A Global Plan of Action - Background, Visions and Outcomes

Energy As a Priority Area for Humanitarian Response

‘Thriving, and not just surviving’ requires sustainable energy. Without energy, families cannot cook their food, heat and light their homes, or power their businesses. Communities cannot power their health centres, schools or public spaces. Currently humanitarian assistance relies heavily on fossil fuels to enable efficient and rapid delivery of essential services to the communities in need and for powering premises in remote locations.

The world is facing the highest level of displacement on record with 65.6 million people displaced by conflict or crisis (UNCHR, 2017). In addition, disasters displace three times more people than conflicts: an average of 26.4 million people per year have been displaced from their homes by disasters since 2008 (IDMC, 2017), a trend likely to continue with climate change.

Of the displaced people who are living in camp settings, around 90% are without electricity access and 80% rely on solid fuels for cooking. During humanitarian crises, access to safe, reliable, and clean energy for crisis-affected people can be difficult to achieve. With funding shortages and inadequate policies to support the humanitarian community in providing sustainable and clean energy, current energy practices are often inefficient, polluting, unsafe for the users, and harmful to the surrounding environment.

Considering energy needs during response can have a positive impact on aid efficiency on the mid- and longer term: by reducing expenses related to high costs of diesel fuel, more financial resources will be available to spend on protection and immediate assistance. In addition, the long-term health and environmental impacts of polluting fuel sources on displaced people, which reduce the resilience of communities and hamper progress, could be solved with the systematic deployment of renewable energy. Without access to sustainable energy the options for building programmes focused on self-reliance of communities and improving livelihoods are limited.

While it is challenging to integrate sustainable energy at the start of humanitarian programming, it is possible to a certain extent. Energy planning tools, technical guidelines, business models, and procedures already exist to support humanitarian assistance in delivering suitable energy. Working in partnership across humanitarian and development organisations is critical to delivering this.

Energy Enables

Sustainable energy is a key enabler which must be the heart of people-centred responses to displacement situations. The use of energy is a central part of all our day to day lives. Whether that is for boiling water, heating our homes, charging mobile phones, cooking food, or powering schools and offices: energy is at the heart of what we do. Access to sustainable energy is needed to deliver better health, education, and livelihood opportunities for both displaced people and host communities.

Energy enables but it is also essential while working in displacement settings: Many of the core pillars of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework are underpinned by energy:

(i) Reception and admission - electricity is required to power reception centres and during emergency responses. Sustainable energy products such as solar lamps are often included in the emergency provisions provided to displaced people during crises to enhance their quality of life.

(ii)    Support for immediate and ongoing needs – sustainable energy is needed for homes, schools, and businesses to enable people to live dignified and productive lives.

(iii)   Support for host countries and communities – sustainable energy services can reduce the environmental and resource burden on host governments and local communities. Energy services for camp settings can also be expended to host communities to support their national and regional development plans.

(iv)   Durable solutions – affordable electricity is necessary for businesses and access to sustainable energy enables livelihood opportunities. Activities around energy can be combined with training and capacity building to provide know how which can be used for a living after resettlement or repatriation.

 

The positive impacts of sustainable energy are measurable and quantifiable in terms of reducing costs, limiting carbon emissions, and providing jobs and livelihood opportunities. The Global Plan of Action aims to develop sustainable energy delivery further to support the needs of displaced people globally.

Visions 

The case for change is clear. The delegates of the Berlin Conference agreed to collaborate to deliver the vision that: Every person affected by conflict or natural disaster has access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy services by 2030. While the people of concern are at the front and center of our efforts, there is also the infrastructure and operations side of humanitarian response.

For that, the Vision for the system is: "The share of renewable energy in the humanitarian relief system is increased substantially and energy efficiency in humanitarian operations is improved." To achieve these overall visions, concrete actions in five key areas will be necessary:

Planning and coordination is vital to ensuring that no displaced people are left behind in the provision of energy assistance, as well as for the long-term improvement of energy programming through knowledge sharing, learning, and increased collaboration between actors. To be effective, planning and coordination mechanisms must directly engage key decision-makers and staff at all levels. Crucially, displaced people and host communities must be included in the design and implementation of energy programs to ensure that their needs and priorities are reflected.

Policy and advocacy efforts are needed at global, national and agency levels to address energy challenges in humanitarian settings. At an international multilateral level, this means explicitly recognizing the issue of sustainable energy for displaced people in global policy agendas. At national host country level, this means showing where sustainable energy solutions can contribute to national and local sustainable development objectives and facilitate the relevant aid and investment. At agency level, it means incorporating energy considerations and best practice into core programming.

Innovative finance approaches must be explored to support the design and delivery of sustainable energy solutions across the humanitarian sector. There is a need to bolster finance for long term sustainable infrastructure and renewable investments, as well as support humanitarian agencies to incorporate energy programming into their budgets, address energy needs in acute emergencies, and shift to more environmentally sustainable modes of delivery.

Technical expertise and capacity building will prioritize awareness raising, training and capacity building in operational agencies to ensure high quality and well-coordinated field programs. There is a need to holistically outline the specific training and capacity needs of stakeholders across the value chain so user appropriate training methods can be delivered. To better ensure technology adoption, the end user capacity and energy needs are vital to understand. The skills and capacities of displaced people will be utilised to ensure that they have an active role in future energy interventions, ensure they have appropriate technical knowledge to enable delivery, and create jobs and livelihood opportunities for both displaced people and host communities.

Data, evidence, monitoring and evaluation about energy needs and interventions must be high-quality, accurate and relevant for users to ensure programs are reducing energy poverty and the associated protection costs. Relevant data should ideally be collected in every program, utilizing existing mobile platform tools when possible, and integrated into humanitarian response. Non-personalized data should be digitally shared openly between stakeholders. Where possible data should be harmonised and standardised to enable comparison and to facilitate effective monitoring and evaluation.