Although development organizations agree that reliable access to energy and energy services—one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals—is likely to have profound and perhaps disproportionate impacts on women, few studies have directly empirically estimated the impact of energy access on women's empowerment. This is a result of both a relative dearth of energy access evaluations in general and a lack of clarity on how to quantify gender impacts of development projects. Here we present an evaluation of the impacts of the Solar Market Garden—a distributed photovoltaic irrigation project—on the level and structure of women's empowerment in Benin, West Africa. We use a quasi-experimental design (matched-pair villages) to estimate changes in empowerment for project beneficiaries after one year of Solar Market Garden production relative to non-beneficiaries in both treatment and comparison villages (n = 771). To create an empowerment metric, we constructed a set of general questions based on existing theories of empowerment, and then used latent variable analysis to understand the underlying structure of empowerment locally. We repeated this analysis at follow-up to understand whether the structure of empowerment had changed over time, and then measured changes in both the levels and likelihood of empowerment over time. We show that the Solar Market Garden significantly positively impacted women's empowerment, particularly through the domain of economic independence. In addition to providing rigorous evidence for the impact of a rural renewable energy project on women's empowerment, our work lays out a methodology that can be used in the future to benchmark the gender impacts of energy projects.
Abstract: Freshwater scarcity is expected to increase over the coming decades due to population growth, migration to urban centers in water-scarce regions, and climate change. Increased scarcity will in turn drive price increases and potential for conflict. The ability of a country to equitably deliver freshwater may thus be the difference between survival and peace or war. Past solutions have relied upon massive water projects that convey freshwater from water-rich to water-scarce regions, but such strategies are energy intensive, costly, and contentious when political boundaries are crossed. Seawater desalination can be even more energy intensive, and is constrained to near-ocean locations. By contrast, reuse of treated water creates local supplies that offset demand for imported water. In the developed world, such systems are typically add-ons to existing centralized treatment plants, and purified water is pumped from these facilities to local users. In the developing world, the costs of such systems are prohibitive, and a new approach is needed. What might be done with mass-produced modular systems equipped with accurate and rapid monitoring technology? What would be the obstacles and the pay-offs?
Speaker Bio: Craig Criddle is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Codiga Resource Recovery Center at Stanford. He received his undergraduate and MS degrees from Utah State University and his PhD from Stanford. His research focuses on technology for recovery of clean water, renewable energy, biomaterials, and valuable information. As Director of the Codiga Resource Recovery Center, he works with colleagues and practitioners to accelerate commercialization of promising technologies for resource recovery and to equip a new generation of practitioners with the know-how needed to successfully implement new technologies and to innovate beyond them.
William J. Perry Conference Room
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Craig Criddle
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Stanford University
Since the 1960s, India’s groundwater irrigation has increased dramatically, playing an important role in its economy and people’s lives — supporting livelihoods of over 26 crore farmers and agricultural labourers who grow over a third of India’s foodgrains. These benefits, however, have come at the cost of increased pressure on groundwater reserves.
India is the world’s largest user of groundwater and, since the 1980s, its groundwater levels have been dropping. The severity of the problem is particularly acute in the northwest, where levels have plunged from 8m below ground to 16m, so that water needs to be pumped from even greater depths. Worse yet, much of this is non-renewable since recharge rates are less than extraction rates and replenishing this resource can take thousands of years.
This won’t last
Using up such “fossil” groundwater is unsustainable. Moreover, the future of monsoon rainfall remains uncertain; while some climate models predict an increase, others forecast a weakening monsoon, although changes in monsoon variability are already underway and will continue into the future. Historical records show the number of dry spells and the intensity of wet spells have risen over the past 50 years. As climate change alters the monsoon, the large stresses on India’s groundwater resources may increase.
In a shack that now sits below sea level, a mother in Bangladesh struggles to grow vegetables in soil inundated by salt water. In Malawi, a toddler joins thousands of other children perishing from drought-induced malnutrition. And in China, more than one million people died from air pollution in 2012 alone.
Around the world, climate change is already having an effect on human health.
In a recent paper, Katherine Burke and Michele Barry from the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, along with former Wellesley College President Diana Walsh, described climate change as “the ultimate global health crisis.” They offered recommendations to the new United States president to address the urgently arising health risks associated with climate change.
