Electrification For Deforestation? A Look At Ethiopia
Access to electricity (% of population) — Ethiopia
The chart shows that the electrification rate of Ethiopia has been quite impressive over the past decade. According to the world bank, it has been one of the best in the past decade as the electricity access rate has been said to have reached 60%. There have been arguments in this regard that the indexes used for this measurement by World Bank and other institutions are inaccurate and that the actual percentage would be around 44%. Even so, this would have been a significant increase over the past decade. The interest here however is about the strong positive correlation that has been drawn between electricity access and HDI. To state, the higher a country’s access rate to electricity, the higher its HDI. This has been proven with developed countries as their increasing electricity access has increased their HDI. The HDI chart shows that over the past decade where access to electricity has been increasing steadily, the HDI has equally responded in the positive climb. The growth can be seen from 2004 when electricity access fell. The government used policy instruments like the Universal Electricity Access Program, no VAT and excise taxes on kerosene for households, and, the National Electrification Program to provide other sources of energy. This resulted in the quick response of reclimbing of the electricity access rate from 2005. But this achievement has come at a dear cost which is the significant loss of their forest areas. But importantly, we can say that increasing electricity access in Ethiopia can increase the HDI of the country. The policies should therefore look to scaling the electricity access, especially to the rural areas if they want to improve their HDI.
THE CONSEQUENCE OF RELYING ON BIOMASS AS AN ENERGY
The country is highly dependent on biomass for the majority of its energy. In fact, 87% of their energy comes from this source, The result is that 55 million tons of wood are consumed annually which means the deforestation rate is high. The policy document only addresses how it will increase the efficiency of the energy from biomass but does not find solutions to replacing the felled trees and forests. The figure above shows how the declining forest area in Ethiopia. The decline in the forest area begun in 2004. We can explain this by tracing the access to electricity in figure 1 and we can see that there was a steep decline in 2004. This means that people in Ethiopia looked to biomass sources as a solution to generating energy and electricity. It translates that more trees needed to be hewed to provide wood for the energy and electricity demand. This chart also shows that in order for the country to reduce its deforestation rates, the afforestation policies must also align with the policies which seek to increase the country’s electrification rate and also diversify its energy sources.
In conclusion, I believe it is important to begin asking if the trade-off is worth it, as clearly Ethiopia is not the only country achieving high electrification rates at the expense of its biomass. For countries attaining a high HDI due to increasing electrification rates, are the resulting deforestation rates a cause for concern or must they be accepted as the price to pay for the aggregate welfare? Can there be other sustainable means that guarantee them the same results of electrification and HDI growth?
