I enjoyed reading the two chapters because when I thought about important resources people lack, I usually do not think of energy. I think more about access to school, hospitals, food/water, shelter. But energy is integral to many of those categories and this reading gave a good overview. It was also surprising that smoke is one of the largest causes of ill-health and death when people don't have safe methods of using the stove and fuel. Lot's of people seem totally dependent on firewood for their cooking and fuel. How does this affect deforestation? I wonder how effective the approaches taken to rely less on wood have worked?
I also liked the gender analysis part that explained how energy is also an equity issue. Women in the developing world have work days that are much longer than men because they bear the burden of supplying energy resources. This affects them by greater fatigue, nutritional deprivation, withdrawal of children. Energy poverty disproportionately affects women compared to men.
Your final statement is incredibly important, and true even with an edit: On the whole, "poverty disproportionately affects women compared to men."
ReplyDeleteAnd the resources you list are absolutely important but, as you said, energy is integral to so many resources. Firewood and deforestation is complicated and I'll discuss it more later in the class. However, most studies suggest that deforestation is driven more by agriculture and charcoal than firewood. However, the data is very hard to come by and I am not convinced that firewood doesn't also drive deforestation too. And as for efficacy, the approaches generally do not have rosy outcomes, although there are exceptions.