Challenging traditional energy settings in the humanitarian aid: experiences from Doctors Without Borders

Abstract

Energy is essential to the provision of humanitarian aid, from operating medical and non-medical equipment, to storing vaccines and drugs. In the last decades, the contexts of intervention of humanitarian actors are getting more complex and volatile, sometimes leading to longer project lifespans. To respond to this evolving context, and at the same time to try to cope with the global ecological crisis, humanitarian actors are proposing new strategies toward more sustainable energy solutions in their operations. However, there is a lack of reflection regarding how energy is conceived and used in the humanitarian response. With the aim of shedding light on these issues, we take the case of Médecins Sans Frontières, a medical humanitarian organization who is rethinking its traditional logics of energy planning. The results reveal that even if some transformative approaches to energy are emerging in the humanitarian field, they face several challenges when putting them into practice. Challenges related to effectiveness and flexibility, core concerns of the humanitarian aid. The work invites to a deeper look at the plurality of those challenges, aiming to gain better understanding on the relationship between energy and society and its operational impact.

Keywords:

• humanitarian aid
• energy transition
• Doctors Without Borders
• health engineering

Acknowledgements

Please note: Views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) alone and do NOT reflect the official position of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Notes

1 Consortium of Chatham House, UKAid, Energy4Impact, Practical Action, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Lahn and Grafham 2015).

2 The UNF, with the support of WHO and UN Women, created in 2017 the Working Group ‘Powering Healthcare’ with the aim to advance the global agenda of health facility electrification.

3 The Lancet Commission pointed out that CC ‘threatens to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health’ (Watts et al. 2017).

4 Around 350–400 stationary generators are currently deployed globally by the Brussels Operational Center, using approximately 5000 m³ of fuel and amounting to 13,500 tons of CO₂ per year (2016 data) (Persson, Ten-Palomares, and Huchulak 2018).