will also be represented at the preparatory Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil, 29-30 October, 2003. Adélia de Melo Branco, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Brazil will participate in the regional meeting to advocate for the inclusion of gender and renewable energy issues in the discussions and outputs of the meeting.

ENERGIA Regional Desk Officers Regional Desk Officers will coordinate and facilitate national and (sub) regional network activities from within the region. RDOs will meet regularly with regional and national focal points and monitor the activities of the network. They will play a strategic role in defining gender and energy priorities for the region. The ENERGIA Secretariat hopes to have the Asia and Africa RDOs in place by end October and mid November 2003, respectively.

Forthcoming Events

Gender, Development and Public Policy in an era of Globalisation, 11-12 May 2004, Bangkok, Thailand
The Asian Institute of Technology (Gender and Development Studies) in collaboration with the Institute of Social Studies (The Netherlands) and the Centres of Development and Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds (UK) is organising this conference. The aim is to bring together scholars, academics and activists to discuss public policy in various fields within the development arena. The conference invites papers for four panels in the following sub-themes: gender and environmental resource management; gender, economic development, technology and enterprise; gender, human rights and social policy; gender, conflict, migration and human security. Deadline for submission of abstracts is 7 October 2003, and for full papers March 2004. More details to be found at http://www.serd.ait.ac.th/gds/asialink/ and by e-mail at gendev@ait.ac.th or by contacting Ageno Ochola

World Renewable Energy Congress VIII, 28 August - 3 September 2004, Denver, Colorado, USA
The eighth World Renewable Energy Congress will be organised under the leadership of the World Renewable Energy Network (WREN) supported by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Gender and Energy is one of the conference topics for which abstracts for papers are currently being accepted. All abstracts have to be written in English and be no more than one page in length. The deadline for receiving abstracts is December 5, 2003. The abstracts should be sent, preferably by e-mail, to: Ms. Anna Talamantez, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Boulevard, Golden, CO 80401-3393, USA.
Pre-registration is required for this conference. More information on registration can be obtained from Ms. Ivilina Thornton Visit the conference website for more details and updates.

ETHOS 2004, 31 January - 1 February 2004, Seattle, Washington, USA
Engineers in Technical and Humanitarian Opportunities of Service (ETHOS) is a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to facilitate research, development and dissemination of appropriate technology by forming collaborative North-South partnerships. The ETHOS 2004 conference aims to have a strong participation of Southern partners, international stoves experts and development specialists with field experience in the transfer of cooking technologies. Field experience, including monitoring of: performance, indoor air pollution exposure, health impacts, user satisfaction, stove promotion, time and socio-economic impacts of improved stoves will be shared at the conference. Abstracts for papers, talks and workshops are now being accepted and should be submitted to Lisa Büttner.
Deadline for abstracts is November 15, 2003 and for papers January 15, 2004.
More information at: http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~kmbryden/ETHOS.html

Projects/Programmes

The Ashden Awards 2004
The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy reward outstanding and innovative renewable energy projects. Four awards are offered each year – three for projects in the developing world under the categories food security, enterprise and community welfare, and one for a project in the UK. The application procedure for the 2004 awards for developing countries includes a preliminary phase during which interested applicants submit a 2-page concept note before 14 November 2003. Selected entries will be invited to submit a full application.
More information can be obtained from info@ashden.org or at the website http://www.ashdenawards.org/about.html
Read about the winners of the 2003 awards at: http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners_03.html

ENPOWER
ENPOWER is a project that has put together a toolkit to facilitate the provision of better energy services to poor communities. The toolkit has been developed and field-tested in several locations in South Africa, India and Namibia. It will ensure that poor communities, both men and women, have their voices heard and are central to energy investment decisions for the community.
Background information on the project and an electronic version of the toolkit can be downloaded from the Energy Voices website.

Solar Sisters - PV Installation in Nepal
Solar Sisters is a programme operated by the Himalayan Light Foundation, a Nepal-based NGO. It focuses on improving women’s livelihoods by providing affordable solar lighting systems to community buildings. Each installation project is made possible either by volunteers - male or female, who subsidise a solar electricity system and come to Nepal for 10 days to install it themselves, or by donors who fund the systems which are then installed by local technicians. This programme is repeated four times a year, in March, April, October, and November, in the first ten days of the month.
More information can be found on: http://www.hlf.org.np/solsis.htm

Home Employment and Lighting Package (HELP)
HELP combines the dissemination and use of solar technology with income generation. Villagers participating in HELP are offered a skill-training programme, the tools to set up an income generating activity and a solar electricity system, which extends the working day. A key objective of the programme is to provide solar electricity systems to rural poor communities on the basis of social collateral instead of asset collateral. Encouraging women to participate in income generating activities and educating HELP families to share the women’s workload thus enabling them to be involved in development activities are other objectives.
More details can be found at: http://www.hlf.org.np/help.htm

Role of Women in Energy Policy in West Africa
“Associates for International Resources and Development” (AIRD) is a small company based in the US providing economic research and consulting services. They are at present conducting a research investigation on the “Role of women in energy policy” in connection to their work on the West African Power Pool planning process, in which they have observed minimal participation of women. They are also preparing a paper on how women’s participation could lead to the development of more pro-poor energy policies among the ECOWAS countries.
Any information that is useful for this study could be forwarded to Sylvia Ciesluk, Research Assistant, AIRD.

