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ENERGIA News Issue 2.2, May 1998

Networking Around the World

The Women's Power Project Electronic Network

A joint proposal of the Nuclear Free Philippines Coalition (NFPC) and the Sustainable Energy and Environment Network (SEEN) of the Transnational Institute (TNI).

Confronting an Unsustainable Energy Paradigm: Linking Women Activists in Asia

Myrla Baldanodo and Daphne Wysham

The aim of the Women's Power Project Electronic Network (WPPEN) is to develop a web page and message server. Its purposeis to serve as a forum for activists, researchers and non-government organisations, particularly those focussed on nuclear and coal power; alternative and safe energy and women. The unique role of the Women's Power Project Electronic Network is to link energy and environment issues together with women's empowerment, not only through community organisation against the dominant energy paradigm, but by promoting and disseminating information about alternative energy options.

Using the Internet, email and electronic discussion groups, the WPPEN will develop and exchange publications and educational and campaign materials for Southern activists, community groups and non-government organisations. These materials will aim to empower the people to reject nuclear power and push for alternative safe and renewable energy.

Background

Inadequate Attention to Energy Needs of the Poor and Women

In rural areas of the global South, more than 2 billion out of the world's 5.5 billion people rely on biomass as their only fuel. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), over 1 billion people are currently consuming biomass fuels at a much faster rate than they are being replenished. By the year 2000, according to UNEP, over 2.4 billion people will be unable to meet their basic energy needs. In some areas where deforestation is severe, women and girls, traditional fuel-gatherers in the South, are walking up to 15 miles each day in search of fuel. Or, alternatively, women are resorting to lower quality fuels like crop waste or animal dung; in doing so, women increase their and their children's risk of lung disease while depriving the soil of vital nutrients. Yet even these low quality fuel alternatives may soon be in short supply in some regions: Barring significant changes in energy policy, the number of people globally dependent on biomass fuels is expected to triple to 6 billion out of a global population of 8 to 11 billion by 2035, according to the World Bank.

This energy crisis will play out in a variety of increasingly undeniable ways--increased malnutrition and water-borne diseases (due to fuel scarcity), accelerated soil erosion (due to pressure on forests for cooking fuel), and greater stress on women and girls who have traditional responsibility in most Southern countries for gathering energy resources. Despite the growing undeniability of this rural energy crisis, it remains a low priority for policy-makers. Instead, attention is focussed on providing financing for the commercial energy sector. It is this shortfall of electricity that has captured the attention of Bank policy-makers and private industry. The Bank estimates that $1 trillion will be needed over the next decade, and more than $4 trillion over the next three decades, to meet the growing demand for electricity in the South. Most of this energy will be supplied by coal and nuclear power. According to the World Bank, 38% of this demand will be paid for in foreign exchange, largely through multilateral development banks.

There are two vital dimensions of this demand that must be noted. First, the demand for electricity that will be met will largely come from industry. Secondly, the energy resources used - in Asia, the world's fastest growing economic region, largely coal - will result in unprecedented pollution of the Earth's atmosphere, destruction of ecosystems, dislocation of indigenous peoples, and growing inequity between rich and poor. Meanwhile, the demand for energy coming from small businesses and individuals, especially those in rural areas, will continue to fall on deaf ears.

Nuclear Power Plants and Their Negative Impacts in Asia

Disastrous experiences in the past with nuclear power plants in Asia, Europe and America have not served as a lesson for the cessation of their operation, especially in Asia. Plans to develop nuclear power in Asia continue to increase. Moreover trade and technology and the installation of nuclear power in Asia have intensified, even though in Europe and America, it is evident that the use of nuclear energy is decreasing.

• Japan has 50 reactors and each year there are about 40 accidents at these stations. Accurate information about the release of radioactive materials is never disclosed to subcontract laborers of the plants Many of them have suffered radiation diseases and have died. We are also deeply concerned about the huge plutonium program of Japan, which would be a menace to the future of Asia.
• Korea has 11 reactors and is currently building 5 more. The Korean government plan to build at least 12 more reactors by the year 2010. This means that by 2010 Korea will have 28 reactors. The Korean government's decision does not take into account the environmental consequences and their subsequent effects to residents of the surrounding area.
• Taiwan now has six reactors and has already experienced many accidents. Many people living in the vicinity of nuclear power plants have died from contamination. The disposal of Taiwan's nuclear wastes on the Langyu island (Orchid Island) has damaged the well being of the local residents who constantly feel threatened by the danger of exposure to nuclear waste and radiation which can leak from the waste storage site.
• The Philippines is set to convert its only nuclear power plant - - the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. But under the new 12-year Philippine Energy Plan (PEP), the Philippine government intends to go full scale into a nuclear power program that would set up ten (10) nuclear power plants around the country in the next 30 years. During the Second Nuclear Congress last December 1996, the Philippine government disclosed 10 sites for the nuclear power plants that will be built. Last year, the Philippine Government created the Nuclear Power Steering Committee that has been tasked to (1) conduct feasibility study on potential nuclear power plants; (2) to undertake an intensive education and information campaign on nuclear power and; (3) to design a new nuclear power program.
• The Indonesian government is seriously pursuing its plan to build 12 reactors by the year 2015, with the construction of the first plant to begin in 1998.
• India has 10 reactors and is in the process of constructing 5 new reactors.
• The governments of Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Hongkong have also expressed their interests on nuclear power. In particular, the Thai cabinet has recently appointed a 21 man committee to conduct a feasibility study on nuclear power.

