What role do communities play in accessing energy in humanitarian settings? In this fourth episode of the Humanitarianism and Transitions to a Low-Carbon Future miniseries Ekatherina Zhukova, Senior Lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, and Long Seng To, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Development and Joint-Director of the Centre for Sustainable Transitions: Energy, Environment & Resilience (STEER) at the Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, discuss how the concept of “community energy resilience” can help bring attention to a human dimension of an otherwise technical world of energy access in humanitarian crises.
Based on To’s extensive work experience in several countries in Africa and Asia, they ponder the importance of co-designing humanitarian energy systems with displaced people themselves and other stakeholders. Zhukova and To also explore how the cluster system of humanitarian response operates in the absence of energy clusters and what meanings different communities affected by crisis across the globe assign to energy resilience.