Getting Cooking Energy Right in the Post-2015 Indicators

August 8, 2015

Access to sustainable, safe energy has been left out of previous international development agendas and ENERGIA and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Alliance) are committed to helping reverse this trend. The lack of access to clean and efficient cooking solutions has significant impacts on health, economic, and social well-being, gender equality, and the environment – all areas of critical importance to the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Cooking over open fires and traditional stoves is not only harmful on its own, it is a root cause of poverty, gender inequality, and environmental degradation. Conversely, integrating clean cooking into development agendas and approaches can catalyze impacts across all of these areas. ENERGIA and the Alliance are working towards the full and accurate integration of clean cooking and related issues into the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, in particular the Agenda’s indicator framework.

ENERGIA and the Alliance are contributing to the work of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGI), which is in the process of reviewing and finalizing the indicator framework to measure the success of the new global goals.

The Alliance and ENERGIA stand together for the consistent and accurate inclusion of cooking energy, a particularly important concern for women in the developing world, throughout the Post-2015 indicator framework. We have written a joint statement that reviews the current indicators related to cooking energy and proposes modified indicators that we consider essential to getting cooking energy right in the Post-2015 indicators:

 

Summary of Indicator Recommendations

Goal & Target	Current indicator as written in the second iteration of this proposed indicator list	Indicators recommended by the Alliance and ENERGIA
Goal 7,  Target 7.1	“Percentage of population with primary reliance on non-solid fuels (%).”	“Percentage of households primarily using clean and efficient cooking fuels and technologies”
Goal 3,  Target 3.9	“Population in urban areas exposed to outdoor air pollution levels above WHO guideline levels.”	“Mean air pollution of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5).”
Goal 3,  Target 3.9	None	“Number of premature deaths attributable to ambient and household air pollution.”
Goal 5,  Target 5.4	“Proportion of household within 15 minutes of nearest water source.” (Recommended by UN Women, but not currently listed as priority indicator)	“Proportion of households within 15 minutes of fuel and clean water.”

 

Universal access to safe, sustainable cooking energy is an imperative to reach SDG 7 on Energy. Addressing pollution caused by inefficient cooking must be represented under SDG 3 on Health. In order to reach SDG 5 on Gender Equality, the amount of time that women and girls spend collecting fuel and cooking must be reduced. Together these joint recommendations will address key areas left out of the Millennium Development Goals.

The Alliance and ENERGIA urge the IAEG-SDGs to include the above recommendations as global priority indicators in the Post-2015 framework.  More than twenty other stakeholders have shown their support of this joint statement by adding their logos. If you are interested in adding your organization’s logo, please write to us at s.oparaocha@etcnl.nl  All stakeholders are urged to use the joint statement to advocate at national and international level during the “Open Consultation on first list of possible indicators open to major groups and stakeholders”, from 11 August to 04 September 2015.

Furthermore, kindly note in advocacy efforts, that the umbrella statement for the list of proposals for SDG indicators states that “All indicators should be disaggregated by sex, age, residence (U/R) and other characteristics, as relevant and possible.“ ENERGIA strongly supports this statement and plans to be closely involved at later stages in the conceptualization and definition of disaggregation by sex for all energy-related indicators, in particular the indicator on energy access including electricity, but also indicators on renewable energy and energy efficiency.

ENERGIA networks in Tanzania, Botswana, Senegal and Uganda are currently engaging with national agencies charged with representing their countries in the SDG indicator negotiations, and seeking to participate in national stakeholder consultations, to advocate for these perspectives.

A webinar is planned on September 3 to provide insight on the ENERGIA and Alliance advocacy strategies and efforts to integrate clean cooking into the major global moments of 2015.

JOIN THE WEBINAR ON SEPTEMBER 3rd at this link.

Did you miss our webinar, you can now watch back the full webinar on Youtube