Accelerating rural energy access in the race to net zero

Policy and action research by the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems to improve rural energy access for smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs shows full alignment with the UNFCCC Race to Zero global campaign for decarbonizing economies.

With adverse climate change impacts growing in number and intensity, many world leaders at this year’s COP26 meetings in Glasgow developed joint, ambitious aspirations and plans, including to phase ‘down’ investments in coal, phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, halt deforestation, reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030, and to direct financing more toward clean energy technologies; all with the goal to keep cutting emissions to reach “net zero” by mid-century. A simple definition of net zero is that new emissions do not…

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Photo credit: Nabin Baral/IWMI