This month UN-Energy launched the substantive preparations for the High-Level Dialogue on Energy, a summit-level event in September 2021 to accelerate SDG 7 achievements and promote climate action ahead of the COP26 by planning and implementing energy-related goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Dialogue is historic being the first of its kind since 1981.
Credit: UN Energy
HPNET has been invited to contribute to the initiative as a member in one of the Dialogue’s five Technical Working Groups, Enabling SDGs through Inclusive, Just Energy Transitions. This UN Working Group is especially relevant for HPNET members because community-scale hydropower is a multi-thematic intervention that strengthens the water-energy-land nexus for greater climate resilience in marginalized rural communities -- which ultimately advances multiple SDGs in parallel.
The UN Working Group’s focus on inclusion is also a critical theme for HPNET members:
- Rural communities often bear the brunt of the climate crisis but have the smallest carbon footprint. In fact, many indigenous communities have practices that sustain forests, mitigating emissions. It is vital to enable both sustainable development and multi-benefit climate adaptation mechanisms, i.e. watershed strengthening for climate resilient access to electricity, potable water, sanitation, and irrigation. The best way to do that is to bring the voices of communities to policy-making and funding decisions.
- Women-centric approaches to hydro mini-grids lead to optimal sustainability and socio-economic benefits from the project. Critical to the implementation of women-centric approaches are women energy practitioners, who are a few in number, often not acknowledged for their immense contributions, and not typically in leadership positions.
- Donors and governments often inaccurately see mini-grids as being synonymous to solar-battery mini-grids, and discount the energy access progress made in the last forty years by community hydro and biomass solutions, which to date continue electrifying last mile communities. Although lower cost and more apt for mechanized productive end use, these technologies and the local experts who have advanced them are often sidelined in mainstream funding and policy mechanisms.
| Leveraging four decades of hindsight from the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America, our initiative Social Enterprise for Energy, Ecological and Economic Development (SEEED) provides capacity building for practitioners and community to achieve long-term technical, environmental, institutional, and financial sustainability of their hydro mini-grids. The SEEED approach results in the triple benefits of energy access, climate resilient watersheds, and socio-economic recovery. Using results from SEEED’s evidence-based analyses and peer-to-peer exchanges, done in collaboration with local practitioners, we look forward to contributing to the UN Energy High-Level Dialogue. Below are further details collated from content provided by UN Energy. |  Htan Hla Pin Community Micro Hydro, Shan State, Myanmar. Credit: Loïs Sevestre |
Credit: UN Energy
OBJECTIVE
The Technical Working Group III will focus on developing a Theme Report on Enabling SDGs through Inclusive, Just Energy Transitions that presents a set of recommendations towards an action-oriented global roadmap for the achievement of SDG 7 by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. The report should be made in a succinct manner and can be widely consumed by a non-technical audience.
This group will focus on maximizing the positive impacts of inclusive and just energy transitions on the achievement of the SDGS, including gender equality, job creation, youth empowerment, agriculture and food systems, health, education, water, and sustainable production and consumption, through coordinated multi-sectoral interventions. The focus is to move away from ideas of ‘separation and competition’ to one of ‘interdependence and collective action.’
This group will focus on maximizing the positive impacts of inclusive and just energy transitions on the achievement of the SDGS, including gender equality, job creation, youth empowerment, agriculture and food systems, health, education, water, and sustainable production and consumption, through coordinated multi-sectoral interventions. The focus is to move away from ideas of ‘separation and competition’ to one of ‘interdependence and collective action.’
SUMMIT LEVEL DIALOGUE
The summit level Dialogue on Energy will be convened by the UN Secretary-General in New York in September 2021, setting a global roadmap to achieve clean, accessible energy for all by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, and mobilizing the voluntary commitments and actions urgently needed.
WATCH: Virtual Launch of the UN High-level Dialogue on Energy 2021
WATCH: Virtual Launch of the UN High-level Dialogue on Energy 2021
