ENERGIANet No.5 November 2001

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

Welcome to the fifth issue of ENERGIANet!! Unfortunately there has been a delay in publishing this issue, caused by the work on the new ENERGIA website. You can find out more about the new website below.

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you all to forward your announcements and suggestions for future issues to: Chesha Wettasinha

We are happy to say that the number of subscribers is still growing and has so far reached a total of 139.

Table of Contents

• ENERGIA Announcements
• Conference Information
• Projects
• Courses
• Workshop Reports
• Publications
• Internet Resources
• Donor Information
• Vacancies
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe

ENERGIA Announcements

Revised ENERGIA Website Launched!!!
ENERGIA is happy to announce that its new and expanded website is launched. After an extensive period of on-the-job training for the information officer, developing the new structure and layout of the site, testing, development work on the page contents, and finally a period of further testing, the site went online on 1 October 2001. The website can be accessed through the unchanged URL (www.energia.org), where you will find extensive information about ENERGIA and its activities, including:

• ENERGIA's mission statement and principles;
• The structure of the organisation;
• An introduction to who's who within ENERGIA;
• Detailed contact information; and
• Detailed up-to-date information on each of ENERGIA's programme activities, including links to reports and partnering organisations.

The website also provides many additional resources on gender and sustainable energy in general:

• Downloadable PDF files of ENERGIA News 3.1 to date;
• ENERGIA's electronic newsletter, ENERGIANet;
• A link to ENERGIA's photo gallery, which is hosted by Photoshare, a free service to NGOs run by the Media/Materials Clearinghouse of the John Hopkins University;
• 11 working papers on gender and sustainable energy; and
• All the latest news and events.

Soon we will be adding links to a number of interesting websites, an annotated bibliography on gender and energy, html files of all issues of ENERGIA News, and an online database of the members of ENERGIA. ENERGIA's website already links to several regional gender and energy network sites (such as GENES and OLADE) and programmes and partner organisations (Winrock International, UNDP) and we are looking forward to making other links in your area.
The ENERGIA site is “the” place to start looking for information on gender and energy on the web, and to find out more about ENERGIA. Although the website is considered an important vehicle in making information on gender and sustainable energy available to a wide audience, ENERGIA realises that not everyone has Internet access. ENERGIA will therefore continue to make information also available in hard copy.
We hope all of you with an Internet connection will take a look at the site and we are looking forward to receiving your feedback, suggestions and additions!
For more information, please contact Anja Panjwani

ENERGIA News
Issue 4.3 of ENERGIA News will be published in November 2001. This will be a special issue on the UNDP publication ‘Generating Opportunities: Case Studies on Energy and Women’.
Forthcoming issues of ENERGIA News will be devoted to the following topics:

• Issue 4.4 (December 2001): Gender, Energy and Health. Deadline for submissions: 5 November 2001.
• Issue 5.1 (March 2002): Gender, Energy and Social Development. Deadline for submissions: 5 January 2002.
• Issue 5.2 (July 2002): Women and Sustainable Energy in Asia. Deadline for submissions: 19 March 2002.

For more information, or to submit articles, please contact the ENERGIA Secretariat: energia@etcnl.nl

Conference Information

Special Session on Gender and Sustainable Energy, to be held at ISES 2001 Solar World Congress, 25 November to 2 December in Adelaide, Australia
Members of ENERGIA are planning the organisation of this special session.
The Gender and Sustainable Energy session has been tentatively scheduled for Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 November 2001. The objective of the session will be to review the challenges and opportunities to gender and renewable energy in the Oceanic region and to discuss the possibilities of establishing a gender and energy network in the region. The organisation of the session is being coordinated by Donella Bryce (Apace@uts.edu.au) and Jane Lynch (catsrg@ozemail.com.au). 
ENERGIA would welcome your participation in this special session on Gender and Sustainable Energy. We would appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible if you are planning to attend this special session. Please let us know by contacting: energia@etcnl.nl
For general information about the ISES 2001 Solar World Congress, please email: ises2001@hartleymgt.com.au, or visit the website at: http://www.unisa.edu.au/ises2001congress

Third International Congress on Women, Work and Health, 2-5 June 2002 in Stockholm, Sweden
Organised by the National Institute for Working Life
The focus of the conference will be on combining society and the organisation of work with working conditions and health.
ENERGIA has been invited to organise a symposia on gender, energy and health. Prof. Jyoti Parikh, senior professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, and one of ENERGIA's Consultative Group members will organise this event.
For more information about the special session on gender, energy and health, please contact the ENERGIA Secretariat
For more information about the Congress, please contact Carina Bildt at: carina.bildt@niwl.se, or visit the Congress website at: http://www.niwl.se/wwh

