17 Sustainable Development Goals: How India Can Share Unique Examples For The Entire World

Reliance Foundation, Observer Research Foundation, and the United Nations India Office have published a compilation of 17 great examples of work in India on each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - Ideas, Innovation, Implementation: India’s Journey Towards the SDGs. The United Nations in September held its General Assembly. One of the key discussions was around the Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) and the countries are looking at how they have performed in their halfway mark for these goals. Implementing these ideas could hasten our journey to the SDGs, and provide a strong foundation on which a post-2030 agenda might build further.

An overview of SDG 7: Empowering Women in the Clean Energy Value Chain

It aims to ensure that everyone has access to inexpensive, sustainable energy. Nonetheless, women bear a disproportionate amount of the time and labour burden related to lack of access to contemporary energy sources and are underrepresented in the energy value chains. In order to address women’s underrepresentation in the energy value chain, the Women’s Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Energy Programme was created.

As part of the programme, UN Women and the Madhya Pradesh Urja Vikas Nigam (Department of Renewable Energy) co-financed a pilot programme to bring clean renewable energy to Anganwadi centres (rural child care centres) in Madhya Pradesh. The pilot installed decentralised solar energy systems at 63 centres in Alirajpur and Burhanpur districts and also trained the anganwadi workers to maintain the upkeep of the solar systems.

The programme demonstrates how the private sector, non-profit organisations and government can come together for transformational development, showing how rural women can benefit from renewable energy not just as beneficiaries of modern energy, but as participants in energy value chains.

Energy access is not gender-neutral

Men and women are affected differently by energy policies due to their varying roles at home, communities and workplaces. For example, when energy is scarce, the burden of collecting leaves, twigs and dung for fuel often falls on women and girls.

Research has shown that access to electricity can allow women to participate in the labour force and unlock their economic potential. In Guatemala, for example, access to electricity reduced the time spent by women in cooking by 34 per cent. In Nicaragua, 23 per cent of rural women were more likely to take up paid work if they had access to electricity. In India, if women were able to participate equally as men in the labour market, it would boost the country’s GDP by 16 per cent by 2025.

Supporting women as agents of change in clean energy

UN Women launched a global programme on Women’s Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Energy at COP21 in Paris in 2015. In India, the programme focuses on the aspirational districts. By improving access to clean energy and income of women in these areas, UN Women and its partners aim to deliver on the promise of ‘leaving no one behind’ as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Impact

The programme supported the needs of women at the grassroots and reached out to the most marginalised of women and children in rural areas. While the solar-energy-powered Anganwadi Centres in Madhya Pradesh led to an increase in the number of children enrolling and staying for education, nutrition, and health services; the solar dehydration units in Maharashtra and Odisha boosted small-scale farmers’ skills and incomes.

The programme successfully adopts a holistic approach to build and strengthen the ecosystem that impacts women’s energy access. Most importantly, it not only builds awareness among women about renewable energy solutions for domestic and productive use, but also demonstrates scalable solutions led and managed by women, a model that has global significance, as UN Women shares learnings from India on the world stage.

To read further, download the book now: https://reliancefoundation.org/sdgs_publication