Energy is an essential part of development. Water supply, industry, education, health, agriculture and transport all need energy to function. Energy also plays a crucial role in the elimination of poverty. In the short- and medium- terms, energy use is expected to intensify worldwide. This will bear severe consequences for the global environment, especially in the form of growing CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and resulting climate change. The use of energy is a basic part of most people’s daily activities. For those living in third-world poverty, however, generating energy for cooking, heating and lighting can be more of a daily battle with additional effects on the local environment. The energy solutions in many areas of the developing world are unsustainable, and in some cases destroy the natural resource base needed for existence. For people living in these circumstances, sustainability can be an abstraction, unrelated to their fight for survival.

There is a common understanding on how complex it can be to transform visions of sustainable development into reality. There is a need that international, national and local organisations, in addition to the private sector, make sustainability a part of our development. States, local authorities and public associations must translate concepts of sustainability into tangible results. Credits, duties and taxes must promote the wider use of renewable resources. Local communities and user groups must organise themselves. Education and new technologies must make progress.

Unless we cooperate and organise our efforts, these goals will never succeed. OVE’s international projects strengthen civil society organisations, promote democracy and foster sustainable development as ways to defeat poverty. We believe that the only work that can be sustainable is that which addresses the challenges of poverty.