Energy and Quality of Life – Policy Directions in the New Millennium, 29 November to 1 December 2001 in Valodara, India
The Conference is organised by the M.S. University of Baroda, Gujarat, India
At this international conference, issues will be discussed that require policy decisions in order to give further impetus to the penetration of renewable energy technologies and to enhance their positive impacts on health, indoor air quality, environment and the attainment of sustainable development. Energy and gender issues will be one of the themes to be covered.
For more information, please contact Prof. Rachel George at: rachel_george1@rediffmail.com, or visit: http://wire0.ises.org/wire/independents/confres.NSF/41c7f4629de6528ec12567920047f7f1/2d9f49397e6b3d9bc1256a24002cada9!OpenDocument

Projects

ITDG Training Manual “Resource Poor Women and Information about Energy” and International Gender and Technology Network.
A training manual is currently being developed that will focus explicitly on the energy assets available to resource-poor women, and the vulnerabilities that they face. It aims to provide material that will:

• allow resource-poor women to explore the importance of their existing knowledge and the importance of energy resources in increasing security
• consider the relevance of modern communication technology in their quest to be heard
• allow them to test out practical ways in which they can retain control of the vital links which they can use to communicate with decision makers.

UNIBANCOOP
The UNIBANCOOP project in Paraguay is an initiative of the Celestina Pérez de Almada Foundation. It aims to fight poverty while preserving the local environment. The project especially targets rural women with the aim of helping them to become self-employed and financially secure.
The project uses the trunk of the banana tree, formerly considered as waste material, to make ecologically sound paper. Microcredit loans help women set up microenterprises, and solar dryers are used for drying the paper. Many women have already successfully set up their own microenterprises, or united to form cooperatives, and the income generated by the women has been seen to go back into the communities.
For more information, please contact Dr. Martin Almada at: malmada@rieder.net.py

APICOM plans to install a community bakery in Malanga, the Democratic Republic of Congo
APICOM, the Association for the Promotion of Community Initiatives, is an NGO based in Kinshasa, whose activities are mainly aimed at involving women in the process of sustainable development in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the organisation's planned activities is to start a community bakery in the rural centre of Malanga. Currently there is no baker in Malanga and women have to walk 25 kilometres to the nearest town. Women are regularly robbed and subjected to sexual assaults.
APICOM is looking for financial support for this project.
For more information, assistance, or advice, please contact: APICOM, P.O. Box 1301, Kinshasa-Limete, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Once and Future Action Network (OFAN) revives its Newsletter
OFAN, a coalition of more than 100 organisations working on gender, science and technology (GST), has reinstituted its newsletter on Women in Science and Technology. The current issue gives an overview of global GST networks as well as the activities of the OFAN regional focal points. The next issue will have an environmental focus.
For more information, or to be added to the mailing list, please contact ECOWOMAN (OFAN's new global secretariat) at: ecowoman@is.com.fj

Courses

Course on Women, Gender and Development in Southeast Asia, to be held from 18-28 February 2002, followed by a conference on Gender and Southeast Asia from 1-3 March 2002.
Both the course and the conference will be held in Bangkok, Thailand and will be organised by Women's Action and Research Initiative (WARI).
The training workshop hopes to enhance both the gender sensitivity and the capacity of participants to initiate, implement, formulate, and evaluate, gender programmes and to develop a clearer understanding of historical and cultural aspects of gender constructions in Southeast Asia. The course is at the upper undergraduate/graduate level.
There are 2 scholarships available for course and conference participants from Indochina (Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand). Suitable participants should have good command of English, an interest in gender issues, and should be able to use knowledge gained from the course in their work. Scholarships for other countries are not available.
For more information, please contact: wari9@yahoo.com
For more details, please see the website: http://www.geocities.com/wari9

Workshop Reports

Report on the global seminar for women leaders on the uptake of renewable energy technology
The seminar was held from 27 June to 4 July 2001 at the Murdoch University in Perth, Australia
The seminar was hosted by UNEP and the Australian CRC for Renewable Energy Ltd (ACRE). ENERGIA co-facilitated and contributed to training during a pioneering workshop focussing on the role of women leaders in the uptake of renewable energy technology.
To view the report, please visit: http://acre.murdoch.edu.au/unep/. A review of the workshop will soon appear on the ENERGIA website.

Workshop on poverty alleviation through the introduction of improved stoves
The workshop was held on 17 October 2001 at the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) in London, UK
The workshop was one step in the dissemination of results from a project investigating poverty reduction aspects of improved household stoves programmes, mainly in urban areas in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. The project results show that improved stove programmes, particularly in Ethiopia and Kenya, have had positive effects on the livelihoods of producers, and positive impacts for the consumers.
The major findings of the project can be viewed on the following website under “Summary”: http://povertystoves.energyprojects.net
For more information, please contact Ottavia Mazzoni at: ottavia@esd.co.uk

Publications

Hanff G. and D. Mesquita: The Power to Change: Women and Energy in Central America. September 2001.
This paper describes how the Central America Regional Electricity Project (PREEICA), with support from CIDA, has tried to address the existing gender-equality problems in the electrical regulatory agencies, planning units and ministries of Central America. In Central America not only is there a marked difference in how women and men participate in decisions about energy, there is also an enormous difference in how (or if) they benefit from those decisions.
The paper can be viewed at: http://www.energia.org/resources/papers/hanff-mesquita.html