Bangladeshi children make their way through flood waters.
The authors, along with Stanford researchers Marshall Burke, Eran Bendavid and Amy Pickering who also study climate change, are concerned by how little has been done to mitigate its effects on health.
There is still time to ease — though not eliminate — the worst effects on health, but as the average global temperature continues to creep upward, time appears to be running short.
“I think we are at a critical point right now in terms of mitigating the effects of climate change on health,” said Amy Pickering, a research engineer at the Woods Institute for the Environment. “And I don’t think that’s a priority of the new administration at all.”
Health effects of climate change
Even in countries like the United States that are well-equipped to adapt to climate change, health impacts will be significant.
“Extremes of temperature have a very observable direct effect,” said Eran Bendavid, an assistant professor of medicine and Stanford Health Policy core faculty member.
“We see mortality rates increase when temperatures are very low, and especially when they are very high.”
Bendavid also has seen air pollutants cause respiratory problems in people from Beijing to Los Angeles to villages in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Hotter temperatures make it such that particulate matter and dust and pollutants stick around longer,” he said.
In addition to respiratory issues, air pollution can have long-term cognitive effects. A study in Chile found that children who are exposed to high amounts of air pollution in utero score lower on math tests by the fourth grade.
“I think we’re only starting to understand the true costs of dirty air,” said Marshall Burke. “Even short-term exposure to low levels can have life-long effects.”
Low-income countries like Bangladesh already suffer widespread, direct health effects from rising sea levels. Salt water flooding has crept through homes and crops, threatening food sources and drinking water for millions of people.
“I think that flooding is one of the most pressing issues in low-income and densely populated countries,” said Pickering. “There’s no infrastructure there to handle it.”
Standing water left over from flooding is also a breeding ground for diseases like cholera, diarrhea and mosquito-borne illnesses, all of which are likely to become more prevalent as the planet warms.
On the flip side, many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa — where clean water is already hard to access — are likely to experience severe droughts. The United Nations warned last year that more than 36 million people across southern and eastern Africa face hunger due to drought and record-high temperatures.
Residents may have to walk farther to find water, and local sources could become contaminated more easily. Pickering fears that losing access to nearby, clean water will make maintaining proper hygiene and growing nutritious foods a challenge.
Climate change will affect health in all sectors of society.
All of these effects and more can also damage mental health, said Katherine Burke and her colleagues in their paper. The aftermath of extreme weather events and the hardships of living in long-term drought or flood can cause anxiety, depression, grief and trauma.
Climate change will affect health in every sector of society, but as Katherine Burke and her colleagues said, “….climate disruption is inflicting the greatest suffering on those least responsible for causing it, least equipped to adapt, least able to resist the powerful forces of the status quo.
“If we fail to act now,” they said, “the survival of our species may hang in the balance.”
What can the new administration do to ease health effects?
If the Paris Agreement’s emissions standards are met, scientists predict that the world’s temperature will increase about 2.7 degrees Celsius – still significant but less hazardous than the 4-degree increase projected from current emissions.
The United States plays a critical role in the Paris Agreement. Apart from the significance of cutting its own emissions, failing to live up to its end of the bargain — as the Trump administration has suggested — could have a significant impact on the morale of the other countries involved.
“The reason that Paris is going to work is because we’re in this together,” said Marshall Burke. “If you don’t meet your target, you’re going to be publicly shamed.”
The Trump administration has also discussed repealing the Clean Power Plan, Obama-era legislation to decrease the use of coal, which has been shown to contribute to respiratory disease.
“Withdrawing from either of those will likely have negative short- and long-run health impacts, both in the U.S. and abroad,” said Marshall Burke.
Scott Pruitt, who was confirmed today as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is expected to carry out Trump’s promise to dismantle environment regulations.
Despite the Trump administration’s apparent doubts about climate change, a few prominent Republicans do support addressing its effects.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobile, supports a carbon tax, which would create a financial incentive to turn to renewable energy sources. He also has expressed support for the Paris Agreement. It is possible that as secretary of state, Tillerson could help maintain U.S. obligations from the Paris Agreement, though it is far from certain whether he would choose to do so or how Trump would react.
More promising is a recent proposal from the Climate Leadership Council. Authored by eight leading Republicans — including two former secretaries of state, two former secretaries of the treasury and Rob Walton, Walmart’s former chairman of the board — the plan seeks to reduce emissions considerably through a carbon dividends plan.
