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Earth Summit must address the "double bottom line": tackling poverty without costing the earth.

August 16, 2002

Governments meeting at the Earth Summit this month should agree to a global action plan to get clean energy to the third of humanity who currently lack access to modern energy, according to a paper released by ITDG today.

Over two billion people in the developing world lack any access to electricity and up to three billion depend on traditional biomass (wood, charcoal and dung) to meet their household energy needs. Nearly two million people, mostly children, die each year because their homes are polluted with smoke from cooking fires - and many poor families spend up to a third of their income on fuel for cooking.

With a 12-year pedigree in the provision of sustainable energy solutions in Africa, Asia and South America, ITDG has proved that access to clean and sustainable energy is crucial for lifting the poor out of poverty without polluting the planet. Indeed, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development has called poor's access to sustainable energy a "prerequisite" for the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015.

Therefore, to meet this goal and respond to the needs of the poor who lack any access to modern energy services, the challenge, says ITDG, is for governments to commit to a global plan of action.

Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG)