Conventional energy paradigm contributes to perpetuation of poverty
Conventional ideas about energy and development are often
themselves responsible for fostering the energy-poverty nexus because they
assume that simply increasing the supply of energy will lead to an improvement
in the macro-economy, whose benefits will eventually reach the poor. Instead of
attempting to improve the level of energy services available to people in
poverty to enhance their quality of life, policymakers are locked into modes of
governance that focus on increasing the supply of fuels or electricity. Such
measures can actually cause further harm to the people living in poverty because
of local pollution or large-scale displacement or by creating an institutional
environment that excludes the poor from acquiring quality energy services. For
instance, many developing country governments set import duties and taxes very
high for energy technology and equipment, including those that are very energy
efficient, but offer subsidies to conventional energy, often to appease
particular industry or agricultural lobbies. Thus, many efficient energy
technologies that could improve energy services and environmental quality (e.g.,
solar photovoltaic or solar water heating systems) without the need for large
investments to improve the supply of energy (through grid extension, for
instance) are placed out of reach to poorer households.
Figure 4 Relationship between per
capita energy consumption and Human Development Index.
Note: Date for 100 developed and developing
countries
Source: Suarez (1995). Note, each dot corresponds to a
country
Apart from such direct negative impacts of many governments'
energy policies, the adverse effects of existing patterns of energy use on
nutrition, health and productivity are likely to ensure that even the benefits
of economic growth would be absorbed only very slowly by people living in
poverty. For instance, schooling will continue to promote earning capacity, but
by less when biomass is the dominant energy carrier because of poor lighting,
limited access to knowledge via radio and television and poor school attendance
due to respiratory illness. In contrast, policies and programs that focus
resolutely on creating opportunities for the people living in poverty to improve
their energy services can enable poorer households to enjoy both short-term and
self-reinforcing long-term improvements in their standard of living.
Large conventional power projects, especially coal and
hydropower, are associated with numerous environmental problems, and often
people living in poverty are the most affected. Coal projects typically displace
thousands of people from open cast mining areas, ash disposal sites and mine
drainage areas. Fly ash, oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, contamination of ground
and surface water and depletion of water resources cause serious harm to the
health and livelihood of local communities.
Hydroelectric power currently accounts for nearly 20% of the
world's electricity output. The world-wide technically usable potential is
estimated to be seven times greater than today's generation (Moreira and Poole,
1993). However, development of potential capacity entails a number of hazards.
The process of generating hydropower does not produce wastes or other harmful
by-products. At the same time, the accumulation of a large, almost stationary
body of water sets in motion a train of events, particularly in tropical areas,
that may enhance the spread of infection and disease, including filariasis and
schistosomiasis. Shallow waters associated with the shores of reservoirs can
provide suitable breeding places for mosquito vectors of malaria.
Dams also create new and favorable habitats for various kinds of
vegetation, which in turn may render sizeable areas more attractive to disease
vectors. In addition, dissolved minerals, silt, and organic matter brought by
in-flowing rivers, may alter the aquatic ecosystems and possibly cause algae
blooms, and foster growth of snails, midges, and mosquito larvae. Dams also pose
accident risks when sited upstream from large populations. Important indirect
health effects can be created in populations forced to leave their lands because
of large hydropower development (IPCC, 1996). Hydropower projects displace many
people from reservoir sites, reduce downstream agricultural productivity and
submerge valuable agricultural and forest land in upstream areas, while causing
sedimentation and water quality concerns and increasing the risk of malaria,
encephalitis and other water-borne diseases. People living in poverty are often
the worst affected by all these environmental problems, the most serious to
their livelihoods often being their involuntary resettlement. For instance, the
Three Gorges Project in China is expected to displace about 1.25 million people
and several hydro projects in India, including the Tehri, Sardar Sarovar and
Upper Krishna projects have each displaced more than about 100,000 people (World
Bank, 1994).