Coal-fired Power Plants and Their Negative Impacts

As a result of plans to use coal to generate electricity, by the year 2010, greenhouse gas emissions coming from the developing world are expected to double from their 1990 levels. This means developing countries will account for nearly half of global carbon dioxide emissions by 2010. India and China plan to double their coal-fired energy output by 2015, producing a total of 1,660 million metric tons of CO2 from coal-fired power. Thus, China and India's coal-related carbon emissions alone will constitute close to one-half of the world's projected total of 3,442 million metric tons of CO2 from coal-fired power by 2015. In fact, non-OECD Asian countries will be pumping out more greenhouse gases from coal than any other region in the world--and 59 percent more than all OECD countries combined. It is widely believed that exponential population growth in these countries will eventually cause this disproportionate rise in emissions. However, our research shows that it is actually inefficient industrial users, many of whom have migrated to the South to escape the higher cost of doing business in the North, who are the more likely culprits, creating more than three-fourths of these gases.

Origins of the WPPEN

In March 1996, an international gathering of women activists working on energy and particularly anti-nuclear issues took place outside of Austin, Texas. While nuclear waste transport and disposal was highlights as a major concern for U.S. activists, the women present also recognised the need for activists in both North and South to join in solidarity, since these ‘end-of-the-pipe’ concerns coexist with the sobering reality that at least 94 new nuclear reactors will go on-line by 2010 (mostly in Asia). Despite the growing enormity of the nuclear threat in Asia, few of the otherwise well-informed women at the conference had any details on the expansion of the nuclear industry abroad nor its implications. The consensus among Asian participants was that information was scarce - and greatly needed - in battling these plans for new reactors.

In response to this call for more information, Myrla Baldanodo of the Nuclear Free Philippines Coalition (NFPC) and SEEN's Daphne Wysham agreed to begin to disseminate information on nuclear, large hydro- and coal-fired power plants in order educate and mobilise communities, and particularly women, in Asia in opposition to unsustainable energy development. At our meeting in Austin, it was agreed that a major focus and tool for dissemination this information would be the Internet. NFPC envisages the launch of the Women's Power Project Electronic Network (WPPEN) in 1997 in conjunction with SEEN and in loose partnership with a broad range of other northern and southern NGOs.

The Women's Power Project Electronic Network

The broad objective of the Women's Power Project Electronic Network is to begin to disseminate information around sustainable energy issues - including household solar, microhydro and other alternative renewable and safe energy issues - including household solar, microhydro and reforestation projects where women play a leading role (along the lines of Kenya's Greenbelt Movement). While anti-dam activists have met with some success in Asia, anti-nuclear and anti-coal activists have been less than successful, aside from small pockets of resistance.

The aims of the WPPEN include to:

1. Create a network for information exchange which integrates work on gender education, empowerment and activism in Asia -while, at the same time, shifting the energy paradigm away from environmentally unsound and dangerous energy options.
2. Promote awareness and then activism among women around the actual, long-lasting costs of both nuclear and coal-fired energy options
3. Empower community and particularly women's and indigenous peoples groups through the establishment of networks, organising advice, the provision and exchange of information. These will furnish activists with the tools of resistance to make their energy needs a priority for development financiers.

Together we want to develop a web page that can serve six functions:

1. As a directory for non-government, research and community organisations, particularly women's organisations, working on renewable and safe energy issues, either renewable energy initiatives or in challenging large unsustainable projects.
2. As an information dissemination point for reports on the successes and failure of demonstration models and pilot renewable energy projects in Asia and the U.S. On the other hand, we also want to promote the dissemination of information and experience among communities who might be able to learn from and replicate the alternative, community-based development projects of other communities in Asia.
3. It will contain a monthly newsletter style report on major large-scale development projects particularly in coal, dams or nuclear sectors.
4. It will provide timely summaries on the issues before and outcomes of major international meetings such as the G7, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and World Bank meetings or new legislation which may affect the energy industry or environmental regulations. These will be written with the aim of highlighting the gender impacts of new policies and projects and actively promoting the opportunities for women to organise and campaign against detrimental projects.
5. It will include links to related web sites, particularly those pertaining to groups committed to following up the Action Agendas devised at the Beijing Women's Conference, to human rights organisations working on indigenous people's rights and mining issues, as well as to renewable energy industry sites and research institutes.
6. It will be action-oriented. We are looking for projects that directly impact upon local people and which they have a stake in resisting. We intend to have a built-in option where people can e-mail directly to NFPC or IPS to answer further information requests.