Showing posts from category biofuels.
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Weekly Reading
›Christian Aid’s “Growing Pains: The Possibilities and Problems of Biofuels” finds that “huge subsidies and targets in developed countries for boosting the production of fuels from plants such as maize and palm oil are exacerbating environmental and social problems in poor nations.”
Framing the climate change debate in terms of national security could help advance climate legislation in Congress, argues a New York Times editorial, one week after its front-page article on the topic. In letters to the editor, James Morin of Operation FREE calls climate change the “ultimate destabilizer,” and retired Vice Admiral Lee Gunn warned that the “repercussions of these changes are not as far off as one would think.”
Researchers at Purdue University’s Climate Change Research Center found that climate change could deepen poverty, especially in urban areas of developing countries, by increasing food prices. “While those who work in agriculture would have some benefit from higher grains prices, the urban poor would only get the negative effects.” Of the 16 countries studied, “Bangladesh, Mexico and Zambia showed the greatest percentage of the population entering poverty in the wake of extreme drought.”
India’s 2009 State of the Environment Report finds that almost half of the country’s land is environmentally degraded, air pollution is increasing, and biodiversity is decreasing. In addition, the report points out that almost 700 million rural people—more than half the country’s population—are directly dependent on climate-sensitive resources for their subsistence and livelihoods. And furthermore, “the adaptive capacity of dry land farmers, forest dwellers, fisher folk and nomadic shepherds is very low.”
Surveys completed by a Cambodian national indigenous peoples network find that “five million hectares of land belonging to indigenous minority peoples [have] been appropriated for mining and agricultural land concessions in the past five years,” reports the Phnom Penh Post.
The Economic Report on Africa 2009 warns that despite declining food prices, “many African countries continue to suffer from food shortage and food insecurity due to drought, conflicts and rigid supply conditions among other factors.” -
Weekly Reading
›In Conservation magazine, David Malakoff examines how cellulosic ethanol may threaten biodiversity around the world.
A Comprehensive Approach to Congo’s Conflict Minerals, a report by the Enough Project, argues that ending resource-related violence in the DRC will require:- Making the consumer-electronics supply chain transparent;
- Pinpointing and securing strategic mines;
- Reforming and expanding governance; and
- Providing miners with economic opportunities.
The New Agriculturalist describes how some African farmers are adapting to climate change.
Worldchanging features an interview with Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement and recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. -
In Land Grab, Food Is Not the Only Consideration
›March 3, 2009 // By Will Rogers
Global cereal production – including stable items like wheat, coarse grains, and rice – is projected to shrink in 2009 due to drought and adverse weather in the world’s major producers. With shrinking food stocks, a growing demand for biofuels, and a need for cheaper sources of raw materials like rubber and other natural resources, governments and corporations in many developed countries are seeking to secure access to these coveted commodities by leasing large tracts of land in developing countries.
In Indonesia, PT Daewoo Logistics Indonesia, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics Corporation, and Cheil Jedang Samsung recently announced a partnership to invest US $50 million to grow and process energy crops on the islands of Buru and Samba. The two companies will produce 30,000 tons of corn grain a year on 24,000 hectares and will export their entire production back to South Korea. The announcement comes on the heels of a report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, The Challenge of Hunger: The 2008 Global Hunger Index, that raises concerns about Indonesia’s already precarious food security.
Meanwhile, Saudi investors have been lobbying government officials in the Philippines to grow and export “basmati rice, corn, cassava, sugar, animal fodder, fisheries, red meat, Philippine bananas and mangoes,” reports Neil Morales in BusinessWorld. Philippine officials are hoping to leverage Saudi Arabia’s growing demand for food against the harsh economic climate to boost much-needed foreign direct investment. “Tell me an item that the whole world needs regardless of the economic situation, it is food,” said Peter Favila, the Philippine Trade Secretary, in an interview with BusinessWorld.
But securing food stocks is not the only motive behind the massive leasing of land in developing countries. A surging demand for biofuels to meet energy needs, as well as access to new sources of raw materials for manufacturing goods, appears to be driving recent land grabs. Recently, Sinopec and The Chinese National Overseas Oil Corporation, two state-owned oil giants, made investments of US $5 billion and $5.5 billion, respectively, in Indonesia to grow and process corn into biofuel to be exported to China.
