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Wind turbines and poverty alleviation

Dr. M. S. Haq writes from New York
ONE of the leading Bangladeshi English dailies reported on 12 March 2004 that the Government of Bangladesh is planning to install a total of four 225 KW wind turbines in the country by July 2004. Mr. Syed Abdul Mayeed, the present chairman of the Bangladesh Power Development Board has expressed the hope that the turbines would generate one MW of electricity, once commissioned. It is indeed an encouraging development because it could, among other things, be instrumental in facilitating a more productive and sustainable use of the country's energy resources in the foreseeable future.
In 2003, I wrote an article titled "Bangladesh must improve its energy situation". In that article, I discussed, among other things, the urgent need for Bangladesh to harness its recoverable (at the economic level), as well as affordable energy resources including the wind energy for
accelerating the implementation of the poverty reduction strategies. It was in that, as well as other contexts, I suggested a number of measures as to how to increase the per capita energy consumption in the country; examined the role of wind energy; analysed the engineering, technological and environmental aspects of the present day wind turbines; and recommended the use of pertinent local, as well as non-local expertise including those of the GE, the biggest domestic turbine manufacturer in the US, to mention a few. The article was published in a number of leading dailies between 9 September 2003 and 24 September 2003, both days inclusive.
Now that Bangladesh has decided to invest in the pioneering wind power project, one of its key challenges would be: how to optimise the eventual benefit of the project in the pursuit of eradicating poverty from Bangladesh within a minimum possible time. The time mechanics would play a critical
role in meeting the above challenge because of its relationship with, say, the costs of poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.
The next meeting of the Bangladesh Development Forum (BDF) is expected to be held in Dhaka in May 2004. Bangladesh should take that opportunity to explore, among other things, additional donor support for expediting its poverty reduction through a rapid enhancement of the country's per capita energy consumption. A comprehensive, well articulated, pragmatic and marketable energy driven antipoverty strategy having high result generating potentials and stringent development accountability requirements could inter alia facilitate positive outcomes of the above effort.
Bangladesh would need to work hard to improve private sector participation (including multinational companies') in, and attract additional FDI for, the energy sector. It can negotiate grant-cum-cost sharing arrangements with the bilateral and multilateral donors for
supporting the utilisation of the country's energy resources in a more productive, as well as equitable fashion.
Bangladesh should be mindful about the fact that mobilising resources for development activities is, in many senses, relatively less difficult than creating and sustaining optimal outcomes from those resources with '100 percent' accountability to the stakeholders. One of the ways to deal with the difficulties is through a continuous strengthening of the accountability regime for developmental outcomes. It is expected the BDF would deal with the matter in a more innovative, as well as user-friendly manner in its discourses and debates leading to the meeting in May this year.
In fine, I would like to congratulate the government and in particular, the Bangladesh Power Development Board, on the wind power initiative. It is hoped Bangladeshis would, among other things, be able to witness the completion of the project in time.