Publications

Energy for Sustainable Development, Vol VII No 3, September 2003. Special issue on gender and energy
Among the articles in this issue of the journal are:

• Energy for women and women for energy by Srilatha Batiwala and Amulya Reddy
• Gender and Energy: is there a Northern perspective? by Joy Clancy and Ulrike Roehr
• Gender and health issues in the biomass energy cycle: impediments to sustainable development by Anoja Wickramasinghe
• The road to Johannesburg and beyond: networking for gender and energy by Gail Karlsson and Sheila Oparaocha

Subscriptions to the journal can be obtained by writing to the Executive Editor
The articles can be read on-line at: http://www.ieiglobal.org/vol7_issue3.html

Gender and Household Energy – the International Context
J. Clancy (Technology and Development Group, University of Twente, The Netherlands)
This paper focuses on gender and household energy issues in a global context. The first section looks at the gender-energy-poverty nexus in general and how household energy can contribute to reducing vulnerability and empowering women. The section finishes with a review of how international development agencies address gender and household energy issues. The second section discusses in more detail the subject that is emerging high on development agencies’ agenda related to household energy: gender and health. Two issues within the energy sector that are driven at the international level are the privatisation of the energy sector and the impacts of fossil fuel combustion. Both of these issues are examined in relation to gender and household energy.
Read the paper on the SPARKNET website

Into action to improve women’s work and health
National Institute for Working Life, Stockholm, Sweden
This publication gives a glimpse into the rich fields of research and experience presented at the congress “Women, Work and Health” held in Stockholm, Sweden in June 2002. It contains examples of concrete applications of research as well as descriptions of initiatives to improve women’s health and working conditions around the world. “A good stove and clean fuel ease the burden in the countryside” features ENERGIA member Jyothi Parikh’s work in health impacts of open stoves on women.
The publication can be obtained free of charge by placing your order at: http://www.niwl.se, or by mailing the editor.
A compilation of all the abstracts of cases from the congress can be downloaded at: http://www.arbetslivsinstitutet.se/publikationer/en/detaljerad.asp?ID=1111
The Fourth International Congress on Women, Work and Health would like to focus on the themes of safety, health and environment. It is to be held in New Delhi, India, from 27-30 November 2005.

Proceedings

Regional Workshop on Gender, Energy and Sustainable Development held in Nadi, Fiji from 4-8 August 2003, organised by the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC)
This workshop brought together 48 participants from countries in the region and was a follow up to the ESCAP workshop held in Perth, Australia in July 2001. The workshop recommended the establishment of a regional gender and energy network “Pacific Gender and Energy Network” (PEG). Other recommendations were mainstreaming gender into national energy and policy planning, improving networking at national and regional levels with relevant stakeholders, strengthening information dissemination in order to increase awareness of energy and gender issues, provision of technical assistance in the said areas, improved gender and energy training and capacity development at a number of levels etc.
A copy of the report can be obtained from Yogita Chandra, Community Lifelines Programme, SOPAC

Workshop on Renewable Energies for Women’s Empowerment held on 10 September 2003 in Atmakur, India, organised by REMEDE
This workshop organised by REMEDE brought together leaders and members of women’s self-help groups and NGO representatives from Andra Pradesh in India. Resource persons from Winrock India and Bharat Synergies attended. Solar lights, solar dryers and cookers, low-cost portable bio-gas plants and other energy saving equipment were demonstrated. A pilot project to study the impacts of such equipment on women was developed, and women who would be part of the study were identified. Feedback forms were designed together and a mechanism for monitoring and follow up was set up.
More details on this event can be obtained from T.M. Gowrisankar, REMEDE.

Internet Resources

Toolkit for women is a website that aims to help women's groups to use international agreements in their advocacy work and in concrete projects on the ground, to monitor progress in implementation, and to make these agreements become reality. The site has a “welcome to newcomers” page, which gives an overview of the United Nations World Conferences since 1990. The site map navigates you through the whole website and provides access to all its components.
Visit this site at: http://www.earthsummit2002.org/toolkits/women/intro/intro.htm
The Toolkit booklet can be downloaded from the website. Printed copies can be obtained from the administrator at UNED Forum. The booklet is free of charge for women’s groups, NGOs, CBOs and other civil society groups in developing countries.

Solar Household Energy Inc.’s website http://www.she-inc.org/about.htm reports on solar cooking initiatives and developments from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the US. The organisation’s challenge to is to provide a practical and appealing alternative to the use of non-renewable fuel for cooking in the developing world, a practice that takes an enormous human and environmental toll. The increasing burden on women in foraging and carrying, and the health impacts due to cooking on smoky fires is central in this challenge. In its resource section, the website gives links to other related organisations, reference tools, equipment suppliers etc.

EnPoGen CD-ROM contains material from the Energy, Poverty and Gender Initiative of the World Bank’s Asia Alternative Energy Programme (ASTAE), which carried out studies that examined the linkages between energy, poverty and gender in China, Sri Lanka and Asia. The contents include the background reports, country study reports, summary reports and the special issue of ENERGIA News of November 2002. Also on the CD-Rom is the framework and methodology for design, monitoring and evaluation of poverty and gender impacts of rural electrification projects developed as part of the EnPoGen initiative.
Copies of the CD-ROM can be obtained by contacting Enno Heijndermans.

DFID Energy is the re-designed site of DFID’s (UK Department for International Development) Engineering Knowledge and Research Programme (KaR) containing information on all research and development projects supported by it. Visitors to the site are able to navigate fast and access the information they require. The web site provides summaries on all projects carried out since 1995 and copies of the DFID Energy newsletter. A new feature is the facility to submit news items or details of events that may then be published on the site.
Visit the site at http://www.dfid-kar-energy.org.uk/

News from Donors

South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy (SARI/Energy) – Small Grants Programme
Winrock International, Winrock International India and the Institute for International Education are working together to implement the USAID-sponsored SARI/Energy Small Grants Programme, and are seeking proposals for projects that encourage regional cooperation in South Asia on issues of mutual regional concern in the energy sector.
More information can be found on http://www.sari-energy.org

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