Meanwhile, several Chinese companies have secured deals in Southeast Asia to grow rubber trees so that they can process and export the sap to meet China’s rising manufacturing demands (China is expected to consume 30 percent of the world’s rubber by 2020). In Cambodia, domestic rice fields have been cleared to make way for rubber trees, with nearly all the sap to be exported to China. And in Burma – which according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization is plagued by severe localized food insecurity – concessions have been made to lease land to two Chinese companies to establish rubber plantations. According to Agweek, Burmese “troops are forcibly evicting farmers to make way for rubber plantations.”
Governments in these developing countries should exercise caution when granting land concessions to foreign governments and corporations. Despite the short-term investments, most – if not all – of the production will be exported, making the long-term food security situation even worse in these host countries. And according to a recent report from the U.N. Environment Programme, From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role Natural Resources and the Environment, environmental conditions – like severe food insecurity – linked with these poor government policies and claims of “neo-colonialism” could exacerbate existing trends and tensions in the host countries and spark violent conflict.
A recent attempt by South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics Corporation to negotiate a 99-year lease on 3.2 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar has stalled due to severe domestic outcry. Since mid-January, the country has been in a state of emergency; riots have erupted throughout the capital city of Antananarivo, killing, by some estimates, close to 100 and injuring more than 200; and Madagascar’s President Marc Ravalomanana is struggling to maintain power amidst fierce criticism by opposition leaders like Antananarivo Mayor Andry Rajoelina for even considering the deal.
Even with the prospect of political unrest, however, current economic woes will likely dictate policymaking in these developing countries, with short-term payoffs eclipsing the long-term political, social, economic and security consequences.
Photo: In the northeastern coastal city of Tamatave, political unrest has stirred since mid-January over negotiations between the Malagasy government and South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics Corporation to lease nearly half the country’s arable farmland to the company to grow and export food to South Korea. Courtesy of flickr user foko_madagascar.
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Reading Radar– A Weekly Roundup
›January 23, 2009 // By Wilson Center Staff“As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza’s extreme demographic armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA’s budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries,” argues the University of Bremen’s Gunnar Heinsohn in the Wall Street Journal.
In an article for the Huffington Post, Water Advocates’ John Sauer argues that we should group together waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and cholera under the name “No-Plumbing Disease,” to help water and sanitation get the attention they deserve.
It takes a strong editor to push for stories on development issues like poverty and public health, but there is often surprisingly high interest in these stories, writes Richard Kavuma for the Guardian.Yale Environment 360 sums up President Obama’s statements on the environment in his inaugural address.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has cancelled nearly 60 percent of its logging contracts in an attempt to end corrupt and environmentally destructive logging, report the BBC and Reuters.
“Could the crises of food, fuel and finance that we experienced in 2008 simply be three canaries in the coalmine? What if these are just the early-warning signals that our current economic system is not sustainable at a much deeper level?” asks Dominic Waughray, head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum.
“A flurry of scientific field work and environmental reports have linked the spread of oil palm plantations in Indonesia to the decimation of rain forests, increased conflict between logging and oil palm interests and rural and indigenous people, and massive CO2 emissions through logging, burning, and the draining of carbon-rich peat lands,” writes Tom Knudson on Yale Environment 360.
A nickel mine in Madagascar is likely to harm biodiversity in one of the world’s most biologically unique places, reports mongabay.com.
“It is high time that India and Pakistan consider the primacy of ecological cooperation as a means of lasting conflict resolution,” argues Saleem Ali in Pakistan’s Daily Times. -
Prostitution, Agriculture, Development Fuel Human Trafficking in Brazil
›October 28, 2008 // By Ana Janaina NelsonModern-day slavery, also known as human trafficking, is the third most lucrative form of organized crime in the world, after trade in illegal drugs and arms trafficking. Today, 27 million people are enslaved—mostly as a result of debt bondage. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns found that Brazil is the third-largest source of human trafficking in the Western hemisphere, after Mexico and Colombia. According to the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2008, 250,000-500,000 Brazilian children are currently exploited for prostitution, both domestically and abroad. NGOs estimate that 75,000 Brazilian women and girls—most of them trafficked—work as prostitutes in neighboring South American countries, the United States, and Europe.
In addition, notes the Trafficking in Persons Report 2008, 25,000-100,000 Brazilian men are forced into domestic slave labor. “Approximately half of the nearly 6,000 men freed from slave labor in 2007 were found exploited on plantations growing sugar cane for the production of ethanol, a growing trend,” says the report. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the “agricultural states of the north, like Piaui, Maranhao, Pará and Mato Grosso, are the most problematic.” Agriculture and development have also been linked to sex trafficking. A 2003 study by the Brazilian NGO CECRIA found that in the Amazon, sexual exploitation of children often occurs in brothels that cater to mining settlements. The study also highlighted the prevalence of sex trafficking in regions with major development projects.
