Meeting Gender Equitable Basic Energy Needs: Supply and Demand of Sustainable Biomass, including Biofuels

1. Meeting Gender Equitable Basic Energy Needs: Supply and Demand of Sustainable Biomass, including Biofuels Presented at Planning for Mainstreaming Gender in Energy World Bank Washington D.C. May 21-22 2008 by Govind Kelkar UNIFEM South Asia Office, New Delhi

2. Field realities for Gender Concerns in Basic Energy Needs • My recent visits to Jharkhand & Nagaland in India and to Yunnan, China confirms that access to modern energy, coupled with income generation and gender parity in decision making are a necessary condition for economic development. • Access to modern energy means: use of LPG and/or Kerosene for cooking, solar pv system, mini-grid or grid electricity for lighting the streets and homes, and its uses for pumping water/ irrigation for agriculture. • Solar cooker (subsidized) are discarded for tasteless food, insufficient for cooking local dishes. • There is a limited interest in biogas stoves.

3. Field realities for Gender Concerns in Basic Energy Needs • Women in large numbers are agricultural producers responsible for most household cooking and collection of fuelwood, and they cultivate biofuels, including Jatropha. • These socially assigned roles keep women away from educational opportunities, social participation and limit there access to new knowledge and technologies. • Indoor air pollution poor lighting poor rural transport and hard labor of fuelwood collection affect their health and spread illnesses.

4. Biomass: Policy Concerns • In the fast growing economies of Asia, policy concerns are to promote energy efficient equipment and renewable energy technologies for ethanol, biodiesel, solar and wind power. • Concerns for inclusive growth social/ gender equality and healthcare of people, are put aside in favor of containing negative externalities: greenhouse gases, global warming and rising oil prices. • This lack of concern continues despite the 2002 estimates of International Energy Agency, that 2.4 billion in the developing world use biomass for cooking with serious effects on the health of users and local environment, to the extend that 15 million people died from disease caused by indoor air pollution in 2002 (WHO, 2006).

5. Gender Impacts of Biofuels:Ethanol and biodeisel • Adverse impact on the foods security globally, particularly of women in rural households. Rural women, with primary responsibility for agriculture production and provision of food to the family, are likely to be affected in differential terms. • Land and other productive assets (e.g. water, chemical fertilizer) are being diverse from food crops to agro-fuel crops (as noted UN-Energy 2007, FAO 2008). • As a result of growing use of agricultural commodities for production of biofuels, a negative impact on the livestock sector, largely managed by women and a key to the food security of rural households.

6. Energy Policy: Demand and Supply Questions • An important question of demand side is related o capability of government machineries and the private sector to deliver clean and cost effective energy services in rural areas and set up an institutional infrastructure that makes conservation and efficiency of energy a profitable commercial business rather than subsidizing that adoption of energy efficient equipment (e.g. the case of improved stores in India and China) • The question of demand is closely related to supply objectives, to ensure the provision of adequate, clean and cost effective supply of energy for an equitable and inclusive economic growth. • Need for an approach that addresses both demand and supply side issues, captures complex relationships of different sets of gender factors (as seen in the households, organizations and institutions) and encompasses energy policy to achieve women’s development and economic growth.

7. Gender Factors in Energy Policies • Energy planning has focused on women’s role in cooking collecting and fetching water. • The demand-side analysis of energy needs of poor people does not recognize women’s roles in agricultural production and livelihood functions in the informal sector, despite the government acknowledgement of the feminization of agriculture and the informal sector. • The demand analysis has given no attention to gendered distribution of productive assets such as technologies, credit, land, capacity for decision making. • More benefits from biofuels are likely to be with men, because of their predominance in land ownership and control rights to productive assets.

8. Gender Factors in Energy Policies • The present supply oriented planning overlooks the fact that rural poor women have traditionally supplied wood-fuel for cooking and heating. They are increasingly playing a role of modern energy supplier i.e. decision-making, entrepreneurs agro-fuel producers and workers. Some examples include: • Women cooperatives to manufacture high quality D.C. lamps and charge controllers for solar home systems in Char Montaz in southern Bangladesh. • In Midu County, the county level All China Women’s Federation organized coal briquetting for energy efficiency and reducing pollution. • Owners of LPG distribution agency and operators at petrol stations in Delhi, India

9. Gender Factors in Energy Policies • Cultivators of agrofuels, jatropha, neem pongamia and other oil seeds in many states of India. • Rural woman’s Self-Help Groups have set up energy infrastructure in the several states of India. • Powerguda SHG women become environmental pioneers when their biofuel plantation earned carbon credits, awarded by the World Bank (2003) for naturalizing the emissions for air travel.