Huyer S. and G. Westholm: Toolkit on Gender Indicators in Engineering, Science and Technology. UNESCO/GAB.
UNESCO has developed a toolkit to promote the collection of gender-disaggregated data in scientific and technological activities for national and international policy. The toolkit also presents a method to ensure the systematic collection of gender-disaggregated data on science and technology.
This publication can be downloaded from: http://gstgateway.wigsat.org/ta/data/toolkit.html

Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources: Women, Energy and Development. Special issue of Urja Bharati, June 2001.
This special issue of Urja Bharati focuses solely on the multidimensional topic of Women, Energy and Development in the Indian context. The newsletter discusses a large number of important issues in the field, such as the issue of women's time and human energy; forestry; fuel rights; the national stove programme; health issues; and various sources of renewable energy. Although some of the material is well known, it does contains some thought-provoking and interesting items and it presents people's personal views and experiences.
For more information about this newsletter, please contact the Ministry at: secmnes@x400.nicgw.nic.in

Yong C. Gender Impact of Resettlement: The Case of Babagon Dam in Sabah, Malaysia. In Gender, Technology and Development, Vol.5, no.2, May-August 2001, pp223-244.
The resettlement of a local community has resulted in a restructuring of gender relationships, livelihoods, value systems, and culture. The study shows that the burden of change is far greater for women who have even less access to the benefits of ‘development’ than do men. There is need for a greater involvement of indigenous communities in resettlement efforts, supported by more adequate state and community resources.
Carol Yong recently wrote on the same subject for ENERGIA News in issue 4.2.
Back issues of Gender, Technology and Development can be viewed at: http://gendevtech.ait.ac.th/gtd/gtd.htm

Internet Resources

The NREL website offers a number of interesting resources:

• PIX, a photo library, whose contents can be used without charge provided that the source is credited. NREL would welcome the submission of further photographs. Visit the photo library at: http://www.nrel.gov/data/pix/pix.html
• Renewables for Sustainable Village Power. This NREL sub-site provides information about the Village Power Programme, as well as a number of resources, such as a village power project database, library, Internet resources, and village power conference information. Visit the RSVP site at: http://www.rsvp.nrel.gov/

The Global Development Network (GDN) website offers a lot of information on its initiatives to support the generation and sharing of knowledge for development and to help bridge the gap between the development of ideas and their practical implementation. These initiatives include: research grant competitions, global research projects, development awards, scholarship opportunities, and much more.
Visit the site at: http://www.gdnet.org

You can visit the site of the newly founded organisation OWWEGA (Organisation of Women in Water, Electricity and Gas in Africa) and learn more about the background and mandate of OWWEGA and view its e-newsletter.
Visit the site at: http://www.owwega.org/

The Climate Network Europe website has a searchable database of over 3000 documents on climate change, and is regularly updated. The site also provides links to other related online libraries. Visit the site at: http://www.climnet.org/library/library.htm

Donor Information

UNDP Launched New Energy Trust Funds
On 10 September 2001, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched a thematic trust fund, which complements existing global efforts by providing a new window through which the donor community can address local energy needs that are not currently eligible for financing from other funds. US$60 million has been allocated to the fund over a period of 3 years.
The Energy Trust Fund for Sustainable Development will assist countries in producing and using energy in ways that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. It wants to ensure that energy will become an important tool in development. The focus of the fund will be on national policy frameworks, rural energy services, clean energy technologies, and new financing mechanisms, to support sustainable energy.
For more information, please contact Omar Gharzeddine at: omar.gharzeddine@undp.org
Or visit the website: http://www.undp.org/dpa/pressrelease/releases/2001/september/10sept01.html

UN Foundation Support to Sustainable Energy Services
The United Nations Foundation is a public charity responsible for channelling the US$1 billion contribution made by Ted Turner in support of United Nations’ causes. The Foundation intends to disburse US$72.6 million for new projects, mainly in the environment sector.
Of the 39 projects approved, 10 are in support of sustainable energy services. One of the projects that received funding is the African Rural Energy Enterprise Development (AREED), a UNEP initiative.

Vacancies

UNDP is Seeking an Environmental Law and Institutions Specialist for its Energy and Environment Practice Area in Kathmandu
As part of the Bureau of Development Policy (BDP), the substantive policy arm of UNDP, the specialist will respond to demands for advice from countries in Asia and the Pacific, and will also contribute to developing global consulting services in their area of expertise. The specialist will be part of a multi-disciplinary consulting team, based in Kathmandu, which combines technical competence in particular fields with a holistic approach to development.
For further information, and application details, please visit the UNDP website at: http://roo.undp.org/jobs/view_job.cfm?job_id=5

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