From right to light: a human rights-based approach to universal access to modern energy services.

Abstract

The thesis re-introduces the human rights-based approach to achieve universal access to modern energy services to offer an integrated and coherent legal strategy and implementation framework that brings renewable energy technology and rural electrification under the common logic and language of human rights. Although access to modern energy services is indispensable to providing basic needs, eradicating poverty and meeting sustainable development goals, 1.3 billion people remain without access to electricity and 2.6 billion people are still without access to clean cooking facilities. Essentially, the challenge lies in how to enhance access to modern energy services, particularly for those who are in impoverished rural areas of the developing world, while achieving universal coverage and sustainable development at the same time. In response, the United Nations called the world’s attention to this challenge and launched the ‘Sustainable Energy for All’ initiative that focuses on three interlinked objectives: 1) enhancing universal access to modern energy services; 2) improving the rate of energy efficiency; and 3) increasing renewable energy use. Beyond catalysing global awareness, however, the critical stage of turning the vision into reality with concrete commitments to action beckons. The imperative of developing a coherent and appropriate legal response is vital to advancing international and national development agenda and goals. For this reason, it is strongly posited that there is a need to embody the notion of basic needs such as access to modern energy services in clear, preferably legally binding standards. However, the legal response to the lack of access to modern energy services is not clearly articulated, particularly from a developing country perspective. In the meantime, the lack of universal access to modern energy services continues to drive the widening gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ resulting in marginalisation especially of the rural energy poor. With this marginalisation, the human rights dimension of energy poverty due to lack of access to modern energy services comes into the fore as such a situation amounts to deprivation of basic needs, entails disempowerment, and gives rise to serious equity considerations. Intuitively, these typically fall within the purview of human rights conversations prompting some scholars to suggest a human rights-based approach to achieve universal access to modern energy services. Yet the human rights perspective does not figure prominently in such a global initiative. From the foregoing, the thesis contextually describes human rights, including the challenge of definitions, associated with such a term. Also, the thesis revisits the conceptual and historical underpinnings of human rights and how these evolved in the modern context. Next, it examines the merits and limits of the language of human needs compared to the language of human rights in terms of enhancing universal access to modern energy services. The thesis then analyses the plausibility of integrating needs-talk into rights-talk, which lays the basis for subsequent discussions on renewable energy technology and rural electrification as integral components of the human rights-based approach. Finally, it looks into the practical significance of adopting such an approach to addressing the energy poverty challenge in a developing country setting such as the Philippines where no similar study has yet to be undertaken.