Engendering Project Planning

3.1   Project Planning Situations

Embedding a gender approach while planning energy projects at community level can take place in two distinctly different situations. The ideal situation would be first to determine the priorities of the people (both men and women) themselves and then to focus the project, or multiple projects, on assisting them in improving their livelihoods and making them more sustainable. Commonly known as integrated development, this approach makes it possible to address a number of issues simultaneously, for example health and education; energy is an instrumental component rather than the focus.

Many projects, however, fall short of an integrated development approach. In the energy technology area, the many NGOs and private sector companies focus primarily on one type of technology, although many offer two or even three. In essence, they are driven by the fact that they are “selling” a limited range of energy options. This type of planning situation is identified as the single energy technology situation.

These two main planning situations are discussed in more detail below. It is assumed that both use the project cycle and that the integrated development situation uses a sustainable livelihoods (SL) framework. The SL approach integrates environmental, social, and economic issues into a holistic framework for analysis and programming from the beginning. By using both participatory and policy (cross-sectoral) tools, the SL approach highlights the inter-linkages between livelihood systems at the micro-level and the macro policies, for example the withdrawal of kerosene subsidies, that affect these livelihoods.

Integrated Development Situation

The integrated development situation concerns the type of project that is not primarily concerned with energy but with overall development within a community. Energy is just one of many issues to be addressed, and the project managers are usually not specialists in any particular sort of energy. The range of energy options that the project could consider may in theory be quite broad, since there is no vested interest in a particular technology. In practice, however, energy has hardly been included in most integrated development exercises, or has been marginalized in them. This is often due to lack of understanding of the importance of energy and/or lack of knowledge of the full range of options.

When a community has identified energy as a priority, an improved approach to planning might consider the whole range of energy-using activities carried out by the men and women who are the intended beneficiaries, and then consider which of these activities should get priority, before deciding what the technical possibilities are. Determining the priorities should be done by the community. Following the prioritisation, it might be necessary to look at the barriers to adoption of such technical possibilities, on a gendered basis.

A variation on this integrated development situation is the “women in development” approach, in which the project has women as the target group. The aim of this sort of project is generally to provide benefits specifically for women’s development, and such projects are often empowerment-oriented. Questions then arise concerning the extent to which energy is a key to such development, the priority which women accord it, and what kinds of barriers may need to be overcome to solve the identified energy problems.

Single Energy Technology Situation

As noted, the nature of institutions in the energy sector means that many projects in fact have a “single interest” character and are promoted and carried out by specialists in the particular technology. In this situation, projects focus on a particular type of energy technology: for example, solar applications, biogas, improved stoves, micro-hydro systems, or mini-grids.

However, it is important to note that different energy technologies may provide either a single energy service (e.g., improved stoves for cooking) or multiple possible services (e.g., community electricity systems using micro-hydro systems, mini-grids, etc.). In the latter case, it is essential to determine the priorities of both men and women to ensure that the intervention has a positive impact on people’s livelihoods and also addresses the gender objectives of the project.

This single energy technology situation also includes interventions on the supply side, for example projects that are concerned with supporting community forest management for wood fuel supply or utilisation of agro-processing residues through briquetting.