Ethiopia: Clean Energy Said Vital to Human, Environmental Health Safety
Some 90 percent of Africa's rural energy derived from biomass which results in the clearance of vegetation cover, land degradation and soil erosion. In addition, carbon emission due to deforestation not only reduces the forest carbon sequestration capacity but also aggravates global warming. Worse to these, all biomass energy utilized by traditional cooking stove at household level contributes to high child and women mortality rate. Hence, supplying clean, affordable and modern energy generated from bio gas could be taken as a way out and for sustainable development.
Opening a three-day international workshop entitled "Africa Biogas and Clean Cooking Conference" Organized by the Ethiopian Government jointly with the African Union yesterday, State Minster of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Eng. Wondimu Tekle said that the key challenges of achieving sustainable development is the issue of the provision of sustainable, reliable and affordable modern energy. "Lack of modern energy is still a major constraint in the effort to bring social and economic development to all developing countries."
He further said that tackling energy poverty is no less significant than tackling other social forms of poverty and social ills, since they all feed in to each other in one vicious cycle of poverty. In fact, the main objective is not only to escape energy poverty, but to ensure access to sustainable energy growth in Ethiopia.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201604070678.html
SuSanA Secretariat