10. Energy Planning Distance with Change in Gender Relations • Two distinct but inter-related levels of distance: • Professional value on women’s time: Women’s time is mainly used for non-monetized work such as collecting fuels, fetching water, cooking and housework. • Development: denial of individuality and autonomy to women in distribution of productive assets and capabilities.

11. Valuation of Women’s Time • Valuation of women’s time: women’s time can be valued in terms of what it produces. Use Value: a lot of products of women’s labor or services that are not sold e.g. collected wood fuel used or cooking at home. Exchange value: when a marketable product is produced and sold at its market price, in this case, women’s time is valued as the net income from the sale of what is produced.

12. Valuation of Women’s Labor • Women's labor can be valued in either of the two ways: • The market price of the product, even if it is not sold, for example, wood, collected for use at home, can be valued at its market price. • Then the value of women’s labor would be the potential income (not actual) from the product, the income from alternate use of women’s labor that is given up in order to carry out the task in question. e.g. women’s labor used in wood collection could otherwise earn $1/day. • The opportunity cost concept of women’s labor time valuation.If the marginal income from women's labor is much higher than the marginal income from men's labor, then there is a greater likelihood of change in the household division of labor; with men taking up additional domestic responsibilities. • If there is no alternate use for women’s labor then the opportunity cost would be zero or, it would be whatever is the labor wage actually available on the market, say, $0.5/day

13. Valuation of Women’s Time • There is yet another aspect of the valuation of women’s labor that is usually not considered as such. • This is the negative health effect of indoor air pollution due to use of wood, dung, and other crop residues. • There is a definite cost involved in indoor air pollution: • Cost of treatment • Cost of income foregone because of labor lost – loss of productivity (in own production) or loss of wages. • This negative effect on women’s labor is usually not integrated into policy or programme analysis • It is an unaccounted cost borne by women’s bodies and their labor

14. Women’s Labor: Meaning for Planning and implementation? • That the often low opportunity cost of women’s labor in rural economy of developing countries is a factor that inhibits the energy transition to modern fuels, thus, the necessity of tackling the low opportunity cost of women’s labor. • That eliminating or reducing the negative effects on women’s health. The social benefit of eliminating indoor air pollution is greater than it’s benefit in increasing energy efficiency in the home • Women have mediated (through the household or it head) right to productive assets. • Disjuncture between formal equality and real equality in managing assets. • Asset redistribution is superior to income redistribution. In overcoming distortions in the functioning of markets and for restructuring gender relations.

15. SuggestiveGender Mainstreaming Planning Framework • Two important issues for planning consideration: • Feminization of agricultural labor. • Gender asset inequality and control rights. • Planning framework should address: • Gender-specific problems subject to social, cultural structures. • Adequate inclusion of women in the management of energy. • Building management capacities of women. • Addressing uncertainty arising from policy fatigue.

16. SuggestiveGender Mainstreaming Planning Framework • The challenge is not to reinstitute policy for gender mainstreaming but to redeploy the machinery already in place. • Adequate measures for accountability of various ministries with select gender indicators, gender audits and gender budgets. • Self Help groups, panchayati raj institutions and community based organizations (such as SEWA, ACWF) can be the efficient models of an institutional arrangement at the local level.

17. SuggestiveGender Mainstreaming Planning Framework • Concerted efforts are to be made to: • Eliminate social, cultural limits on the opportunity cost of women’s labor; • Implement affirmative policies to strengthen women’s capabilities, thus enable them to articulate their needs and interests for health, technical education and well-being; • Promote end use of commercial energy that directly increase women’s productivity in income-producing activities; • Substantially increase the proportional number of women in energy use and management bodies, as well as in all energy policy influencing agencies and institutions.