Strategy on Tree-based Energy

Energy is essential for individuals and populations to escape from poverty and move onto a path of greater well-being, security and prosperity. Families require energy to cook, stay warm, light their homes, and engage in productive activities that allow them to improve their livelihoods. Bereft of liquid fuels or electricity, for instance, farms are unable to mechanize, and communities become “stuck” without energy to increase the productivity of their enterprises and undertakings.Although important global and national policies endorse providing the poor with greater access to a range of types of energy, about 2.7 billion people worldwide are almost wholly dependent upon solid fuel, mostly woody biomass, for cooking and heating. Woody biomass is one of the most renewable sources of energy; however, this reliance is currently neither healthful nor sustainable. Demand for woodfuel is growing and, in many regions, outstripping supply because of population growth as well as urbanization and increased incomes, the latter two of which lead to a rise in the use of charcoal for cooking. All of this comes at a great social and economic cost. Women and children spend many hours each day collecting firewood; human health is damaged by indoor air pollution; and charcoal production is degrading large areas of remaining dry forest as well as other forest types.Bioenergy can be both healthful and sustainable. What are needed are bioenergy systems that, among other things, reduce drudgery and do not contribute to ill health or undermine the ecosystems upon which life depends. This document lays out an approach to developing various forms of bioenergy derived primarily from trees. It also recognises the role of trees on water catchments in supporting other types of renewable energy such as hydropower.The strategy’s aim is first to promote pathways that address the provision of energy to meet basic needs, such as cooking, warmth and lighting. Its second aim is to promote pathways that provide more “modern” – in the sense of advanced and innovative – energy systems that use bioenergy, such as biodiesel from tree seed, to improve income generation and reduce poverty. These two aims are to be pursued in such a way that they support a third important aim – the improved management, protection and enhancement of ecosystems and productive landscapes. Greater use of sustainable and renewable bioenergy will help to mitigate climate change. Among the approaches outlined in this strategy are: improving access to firewood; making charcoal production and use more sustainable and efficient; developing systems to generate electricity from woody biomass; and developing liquid biofuels. The focus of the last of these will be on sustainable production systems that integrate agroforestry and sustainable landscape management to ensure that biofuel production mitigates greenhouse gas emissions, improves land health and protects ecosystem services and does not compromise food production. Poor people in developing countries will be at the centre of the programme proposed by this strategy, while strong policies and strengthened institutions will be the basis for change.The strategy employs a “research in development” approach that will require ICRAF to work closely with other CGIAR Centres, other research institutions and, crucially, with development partners.

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