Energy

Intersectionality and Energy Transitions: A Review of Gender, Social Equity and Low-Carbon Energy

Citation:

Johnson, Oliver W., Jenny Yi-Chen Han, Anne-Louise Knight, Sofie Mortensen, May Thazin Aung, Michael Boyland, and Bernadette P. Resurrección. 2020. “Intersectionality and Energy Transitions: A Review of Gender, Social Equity and Low-Carbon Energy.” Energy Research & Social Science 70: 101774.

Authors: Oliver W. Johnson, Jenny Yi-Chen Han, Anne-Louise Knight, Sofie Mortensen, May Thazin Aung, Michael Boyland, Bernadette P. Resurrección

Abstract:

Transitions to low-carbon energy systems are essential to meeting global commitments to climate change mi- tigation. Yet “greening” energy systems may not make them any fairer, inclusive or just. In this paper, we review the academic literature to understand the state of knowledge on how diffusion of low-carbon technologies impacts gender and social equity in intersectional ways. Our findings indicate that renewable energy projects alone cannot achieve gender and social equity, as energy interventions do not automatically tackle the structural dynamics embedded within socio-cultural and socio-economic contexts. If existing power asymmetries related to access and resource distribution are not addressed early on, the same structural inequalities will simply be replicated and transferred over into new energy regimes.

Keywords: energy transitions, low-carbon energy, climate change, renewable energy, gender equality, social equity

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, Energy, Land Tenure, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Year: 2020

Gender Equity and Renewable Energies

Citation:

Clancy, Joy, Sheila Oparaocha, and Ulrike Roehr. 2006. "Gender Equity and Renewable Energies." In Renewable Energy: A Global Review of Technologies, Policies and Markets, edited by Dirk Assmann et al., 262-81. London: Routledge.

Authors: Joy Clancy , Sheila Oparaocha, Ulrike Roehr

Abstract:

 

Topics: Gender, Gender Roles, Infrastructure, Energy

Year: 2006

Bioenergy Policies in Africa: Mainstreaming Gender amid an Increasing Focus on Biofuels

Citation:

Molony, Thomas. 2011. "Bioenergy Policies in Africa: Mainstreaming Gender amid an Increasing Focus on Biofuels." Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining 5 (3): 330-41.

Author: Thomas Molony

Abstract:

Many developing countries are now working to update their existing energy strategies and to formulate their bioenergy policies to accommodate rises in domestic and external supply and demand for biofuels. This paper presents a case for mainstreaming gender into African countries’ bioenergy policies, and uses a review of the literature on gender and bioenergy to suggest some important avenues for future research to expand the current poor state of information on gender and the newer issue of biofuels. The paper opens with a brief discussion on the motivation for interest in biofuels in some African countries and suggests that in the integrated global context of biofuels, the conditions that generate inequality between rich and poor remain unchanged. It then discusses equity and energy poverty, and points to the lack of empirical evidence on gender issues relating specifically to biofuels. From this it turns to our knowledge of what the existing state of broader bioenergy use can tell us about bringing gender equity to African national bioenergy policies, and suggests that gender equity can be ‘energized’ through a perspective that focuses as much on social roles and relations between men and women as it does on ascribed responsibilities. National level bioenergy Policy Working Groups (PWGs) are then introduced as having an important role to play in ensuring that gender issues are mainstreamed into bioenergy policy within the context of the increasing focus on biofuels.

Keywords: gender, women, bioenergy, policy, development, Africa

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Energy Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Malawi, Mali, Tanzania

Year: 2011

A Green New Deal Without Growth?

Citation:

Mastinia, Ricardos, Giorgos Kallis, and Jason Hickel. 2021. “A Green New Deal Without Growth?” Ecological Economics 179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106832.

