Can Renewable Energy Pay a Peace Dividend?
Sep 24, 2017
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Justin Guay
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What if the hundreds of millions of dollars spent each and every year burning fossil fuels to power peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts could instead create lasting energy infrastructure powered by the wind and the sun?
That’s an important question that has been all but absent from the ongoing efforts to end armed conflict, emphasized during yesterday’s International Day of Peace. Instead, despite the increasing acknowledgment that there are growing links between conflict and climate change renewable energy is not a mainstay in these international field operations. That, it turns out, is a wasted opportunity because renewable energy is not only a principal tool in the fight against climate change, it also provides a unique opportunity to expand our toolkit for consolidating peace in volatile regions.
Put simply, the lack of clean energy deployment in the international community’s crisis response mechanisms is unjust. Instead, the clean energy revolution currently underway is bypassing some of the most fragile and least electrified countries in the world. States like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan have electricity penetration rates of less than 20%. Instability and insecurity hinder significant renewable energy investment in these and other troubled nations, even though it is their populations who have the most to gain.