In response to growing awareness of the magnitude of this problem, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice has stepped up its efforts to combat human trafficking, adopting the ILO and UNODC’s “three-P” approach: prevention, prosecution, and protection. Prevention measures in Brazil focus on sexual exploitation, the most common type of forced labor for trafficked Brazilians. These measures include educating vulnerable populations about avoiding human trafficking, as well as drawing tourists’ attention to criminal penalties under Brazilian law for patronizing prostitutes.
Prosecution efforts in Brazil are also improving: In 2004, Brazil ratified the Palermo Protocol (pdf), the main international legal instrument for combating human trafficking. A year later, the country adopted a National Plan to Combat Human Trafficking, which aims to train those responsible for prosecuting traffickers and protecting victims—primarily police and judges. In addition, notes the Trafficking in Persons Report 2008:The Ministry of Labor’s anti-slave labor mobile units increased their operations during the year, as the unit’s labor inspectors freed victims, forced those responsible for forced labor to pay often substantial amounts in fines and restitution to the victims, and then moved on to others locations to inspect. Mobile unit inspectors did not, however, seize evidence or attempt to interview witnesses with the goal of developing a criminal investigation or prosecution because inspectors and the labor court prosecutors who accompany them have only civil jurisdiction. Because their exploiters are rarely punished, many of the rescued victims are ultimately re-trafficked.
The U.S. Department of State established a four-tiered assessment system to rate countries’ compliance with international trafficking mandates. In 2006, Brazil was listed on the Tier 2 Special Watch List, the second-worst rating, despite recognition that the government made “significant efforts” to combat human trafficking. Brazil recently moved into the Tier 2 category, however, due to more concerted interagency efforts, as well as greater compliance with international guidelines. Yet one wonders whether Brazil will be able to achieve Tier 1 status any time soon, given the Brazilian government’s focus on biofuel- and agriculture-fueled economic growth and the fact that the global financial crisis is likely to drive people into increasingly desperate economic straits.
By Brazil Institute Intern Ana Janaina Nelson.
Photo: A poster warns African women of the dangers of human trafficking; Brazilian women are subject to similar dangers. Courtesy of Flickr user mvcorks. -
Biofuels: Catalyzing Development or Excluding the Poor?
›August 25, 2008 // By Wilson Center StaffThe International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently issued Fuelling exclusion? The biofuels boom and poor people’s access to land, a report that examines how the biofuels boom is likely to affect access to land. “Policy and market incentives to turn land over to biofuels production will tend to raise land values. While in some cases this could give new opportunities to poor farmers, it could also provide grounds for displacement of poorer people from land,” explain the authors. They conclude that “biofuels are not necessarily bad news for small-scale farmers and land users” but that this depends on the “security of land tenure.”
The Brazilian experience with biofuels and land tenure deserves further attention. Traditionally, land tenure has been fairly insecure in Brazil, as it is difficult for the federal government to exert its authority over the nation’s periphery.
The authors cite evidence that large-scale Brazilian soybean and sugarcane outfits have concentrated their land holdings at the expense of small-scale farmers. These findings are consistent with Brazil’s long-term trend of acreage concentration, which has diminished the participation of small-scale farmers in the country’s agro-industry. Since smaller family farms tend to employ more workers than more-efficient large-scale producers, acreage concentration may increase inequality in Brazil and further strain the provision of public goods and services in urban areas, where displaced farmers tend to migrate. Given the recent surge in biofuel production, this trend is likely to continue.
Although the report itself is fairly neutral, some of the specific claims the authors make regarding biofuels, land concentration, and violence in Brazil are undermined by weak supporting evidence. The report’s section on violence and land concentration in Brazil cites Van Gelder and Dros’ (2006) description of a 2004 labor inspection raid that “freed an unknown number of slaves” who worked in soy fields. Yet Van Gelder and Dros lack a citation for this event and provide no information regarding whether or not these soy fields were being used to produce biodiesel. We also don’t know whether this soy farm was on newly acquired land (i.e., we don’t know if it relates to the expansion of biofuel production). Slave labor exists in Brazil and is a serious problem, but it is not identical to the violent land conflicts generated by the expansion of biofuel production—the subject of this report.