Authors: Mastinia, Ricardos , Giorgos Kallis, Jason Hickel

Abstract:

The IPCC warns that in order to keep global warming under 1.5°, global emissions must be cut to zero by 2050. Policymakers and scholars debate how best to decarbonise the energy system, and what socio-economic changes might be necessary. Here we review the strengths, weaknesses, and synergies of two prominent climate change mitigation narratives: the Green New Deal and degrowth. Green New Deal advocates propose a plan to coordinate and finance a large-scale overhaul of the energy system. Some see economic growth as crucial to financing this transition, and claim that the Green New Deal will further stimulate growth. By contrast, proponents of degrowth maintain that growth makes it more difficult to accomplish emissions reductions, and argue for reducing the scale of energy use to enable a rapid energy transition. The two narratives converge on the importance of public investments for financing the energy transition, industrial policies to lead the decarbonisation of the economy, socializing the energy sector to allow longer investment horizons, and expanding the welfare state to increase social protection. We conclude that despite important tensions, there is room for synthesizing Green New Deal and degrowth-minded approaches into a ‘Green New Deal without growth.’

Keywords: Green New Deal, degrowth, decarbonisation, green growth, ecological economics, political ecology

Topics: Economies, Ecological Economics, Public Finance, Infrastructure, Energy

Year: 2021

Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development

Citation:

Resurrección, Bernadette P., and Rebecca Elmhirst, eds. 2020. Negotiating Gender Expertise in Environment and Development. Routledge.

Authors: Bernadette P. Resurrección, Rebecca Elmhirst

Abstract:

This book casts a light on the daily struggles and achievements of ‘gender experts’ working in environment and development organisations, where they are charged with advancing gender equality and social equity and aligning this with visions of sustainable development.

Developed through a series of conversations convened by the book’s editors with leading practitioners from research, advocacy and donor organisations, this text explores the ways gender professionals – specialists and experts, researchers, organizational focal points – deal with personal, power-laden realities associated with navigating gender in everyday practice. In turn, wider questions of epistemology and hierarchies of situated knowledges are examined, where gender analysis is brought into fields defined as largely techno-scientific, positivist and managerialist. Drawing on insights from feminist political ecology and feminist science, technology and society studies, the authors and their collaborators reveal and reflect upon strategies that serve to mute epistemological boundaries and enable small changes to be carved out that on occasions open up promising and alternative pathways for an equitable future.

This book will be of great relevance to scholars and practitioners with an interest in environment and development, science and technology, and gender and women’s studies more broadly.

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Troubling Gender Expertise in Environment and Development: Voices from Feminist Political Ecology

Part 1: The Politics of Identity and Boundary Marking

1. Strategic Reflexivity in Linking Gender Equality with Sustainable Energy: An Engineer in the Gender Profession
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Joy Clancy

2. Is Epistemic Authority Masculine? Reflections on Gender, Status and Knowledge in International Agricultural Research and Development
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Gordon Prain

3. Epistemic Crossings of a Marine Biologist through Gender Encounters
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Maeve Nightingale

4. Beyond the Business Case for Gender: A Feminist Political Ecologist in the FAO
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Clara Mi Young Park

5. Challenges and Dilemmas of Integrating Gender in the Field of Environment and Development at SEI: Metrics and Metaphors
By Andreea R. Torre
In conversation with Natalia Biskupska, Marisa Escobar, Laura Forni, Emily Ghosh, Ha Nguyen, and Lisa Segnestam

Part 2: The Politics of Knowledge in Environment and Development Realms

6. The Politics of Feminist Translation in Water Management
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Seema Kulkarni and Margreet Zwarteveen

7. Embodied Engagement with Gender and Agrobiodiversity: Leveraging Transformative Moments in Multidisciplinary Teams
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Marléne Elias

8. Please Genderise My Log Frame: Interactions with Technical Specialists for Gender Mainstreaming in Environment Projects
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Annette Wallgren And Victor Tsang

9. The Gender Professional as Ethnographer: Working for Equitable Forests
By Rebecca Elmhirst and Bernadette P. Resurrección
In conversation with Carol J. Pierce Colfer

10. Disaster Risk Governance and Gender Professionals: Command-and-Control and Re-Doing Gender
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Maria Holtsberg, Napapan Der Kinderen, and Hilde Jakobsen

11. Lifting the Barriers of Integrating Gender in Livestock Production
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Nicoline De Haan

12. We Build the Power in Empowerment: Feminist Activism at the Forefront of Environment and Climate Change Arenas
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Kate Lappin

