Applying a participatory approach to energy planning

Although energy is a significant concern for poor rural communities, participatory approaches often fail to identify it as an issue. Energy is vital to nearly every development activity and central to improving livelihoods. Yet development practitioners often fail to ask relevant questions at the needs assessment stage of participatory development project cycles. As a result, energy needs are largely ignored.

The final reportof a DFID-funded project coordinated by the University of Reading and Gamos Ltd suggestshow to promote wider awareness of the role of energy and its impacts onlivelihoods. Facilitators of participatory processes are advised on how to incorporatecommunities’ energy concerns into development projects. Research andlessons from workshops in Ghanaand India highlightedlinkages between training and needs assessment.

The research pointed to the need to improve understandingof sustainable livelihoods approaches among development workers to raiseawareness of cross-cutting themes such as energy. Such a focus would broadentheir knowledge of the range of assets people have at their disposal, theinstitutional frameworks within which they operate and the mix of activitiesthey undertake to maximise their livelihoods. If such considerations arecombined with needs assessments that are free from pre-conceived ideas of whatdevelopment programmes will deliver, participatory processes may reflect energyneeds better.

The inattention to energy was highlighted bythe researchers. Officially, India is committed to rural energy projects toenhance electricity supply, promote the availability of kerosene and fuelwood and encourage conservation by improving efficiencyand providing alternative fuel sources such as renewable energy. In practice,however, their impact has been modest – less than a third of rural householdsare electrified, kerosene accounts for only seven percent of rural energy consumptionand social forestry projects have made limited improvements to fuelwood supplies for the rural poor.

A survey of development practitioners and institutionsteaching development studies showed that:

• Development agencies, particularly those attachedto governments, have a restricted mandate which constraints their activities. Thus,agencies concerned with community water problems for instance, take no actionon other expressed needs.
• Those who specifically deal with household andwomen’s issues are more aware of energy needs, particularly those involving fuelwood.
• Their education and training has given mostdevelopment workers expertise in such priority sectors as agriculture andhealth – few have been exposed to energy issues.
• Only one of thirteen UKand Dutch development studies centres surveyed specifically mention ‘energy’ intheir prospectus.

The key factorbehind this lack of attention to energy is the insufficient attention paid toparticipatory and decentralised approaches to programme planning andimplementation – both on the part of state and non-governmental agencies. Thereis a marked absence of literature on how to employ effective participatorymethods to energy projects.

The researchers callon development actors to:

• specify whenparticipation is being used and what its objective are
• stop ignoringthe differences between issues highlighted during initial needs assessment and thoseidentified by agenda-led planning and design
• be aware of the potential inconsistency of usingagenda-driven needs assessment exercises for sector-specific interventionswhile also maintaining that interventions should be genuinely demand-led inorder to be sustainable
• recognise thedangers – already acute in parts of India – that mechanistic application of participatorytools can cause ‘participation fatigue’ where communities to stop respondingpositively.

Inorder for the importance of energy to be reflected in development projects, therole of energy in livelihood planning has to be recognised. Participatory approachescan contribute to this. However, facilitators conducting needs assessment mustrecognise that popular participatory tools may not identify communities’priorities and that dialogue based on long-term relationships may be morerelevant for identifying needs.