Already an issue, malnutrition will increase with droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Their proposal would gradually increase taxes on carbon emissions but would return the proceeds directly to the American people. Americans would receive a regular check with their portion of the proceeds, similar to receiving a social security check. According to the authors, 70 percent of Americans would come out ahead financially, keeping the tax from being a burden on low- and middle-income Americans while still incentivizing lower emissions.
“A tax on carbon is exactly what we need to provide the right incentives and induce the sort of technological and infrastructure change needed to reduce long-term emissions,” said Marshall Burke.
Pickering added, “This policy is a ray of hope for meaningful action on climate.”
It remains to be seen whether the new administration and congress would consider such a program.
What can academics do to help?
Meanwhile, academics can promote health by researching the effects of climate change and finding ways to adapt to them.
“I think it’s fascinating that there’s just so little data right now on how climate change is going to impact health,” said Pickering.
Studying the effects of warming on the world challenges traditional methods of research.
“You can’t create any sort of experiment,” said Bendavid. “There’s only one climate and one planet.”
The scholars agree that interdisciplinary study is a critical part of adapting to climate change and that more research is needed.
“If ever there was an issue worthy of a leader’s best effort, this is the moment, this is the issue,” said Katherine Burke and her colleagues. “Time is short, but it may not be too late to make all the difference.”
Objective: To identify the magnitude of anaemia and deficiencies of Fe (ID) and vitamin A (VAD) and their associated factors among rural women and children.
Design: Cross-sectional, comprising a household, health and nutrition survey and determination of Hb, biochemical (serum concentrations of ferritin, retinol, C-reactive protein and α1-acid glycoprotein) and anthropometric parameters. Multivariate logistic regression examined associations of various factors with anaemia and micronutrient deficiencies.
Setting: Kalalé district, northern Benin. Subjects: Mother–child pairs (n 767): non-pregnant women of reproductive age (15–49 years) and children 6–59 months old.
Results: In women, the overall prevalence of anaemia, ID, Fe-deficiency anaemia (IDA) and VAD was 47·7, 18·3, 11·3 and 17·7%, respectively. A similar pattern for anaemia (82·4 %), ID (23·6%) and IDA (21·2%) was observed among children, while VAD was greater at 33·6%. Greater risk of anaemia, ID and VAD was found for low maternal education, maternal farming activity, maternal health status, low food diversity, lack of fruits and vegetables consumption, low protein foods consumption, high infection, anthropometric deficits, large family size, poor sanitary conditions and low socio-economic status. Strong differences were also observed by ethnicity, women’s group participation and source of information. Finally, age had a significant effect in children, with those aged 6–23 months having the highest risk for anaemia and those aged 12–23 months at risk for ID and IDA.
Conclusions: Anaemia, ID and VAD were high among rural women and their children in northern Benin, although ID accounted for a small proportion of anaemia. Multicentre studies in various parts of the country are needed to substantiate the present results, so that appropriate and beneficial strategies for micronutrient supplementation and interventions to improve food diversity and quality can be planned.
Recent reviews of dietary intake data from Benin showed that recommended daily intakes of key micronutrients, such as vitamin A and Fe, were not met( 1 – 4 ). At the sub-national level, in northern Benin, macronutrient intakes are also too low( 5 , 6 ). Lack of dietary diversity is a particularly severe problem in Benin where diets are based predominantly on starchy staples with little or no animal products and few fresh fruits and vegetables( 1 , 2 , 7 ). According to the last Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) carried out in 2012, only 28 % of rural children satisfied the minimum diversity criterion of eating at least four out of seven food groups and 14 % consumed the minimum acceptable diet. In addition, the prevalence of stunting, wasting and underweight was respectively 40, 5 and 19 % among children aged 6–59 months, while 9 % of rural women had chronic energy deficiency (BMI<18·5 kg/m2)( 7 ). To improve the nutrition situation of women and children in Benin, the Ministry of Health has undertaken several interventions through its Strategic Plan for Food and Nutrition Development, comprising the supplementation of three major nutrients (vitamin A, Fe and iodine) and other promotive activities, such as exclusive breast-feeding, appropriate complementary feeding, and improved maternal and child nutrition( 8 ).