Part 3: The Power of Gender Champions

13. Supporting Gender Experts: A Donor Perspective
By Bernadette P. Resurrección and Rebecca Elmhirst
In conversation with Maria Von Berlekom, Eva Johansson, Orawan Raweekoon and AnnaKarin Norling

14. Gender Equality Work At USAID: Mandatory as Applicable
By Kai Spratt And Charles 'Will' Lewis II

Afterword: Gender Expertise, Environmental Crisis and the Ethos of Care

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Infrastructure, Energy, Water & Sanitation

Year: 2020

Energy Archives: Of Rocks, Rubbish, and Feminist Feeling in Aliki Saragas’s Strike a Rock

Citation:

Strauss, Helene. 2020. “Energy Archives: Of Rocks, Rubbish, and Feminist Feeling in Aliki Saragas’s Strike a Rock.” Subjectivity 13 (4): 254–80. 

Author: Helene Strauss

Abstract:

Taking the film Strike a Rock (dir. Saragas 2017) as a case study, this paper attends to the affective charge of rocks and rubbish—in their material, symbolic, aesthetic and archival forms—as a feminist challenge to violent extractivism’s intergenerational echo. Set in Nkaneng, a township adjacent to the Lonmin Platinum mine in Marikana, where in 2012 the South African police opened fire on a group of striking miners, the film traces some of the means by which local women have been negotiating enduring forms of political and economic impasse in their communities. This paper tests an anthrodecentric approach to extractive capitalism’s historical exploitation of mineral, mechanical, muscular and psychic energies as a means to accelerating resistance to forms of violence at once human and ecological. It identifies in Strike a Rock’s documentary aesthetics an energy archive that animates resistant, regenerative political modalities of post-apartheid feminist affect.

Keywords: capitalism, extractives, resistance

Topics: Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2020

Patriarchy and (Electric) Power? A Feminist Political Ecology of Solar Energy Use in Mexico and the United States

Citation:

Buechler, Stephanie, Verónica Vázquez-García, Karina Guadalupe Martínez-Molina, and Dulce María Sosa-Capistrán. 2020. “Patriarchy and (Electric) Power? A Feminist Political Ecology of Solar Energy Use in Mexico and the United States.” Energy Research & Social Science 70: 1-10.

Authors: Stephanie Buechler, Verónica Vázquez-García, Karina Guadalupe Martínez-Molina, Dulce María Sosa-Capistrán

Abstract:

This study combines the use of feminist political ecology and a water-energy-food nexus lens to analyze gender, age and social class in women’s experiences with small-scale solar energy projects in urban and rural Arizona, USA and Zacatecas, Mexico. Unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy lends itself to more decentralized forms of production, offering an opportunity for individuals and communities (rather than corporations) to shape a more sustainable energy landscape. Understanding women’s roles and needs related to small-scale solar energy projects is essential; women remain the most important decision-makers and laborers for household and small-scale livelihood-related energy use. The study focused on the roles of women community leaders and male self-taught innovators in small-scale solar energy technology training, uptake and dissemination. It also analyzed barriers for elderly and low-income women to access solar energy. Most of the solar energy was related to water use for household chores or for irrigation of urban or rural agriculture. Some projects assisted women in meeting their household and livelihood needs in multiple ways and were part of broader household and community-level sustainability initiatives. The policy and institutional context in which the small-scale projects were inserted shaped women’s access to training and technologies. Some projects and programs missed the very populations they were intended to serve due to funding politicization. 

 

Keywords: feminist political ecology, WEF nexus, solar energy, women, Arizona, Zacatecas

Topics: Age, Class, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Infrastructure, Energy, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico, United States of America

Year: 2020

Energy Consumption by Gender in Some European Countries

Citation:

Räty, R., and A. Carlsson-Kanyama. 2010. “Energy Consumption by Gender in Some European Countries.” Energy Policy 38 (1): 646–9. 

Authors: R. Räty, A. Carlsson-Kanyama

Abstract:

Household total energy use has been estimated in numerous studies in recent decades and differences have mainly been explained by levels of income/expenditure. Studies of gender consumption patterns show that men eat more meat than women and drive longer distances, potentially leading to higher total energy use by men. In this study we calculated the total energy use for male and female consumption patterns in four European countries (Germany, Norway, Greece and Sweden) by studying single households. Significant differences in total energy use were found in two countries, Greece and Sweden. The largest differences found between men and women were for travel and eating out, alcohol and tobacco, where men used much more energy than women. We suggest that these findings are policy relevant for the EU, which aims to mainstream gender issues into all activities and to lower its total energy use.

