23 September 2013: On the margins of the 68th session of the General Assembly, approximately 130 participants, including 20 Heads of State and Government, took part in a high-level event on the importance of sustainable energy for sustainable development, poverty eradication, and broader socio-economic transformation in Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The event aimed to enhance cooperation between LDCs, development partners, the private sector and civil society.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf co-chaired the meeting, the centerpiece of which was a High-level interactive dialogue, moderated by Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. Gyan Chandra Acharya, UN High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), also presented on energy challenges and opportunities for LDCs.

In the presentation and discussions, many success stories were highlighted in an effort to illustrate ways to begin overcoming the “energy gap” faced by LDCs. These examples included discussion of: the world’s largest solar powered hospital, located in Haiti; the establishment of the Liberian Rural and Renewable Energy Agency to facilitate economic transformation of rural Liberia; projects in Uganda providing access to modern energy services to over one million people using solar panels, improved cookstoves and micro-hydro; biofuel guidelines in Tanzania, which is also beginning exploration of geothermal energy; an ambitious regional renewable energy plan being formulated by the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS); a cyclone-proof wind farm in Vanuatu; Bangladeshi renewable energy that has become a cost effective option for rural electrification; and Nepalese community-led micro-hydro, solar, biogas and improved cookstove projects that are transforming lives of the rural poor, especially women.

The Co-Chairs’ communiqué, titled ‘Our Common Action Agenda to Promote Sustainable Energy in the Least Developed Countries,’ calls on relevant actors to collaborate in the development of a global goal on energy as part of the post-2015 development agenda, in which it further urges that special needs of LDCs be specifically prioritized. The event was initiated by the Government of Benin in its capacity as Chair of the Global Coordination Bureau of LDCs, and organized by UN-OHRLLS. [Event website] [Publication: Co-Chairs’ Communiqué: English, French] [Publication: Background note for High-Level Event on Sustainable Energy for LDCs]