The ICPEs and interviews show that these country offices surveyed have made some progress in integrating energy into their country programmes: 40 percent of the staff survey respondents believe that this was leading to better results for the SDGs targeted in their country programmes and a further 47 percent had made connections in their country programme but felt more could be done to strengthen the linkage. At a practical level, the surveyed staff reported that they have provided several forms of connection (a median of 11 per country office). In addition to the households, health facilities and businesses mentioned above, UNDP has also supported connections to administrative offices, food value chains, weather information services and early warning systems. The UNDP portfolio also contains projects that provide services in addition to the electrical supply, such as the support for solar-heated water at maternity centres. The survey responses and interviews demonstrate that senior leadership in these countries strongly recognizes the need to integrate energy across the country programme, and in country offices with the most advanced portfolios, planning for the energy component takes place between technical and monitoring and evaluation staff during each project application.
FIGURE 14. Number of UNDP country offices that supported energy connections, 2017-2021, and types of usage Households Schools Businesses Health facilities Government administration buildings Community centres Street lighting Early warning system for disasters Food value chains Weather, seasonal or climate information points Other
18 18 17 14 11 10 9 8 7 7 6 0
5
10
15
20
25 million US$
Source: Survey of 30 country offices with mature energy projects, 2021
The ICPEs, final evaluations and interviews verify that these connections were made but demonstrate that UNDP often does not plan well for sustainability of the connection. This is more understandable in contexts such as the Syria crisis, where immediate health, economic and social needs were met before challenges with equipment and institutional framing reduced functionality,100 but less so in more stable contexts where UNDP should be able to leverage its contextual knowledge and energy expertise to develop appropriate initiatives. The UNDP Disaster Risk and Energy Access Management (DREAM) project in Barbados, for instance, installed decentralized, solar PV systems at community and resource centres, pavilions and polyclinics throughout the country to strengthen disaster risk response to extreme events, typically hurricanes. However, the clinics themselves lacked a means of financing PV maintenance and the final evaluation raised concerns about the sustainability of the project’s impacts.
100
ICPE Syrian Arab Republic, 2019.
Chapter 4. FINDINGS
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