Keywords: energy, gender, consumption

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: Europe, Central Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Germany, Greece, Norway, Sweden

Year: 2010

Women and Climate Change - Impact and Agency in Human Rights, Security, and Economic Development

Citation:

Alam, Mayesha, Rukmani Bhatia, and Briana Mawby. 2015. Women and Climate Change - Impact and Agency in Human Rights, Security, and Economic Development. Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. doi:10.1163/9789004322714_cclc_2015-0019-008.

Authors: Mayesha Alam, Rukmani Bhatia, Briana Mawby

Annotation:

Summary:
This report comes at an important time of international observance when new commitments to action will be made, coinciding not only with the fifteenth anniversaries of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, but also in anticipation of the Conference of Parties (COP) 21 conference in Paris in late 2015. In an effort to remedy the dearth of existing literature on women and climate change, this report makes an important contribution by covering a wide variety of issues; highlighting both impact and agency; mapping examples of solutions that have proven to be successful; and holding relevance to policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and students. The findings of the report are based on and buttressed by a thorough examination of international conventions and protocols; national action plans; journal articles and other scholarly publications; reports by government and multilateral agencies; policy briefs and guidance notes, as well as civil society reports. The analysis is also informed by and draws upon a series of consultations with experts from around the world in research, advocacy, program design and implementation, and global leadership positions. As a result, the study represents an interdisciplinary endeavor with far-reaching practical applicability.

The report frames climate change as a universal human rights imperative, a global security threat, and a pervasive economic strain. Cataloguing the effects of climate change, the study examines the gendered dimensions of sea level rising and flooding; deforestation and ocean acidification; water scarcity; energy production and energy poverty; and climate-related displacement and migration. As part of this analysis, the report not only identifies how women are strained differentially and severely by the effects of climate change, but also how women have, continue to, and could serve as agents of mitigation and adaptation. For example, the section on water scarcity details how climate change causes droughts and soil erosion, which not only disenfranchises women farmers, who are the majority of the agricultural workforce in Africa and elsewhere, but also undermines hygiene and sanitation, affecting maternal health, women’s economic productivity, and girls’ education. Similarly, the section on energy identifies the gendered health, economic, and human security consequences of unmet energy needs of families that lack access to affordable and dependable energy sources. It also highlights the solutions that are working, such as the work of Grameen Shakti to provide clean, renewable energy to rural communities in Bangladesh, in doing so building a new cadre of women solar engineers and technicians.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Climate Displacement, Education, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Girls, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Infrastructure, Energy, Water & Sanitation

Year: 2015

The Nature of Women, Peace and Security: A Colombian Perspective

Citation:

Yoshida, Keina, and Lina M Céspedes-Báez. 2021. “The Nature of Women, Peace and Security: A Colombian Perspective.” International Affairs 97 (1): 17–34.

Authors: Keina Yoshida, Lina M Céspedes-Báez

Abstract:

On 12 November 2019, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), handed down a landmark decision in the case of ‘Katsa Su’ concerning the Awa indigenous group in Colombia. The Colombian conflict has particularly affected indigenous groups, such as the Awa people, and has also affected the territory in which they live. In this article, we explore the decision of the JEP, within a broader analysis of the Colombian peace agreement and consider how it might help us to think about the place of the environment in the Women, Peace and Security agenda and in international law. We call for a gendered and intersectional approach to environmental peacebuilding which is attentive to the importance of gender and different groups. Further, we highlight how the Colombian example shows how concepts such as relief, recovery and reparations are often confined in international law to women's recovery and redress with respect to sexual violence and yet, this conceptualization should be much broader. The Katsa Su case provides an example of the fact that reparations and redress must address other forms of violence, spiritual and ecological, which women also suffer in times of conflict.

Keywords: Americas, Energy and Environment, International Governance, Law and Ethics, conflict, Security and Defence

Topics: Conflict, Environment, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Infrastructure, Energy, International Law, Peacebuilding, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2021

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