Governments must prioritise gender in energy transition - International summit advocates

This year’s International Gender Summit has ended in Accra with a call on governments, particularly in Africa, to shape the energy transition pathways and processes to prioritise its impact on women.

Policy frameworks and targets created must also recognise the needs of all citizens.

“This is very critical to ensuring inclusive and sustainable development, because all work together to move the world towards a sustainable future that works for all of us,” panellists at the summit agreed.

This year's summit, the 23rd globally and the fourth to be held in Africa, focused on mainstreaming gender, particularly women in Africa’s energy transition pathways and the green new deal.

Summit

The Gender Summit was established in 2011 to facilitate a dialogue on gender equality issues in science.

The two-day summit in Accra, on the theme: "Africa's energy transition pathways and vision of the Green New Deal through a gender lens," was convened by a not-for-profit organisation, Portia Limited UK, and hosted by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Ghana.

The participants included policymakers, researchers, scientists, energy experts and stakeholders from around the world, including representatives from the European Union and ECOWAS.

Making women inclusive

In an address, the Global Chief Executive Officer of AIMS, Lydie Hakizimana, said the Gender Summit-Africa '23 provided preliminary steps to ensure that women were part of determining Africa's vision of the Green New Deal (GND) and the process of transitioning swiftly to sustainable energy, which is yet to be clearly defined.

She defined gender mainstreaming to mean the needs and experiences and priorities of both men and women being considered in all policies and decision-making processes.

She said mainstreaming gender in the energy transitions pathways would ensure that policies and financial planning instruments were inclusive.

“This is very critical to ensuring inclusive and sustainable development, because all work together to move the world towards a sustainable future that works for all of us. 

“The worrying concern is that in the context of UN Sustainable Development Agenda the goals closely connected to the aims of GND, namely SDGs 7 (energy), 9 (industry and innovation),12 (responsible consumption)and 13 (climate action) are ‘silent' on gender in that they have no gender targets and no gender indicators,” she said.

Climate change and women

Ms Hakizimana said research showed that environmental degradation caused by climate change had gender-specific impacts and that low-carbon transitions and climate mitigation efforts could involve power struggles and processes of exacerbating vulnerability, and critically, that the "greening" of energy systems might not make them any fairer, inclusive or just, without recognition of and specific interventions to address gender concerns.

The Managing Director of Portia Ltd, UK, Dr Elizabeth Pollitzer,  said the summit was a platform for dialogue among stakeholders as it was aimed at reaching consensus where improvements to science knowledge and science practice were needed to ensure that gender equality in research and innovation was the norm and so as to embed gender as a primary dimension of quality.

Ghana’s pathway

Contributing to a panel discussion on “High Level Panel: Strategies and partnerships for sustainable green transition in Africa”, a Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Herbert Krapah, said government in drafting its national energy transition, was prioritising the positive impact it would have on women and the youth.

It had, thus, formulated a policy that seeks to mainstream energy-related gender concerns and align them with wider health and safety as well as environmental standards, by inculcating cleaner technologies and cleaner fuel for cooking.

“That would ensure that the 30.5 million hours used by women and youth to gather wood fuel would be saved.

 Cleaner fuel for cooking

In his submission, Mr Krapah explained that apart from the policy, government had also introduced a cylinder recirculation programme, which had the free distribution of cylinders to encourage the use of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking in place of wood fuels.

“We have a policy to distribute 500,000 of them and so far, we have distributed over 400,000 of them across the country to introduce women more and more to cleaner fuels and technologies for cooking,” he said.

Other panellists included the Deputy Head of Mission and Head of the Political Section – European Union Delegation to Ghana, Pieter Smidt Van Gelder and the  Director for ECOWAS Gender Development Centre, Monka Sandra Oualte.

Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Kwaku Afriyie, said the issue was an economic one and that the country was prioritising gender in energy transition as an opportunity to do social restitution as far as women were concerned.

Writer’s email: Doreen.andoh@graphic.com.gh