A Global Plan of Action - Background Paper: Technical Expertise, Capacity Building and Training

Why Technical Expertise, Capacity Building and Training is Important for Energy for Displaced People?

Well-trained and coordinated staff who provide programmatic and technical support to energy projects is crucial in humanitarian assistance. Energy access is often overlooked in the strategies and budgets of organizations engaged in humanitarian assistance for health, protection, food security, shelter, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), and other issues. A number of organizations have progressed in incorporating fuel and energy into their humanitarian work over the past decade, but often these activities are extra-budgetary or dependent on short term grants. Consequently, there is a severe shortage of well-trained technical and programmatic experts who can facilitate coordinated responses to energy needs in the field. This gap in expertise is exacerbated by high turnover rates of deployed staff among humanitarian agencies and NGOs. While many staff are often eager and willing to learn about energy, ease of access to and awareness of the right tools are often barriers that inhibit learning.

Affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy is a critical enabler for sustainable development, yet the fundamental energy needs of displaced people are majorly unattended due to this lack of institutional capacity. Narrowing this gap in humanitarian response through relevant technical expertise, capacity building and training is imperative for a transition away from an unsustainable procure and provide mind set to a more resilient, equitable and sustainable response. Equipping humanitarian organizations with technical expertise and incorporating local expertise to provide sustainable energy services improves safety and security, health and livelihoods for displaced people. Delivering capacity building and trainings around the productive use of energy, solution specific services and sustainable resource management empowers end users and camp managers with increased ecological, safe and effective energy practices. On top of the human centered benefits presented, the capacity to equip displacement situations with clean energy from the start presents a clear economic case resulting in long term cost savings for humanitarian organizations. Without the sufficient institutional capacity to address this need, energy provision in situations of displacement will remain dependent on unsustainable and unsafe practices, intensifying the common humanitarian issues faced in low access regions.

Delivering universal energy access by 2030 remains a challenge, but institutionally addressing this need will be an accelerator for sustainable development to meet global goals and effectively enhance the quality of life of people living in displacement settings. In response to the strong political will of global leaders in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants and subsequent action being taken to improve humanitarian assistance for displaced people, there is a significant opportunity to rethink current energy provision methods and collaboratively equip all stakeholders with the necessary capacity and energy expertise for long term benefits.

Analysis: What challenges are we facing?

The design and implementation of energy solutions is technical, complex and depends on legal and governance frameworks. As the genesis of responses for displaced people are often fragile in nature and initial humanitarian response to crisis generally lacks capacity to serve continuous needs upon high volumes of arrival, energy is understandably not the first priority in emergency situations. This being said, a bulk of the challenges faced in sustainable energy adoption after initial emergency response could be mitigated through institutional capacity and awareness for the important role energy plays in quality response. Energy for displacement situations is still a niche area that affects many cross cutting themes but is not normally focused on as its own category. These challenges are important to understand so technical expertise can be acquired, capacity can be built institutionally, and appropriate trainings can be administered to relevant beneficiaries.

Some challenges that serve as barriers to providing adequate technical expertise, capacity building and training are as follows:

• Lack of institutional technical expertise in or reference point in field.
• Lack of standardized energy trainings and limited access to tools when they are available.
• Little awareness of the importance, benefits, potential and cross cutting nature of clean energy.
• Energy roles assigned to people who are unequipped with appropriate technical expertise or who have very limited time to provide attention to this issue.
• Lack of financing for humanitarian organizations to hire technical energy experts.
• ‘Procure and provide’ mind set, rather than tools and processes designed to enable an environment for private companies to enter.
• Reluctance of staff to receive energy training ‘on top of everything else’.
• Lack of entrance point for private sector to implement solution specific trainings.
• End users training needs or capacity are misunderstood.
• Disabling policies that hinder displaced people from capacity building.

Among other activities, experienced staff with a background on energy in humanitarian settings is needed to conduct solid assessments of energy needs and recommend context-appropriate solutions; provide training on the proper installation, use, maintenance, and benefits of energy products; develop energy strategies that incorporate considerations for the health, safety, livelihoods, and well-being of crisis-affected people – especially women and children – and their surrounding environment; and identify opportunities to transform short term solutions into long term income-generating activities, such as locally producing improved cook stoves or firewood alternatives. These activities build the capacity of crisis-affected communities to cope with future disasters and encourage humanitarian actors to consider longer-term strategies. Despite these many challenges, many tools and resources do exist for humanitarian practitioners, and with some adaptation and training these could be used to facilitate energy programming in humanitarian settings.

In response to these challenges, the humanitarian sector has been taking action in recent years to narrow the capacity gap. Current initiatives such as the Safe Access to Energy (SAFE) Humanitarian Working Group and the Moving Energy Initiative (MEI) have focused on specifically building institutional capacity through trainings, targeted reporting and building institutional awareness. Recognizing the technical expertise gap, multiple organizations such as UNHCR, WFP and the SAFE working group have published open calls for experts in the form of Energy Expert Rosters. Different innovative online platforms such as ENERGYCoP and Sustainable Energy Technology for Food (SET4Food) use open tendering and transparent data to connect private sector expertise to field energy need.

Highlighting best practice cases can provide examples on innovative ways training and expertise have been used in light of longer term sustainable energy practices.