Despite the efforts of the line ministry and its stakeholders, Beninese women aged 15–49 years (41 %) and children aged 6–59 months (58 %) are significantly affected by anaemia with greater prevalence in rural areas( 7 ). Other nutritional data, such as Fe and vitamin A status, however, were not documented in the Benin 2012 DHS. In the 2006 Benin DHS, vitamin A deficiency (VAD) as measured by serum retinol <20 μg/dl was estimated to affect 66·0 % of children aged 12–71 months while the prevalence of night blindness was 11·8 % among pregnant women( 9 ). The few studies of micronutrient deficiencies among rural populations were conducted in specific localized groups and revealed greater prevalence rates of VAD among 12–71 month-old children (82 %) and pregnant women (14 %) in northern Benin( 9 ), while 33–49 % of children under 5 years of age were Fe deficient( 10 ). Until now, to our knowledge, there have been no population-based studies permitting generalization about the epidemiology of anaemia and its principal determinants in non-pregnant women, despite the problem being among the top ten causes of morbidities in the country( 11 , 12 ). The only study that identified anaemia risk factors among Beninese children was carried out in 2007 and found that incomplete immunization, stunted growth, recent infection, absence of a bednet, low household living standard, low maternal education and low community development index increased the risk of anaemia( 13 ).
As such, identifying the magnitude of anaemia and deficiencies of Fe and vitamin A and their determinants in high-risk groups, such as women of childbearing age and children, is essential for evidence-based intervention modalities, particularly in rural areas, where women and children may suffer not only from micronutrient deficiencies but also a shortage of food( 14 ). The present study is a very important step forward to avail of evidence-based information on the distribution of anaemia and micronutrient deficits and their predisposing diet and health factors among rural women and children in northern Benin. It will help understand the contemporary health profile of the rural populations of the study area in terms of dietary, socio-economic and environmental factors.
India is one of the world's largest food producers, making the sustainability of its agricultural system of global significance. Groundwater irrigation underpins India's agriculture, currently boosting crop production by enough to feed 170 million people. Groundwater overexploitation has led to drastic declines in groundwater levels, threatening to push this vital resource out of reach for millions of small-scale farmers who are the backbone of India's food security. Historically, losing access to groundwater has decreased agricultural production and increased poverty. We take a multidisciplinary approach to assess climate change challenges facing India's agricultural system, and to assess the effectiveness of large-scale water infrastructure projects designed to meet these challenges. We find that even in areas that experience climate change induced precipitation increases, expansion of irrigated agriculture will require increasing amounts of unsustainable groundwater. The large proposed national river linking project has limited capacity to alleviate groundwater stress. Thus, without intervention, poverty and food insecurity in rural India is likely to worsen.
In 2007, "solar market gardens" were installed in 2 villages for women’s agricultural groups as a strategy for enhancing food and nutrition security. Data were collected through interviews at installation and 1 year later from all women’s group households (30–35 women/group) and from a random representative sample of 30 households in each village, for both treatment and matched-pair comparison villages. Comparison of baseline and endline data indicated increases in the variety of fruits and vegetables produced and consumed by SMG women’s groups compared to other groups. The proportion of SMG women’s group households engaged in vegetable and fruit production significantly increased by 26% and 55%, respectively (P < .05). After controlling for baseline values, SMG women’s groups were 3 times more likely to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption compared with comparison non-women’s groups (P < .05). In addition, the percentage change in corn, sorghum, beans, oil, rice and fish purchased was significantly greater in the SMG women’s groups compared to other groups. At endline, 57% of the women used their additional income on food, 54% on health care, and 25% on education. Solar Market Gardens have the potential to improve household nutritional status through direct consumption and increased income to make economic decisions.
David Lobell’s recent research indicates that negative impacts to the global agriculture system are much more likely, more severe and wider-ranging in the face of human-caused climate change. Temperature increases are the main drier behind these far-reaching impacts.. There are several pathways toward adaptation, though none of them appears to completely offset the losses. Research highlighted in this brief offers insights for institutions and decisionmakers concerned with protecting food security and international stability throughout the coming decades.
Bangladeshi children make their way through flood waters.
Climate change will affect health in all sectors of society.
Already an issue, malnutrition will increase with droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa.