The provision of modern energy services is recognised as a critical foundation for sustainable development, and is central to the everyday lives of people. Effective policies to dramatically expand modern energy access need to be grounded in a robust information-base. Metrics that can be used for comparative purposes and to track progress towards targets therefore represent an essential support tool. This paper reviews the relevant literature, and discusses the adequacy and applicability of existing instruments to measure energy poverty. Drawing on those insights, it proposes a new composite index to measure energy poverty. Both the associated methodology and initial results for several African countries are discussed. Whereas most existing indicators and composite indices focus on assessing the access to energy, or the degree of development related to energy, our new index-the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI)-focuses on the deprivation of access to modern energy services. It captures both the incidence and intensity of energy poverty, and provides a new tool to support policymaking.

No abstract

We describe the concept, strategy, and initial results of the Millennium Villages Project and implications regarding sustainability and scalability. Our underlying hypothesis is that the interacting crises of agriculture, health, and infrastructure in rural Africa can be overcome through targeted public-sector investments to raise rural productivity and, thereby, to increased private-sector saving and investments. This is carried out by empowering impoverished communities with science-based interventions. Seventy-eight Millennium Villages have been initiated in 12 sites in 10 African countries, each representing a major agroecological zone. In early results, the research villages in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi have reduced malaria prevalence, met caloric requirements, generated crop surpluses, enabled school feeding programs, and provided cash earnings for farm families.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

[1] The excessive exploitation of groundwater aquifers is emerging as a worldwide problem, but it is nowhere as dramatic and consequential as it is in India, the world's largest consumer, where hundreds of millions of people depend on it. Usually the problem is framed in terms of a long-term decline in water tables and its consequence for extraction costs, resource depletion, and the sustainability of irrigated agriculture. Here a comparative analysis is provided of coupled groundwater, energy, and irrigation dynamics in two groundwater intensive regions in India that differ in their underlying hydrogeology-the Indian Punjab with its deep alluvial aquifers and the Telangana region in south-central India with its shallow hard rock aquifers. Using a simple modeling framework and piezometric and agricultural time series, we show that in shallow aquifers the sense in which extraction is excessive is different, and is related to the short-term reliability of water supply rather than long-term sustainability. This has important repercussions for irrigated agricultural economies.Citation: Fishman, R. M., T. Siegfried, P. Raj, V. Modi, and U. Lall (2011), Over-extraction from shallow bedrock versus deep alluvial aquifers: Reliability versus sustainability considerations for India's groundwater irrigation, Water Resour. Res., 47, W00L05,

No abstract