AT THE United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders placed development at the heart of the global agenda by adopting the Millen¬nium Declaration from which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were later extracted. The MDGs are solid objectives that aim at reducing extreme poverty throughout the world by tackling income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, and lack of infrastructure and shel¬ter, while promoting gender equality, education, health, and environmental sustainability.
There are eight MDGs and the second goal is to “Achieve universal primary education”. The target is to ensure that by 2015 all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.
One of the major factors in meeting this goal is access to a reliable supply of energy. Energy services play a significant role in both social and economic development. Energy strengthens economic activity, enhances productivity, and provides access to markets for trading purposes. It enables fulfilment of the basic human needs of nutrition, warmth, and lighting, in addition to education and health. Therefore, ensuring energy access to all is important in achieving the MDGs.
However, current energy systems are failing to meet the needs of the world’s poor. Worldwide, 2.6 billion people rely on traditional biomass, e.g., charcoal, animal dung, for cooking and 1.6 billion people – about a quarter of the human race – do not have access to electricity. In light of this, the United Nations has designated 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, recognising the need for all persons, rich or poor, young or old, to have access to a regular supply of electricity. The United Nations also recognises that without sustainable energy, we cannot meet the MDGs.
A feature of modern education which enables students to be competitive is the use of teaching aids to complement teachers’ normal instructive skills. Sometimes operating these aids require high-quality electricity. Students who  lack  exposure to these aids and skills struggle in the modern world. Additionally, these students will not have access to modern knowledge and techniques such as those relating to computing, which is very important in this technological age and for which electricity is necessary.
In poor homes that have no access to electricity, children spend a significant portion of their time doing household chores: collecting firewood, fetching water, or in other physical work, resulting in them having less time for schoolwork. Most importantly, they do not have lights to study at night. This means that they will be unable to do homework and assignments or review their lessons sufficiently. Therefore, a few hours of electricity to students can result in major improvements in their performance (UN 2005).
Furthermore, indoor air pollution from low-quality, solid cooking fuels (wood, charcoal, dung) imposes a major health burden on those who spend their days close to the cooking area, responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths per year. The solutions are available, and often cost little: it takes only a small amount of energy to pump water for cooking and agriculture and to provide improved fuels. This provides females especially with more time to develop themselves.
Another important element to the provision of efficient education ser¬vices is the availability of qualified teachers. One of the most often cited fac¬tors affecting teachers’ retention in rural areas is the lack of access to modern energy services, in particular lighting and power that enable a minimum qual¬ity of life and connectivity. Energy and ICT in schools can also enable access to educational materials, distance learning, and continuing education for teachers.
To summarise, energy plays an important role in providing education through the following:

•    Lighting allows children to study at night.
•    Energy services reduce time spent by school-going children on basic survival activities, such as fetching water and firewood.
•    Electricity enables the use of educational media, computers, and Internet access at schools.
•    Energy access can help rural schools to attract teachers.
•    Improved cooking facilities free up time spent collecting wood, for education.
Activity
Unscramble the following words  found in the article, then use the circled letters to find out one important way in which energy can be used in the world today.

udng       ________________
eriwdfoo ________________
tnireent ________________
tuoindcea ________________
eryeng     ________________
hoctolygne ________________
ctopuerm ________________
colrcaha ________________
etlryiticec ________________

You can share your ideas and questions by sending letters to: “Our Earth, Our Environment”, C/O EIT Division, Environmental Protection Agency, Ganges Street, Sophia, GEORGETOWN or email us at eit.epaguyana@gmail.com.