Moreover, the authors of Fuelling exclusion? cite another source regarding land concentration and violence—Noronha et al. (2006)—that seems a bit questionable. A rural exodus from certain parts of Brazil is well-documented, but Noronha et al. try to argue that biofuel expansion has driven this migration, relying on macrodata showing increasing urbanization and decreasing rural populations. There is certainly some overlap between increases in biofuel production and this internal migration, but these data are not sufficient to substantiate a causal relationship. Even more troubling is that Noronha et al. maintain that over a 12-year period, there were 16 assassinations linked to the biofuels industry, citing an op-ed written by a union leader as their source. Yet the op-ed only cites the occurrence of 13 deaths—and not by assassination, but from illnesses possibly related to working in the fields. It’s not that there haven’t been deaths associated with the biofuels industry, it’s just that the sources cited by the authors of Fuelling exclusion? don’t prove as much.
There are real concerns about the social consequences of increased ethanol production in Brazil, particularly for the workers who harvest sugarcane by hand. Nevertheless, ethanol production has given Brazil a unique degree of energy independence and economic vitality. To the extent that this vitality is responsible for Brazil’s ability to (thus far) weather the latest international economic storm, it is possible to argue that it is at least indirectly responsible for the nation’s economic stability and the recent rise of the middle class. Yet until the government uses this stability to provide better land security for its rural population, the benefits of biofuels are likely to continue to accrue mainly to Brazil’s middle and upper classes.
By Brazil Institute Program Assistant Alan Wright and Brazil Institute Intern Matthew Layton.
Photo: Sugarcane plantation near Capixaba in Acre, Brazil. Courtesy of Flickr user visionshare. -
Palm Oil Fuels Tensions in Colombia
›May 20, 2008 // By Liat RacinGrowing demand for palm oil is contributing to civil strife in Colombia, argue the authors of “Fuelling Fear: The human cost of biofuels in Colombia,” a report published by U.K. NGO War on Want (video here). Global demand for the crop has doubled in the last decade, largely due to the increasing use of biofuels, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has made increasing biofuel production one of his administration’s priorities. The United Kingdom is one of the largest consumers of Colombian palm oil, which is also a common ingredient in baked goods and cosmetics. “[I]t is now time to question the role played by the UK government and other investors in propagating further violence and bloodshed against the Afro-Colombian communities,” insists Sue Branford, chair of War on Want, in the preface of the report.
“There is an emerging pattern of displacement and human rights violations against Afro-Colombian communities connected to palm oil cultivation,” states the report. The U.K. is accused of turning a blind eye to the land grabs, forced evictions, and other disturbing impacts palm oil cultivation has had on these communities. War on Want estimates that as much as 70 percent of the population of a mountain range in Nariño, located in the southwest corner of the country, has been forcefully evicted from their lands by paramilitaries since October 2007.
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Climate Change, Population Growth Could Trigger Global Food Crisis
›September 19, 2007 // By Thomas RenardThe world could face a global food crisis in the next 50 years, said experts at a recent UN-backed conference in Iceland on sustainable development. Their calculus is simple: In the coming half century, there will be more people on the planet, but rapid land degradation will make it difficult to produce commensurate increases in food. Warmer temperatures and more frequent floods, caused by climate change, will diminish soil fertility in many parts of the world—particularly in developing countries. As 800 million people are already at risk for hunger today, population growth alone is likely increase global food insecurity.
The expansion of biofuels could potentially exacerbate food shortages. A major UN report on biofuels warns that as more fields are devoted to producing corn, palm oil, sugar cane, and other agricultural products for use as biofuels, the amount of food that is produced for human consumption could decrease.
Climate change’s effects on marine ecosystems could also contribute to a food crisis. Changes in water temperature and salinity can damage coral reefs, which scientists estimate support between one-quarter and one-third of all marine life. In addition, a recent study published in Nature shows that phytoplankton—single-celled ocean plants that form the base of the marine food chain—are growing more slowly as the water at Earth’s mid and low latitudes becomes warmer. As the supply of phytoplankton becomes limited, fish have less food to eat, and at the end of the chain, human beings suffer from a scarcity of fish—a particularly dire situation in communities where fish is a primary source of food.
According to scientists at the Iceland forum, competition over scarce resources could lead to conflict. Studies on the relationship between environmental degradation and conflict indicate that such conflicts are likely to be intrastate and of low intensity. Scientists suggesting that food scarcity could trigger classic interstate wars, such as James Lovelock, who predicts that China and Russia will clash to exploit Siberia’s new fertile soils, are in the minority.
Yet policymakers should not be indifferent to food scarcity in developing countries merely because it is not likely to cause global-scale conflicts. Indeed, if the developing world faces more famines and malnutrition in the coming years, pressure on Western governments will be high to intervene.
Global cereal production – including stable items like wheat, coarse grains, and rice – is 
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently issued 