In short, policies and programmes that directly address
opportunities for people living in poverty to improve the level and quality of
their energy services will allow the poor to enjoy both short-term and
self-reinforcing long-term improvements in their standard of living and
preservation of the environment. The improvements can be accomplished by making
more efficient use of commercial and non-commercial energy and by shifting to
higher quality energy carriers.
|
Poverty and Energy in Pura Village
Pura village in Kunigal taluk in the state of Karnataka, India,
was one of the earliest villages to be studied exhaustively for its energy
consumption patterns (Ravindranath et al., 1979; ASTRA, 1982; UNDP, 1995). In
1977, it had a population of 357 in 56 households who consumed about 3000kWh of
electricity per day for the following activities:
1. agricultural operations (with ragi and rice as
the main crops),
2. domestic activities (grazing livestock, cooking, gathering
fuelwood, and fetching water for domestic use, particularly drinking),
3. lighting, and
4. industry (pottery, flour mill, and coffee shop).
The sources of energy for these activities were fuelwood, human
beings, kerosene, bullocks, and electricity, in the order of energy derived.
Energy derived from fuelwood dominated the source set (89%) and domestic
activities outranked all the others (91%) in terms of energy used.
Several features of the patterns of energy consumption in Pura
are significant (Batliwala, 1995):
5. What is conventionally referred to as commercial
energy (i.e., kerosene and electricity in the case of Pura) accounted for a mere
3 per cent of the inanimate energy used in the village, with the remaining 97
per cent coming from fuelwood. Further, fuelwood must be viewed as a
noncommercial source, since only about 4 per cent of the total fuelwood
requirement of Pura was purchased as a commodity, with the rest gathered at zero
private cost.
6. Animate sources (human beings and bullocks) only accounted
for about 8 per cent of the total energy, but the real significance of this
contribution is revealed by the fact that these animate sources represented 77
per cent of the energy used in Pura's agriculture. In fact, this percentage
would have been much higher were it not for the operation of four electrical
pumpsets in Pura, which accounted for 23 per cent of the total agricultural
energy.
7. Virtually all of Pura's energy consumption came from
traditional renewable sources - thus, agriculture was largely based on human
beings and bullocks, and domestic cooking utilized 19 per cent of the human
energy and 80 per cent of the total inanimate energy (entirely fuelwood).
8. This pattern of dependence on renewable resources, although
environmentally sound, was achieved at an exorbitant price. Levels of
agricultural productivity were low, and large amounts of human energy were spent
on fuelwood gathering (on the average, about two to six hours spent travelling
four to eight kilometres per day per family to collect about 10 kilograms
fuelwood).
9. Fetching water for domestic consumption also utilized a great
deal of human energy (an average of one to five hours travelling up to six
kilometers per day per household) to achieve an extremely low per capita water
consumption of 17 liters per day.
10. Of the human energy for domestic activities, 46 per cent was
spent on grazing livestock (5 to 8 hours/day/household), a crucial source of
supplementary household income.
11. Women provided the major part of human labour (53 per cent),
especially in gathering fuel (42 per cent), fetching water (80 per cent),
grazing livestock (15 per cent), and agriculture (44 per cent). Their labour
contributions were vital to the survival of families, a point now well
established in the global literature, but still neglected by planners and
policy-makers.
12. Similarly, children contributed a crucial share of the
labour for gathering fuelwood (25 per cent), fetching water (14 per cent), and
grazing livestock (33 per cent). The critical importance of children's labour
contributions in poor households has significant implications for population and
education policies and programmes - but again, largely ignored.
13. Only 25 per cent of the houses in the "electrified" village
of Pura had domestic connections for electric lighting; the remaining 75 per
cent depended on kerosene lamps, and of these lamps, three quarters were
open-wick type.
14. A very small amount of electricity -day), flowed into Pura,
and even this was distributed in a highly inegalitarian way - 65 per cent going
to the four irrigation pumpsets of three landowners, 28 per cent to illuminate
14 out of 56 houses, and the remaining 7 per cent to a single flour-mill
owner.
Since the Pura study, many studies of rural energy consumption
patterns have been conducted in developing countries (e.g., Barnett et al.,
1982; Nkonoki and Sorenson, 1984; Smith, 1986). The specific numbers vary,
depending upon region, agro-climatic zone, proximity to forests, availability of
crop residues, prevalent cropping pattern, etc., but the broad features of
Pura's energy consumption pattern outlined here were generally validated. |
