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Fuelling price rises
Leader
Tuesday June 5, 2007
The Guardian <
http://www.guardian.co.uk>
There is, admittedly, a humorous side to the debate over biofuels. A story
that involves rocketing pork prices in China, expensive Mexican tortillas
and Philadelphian farmers feeding their livestock chocolate bars has enough
comic material to keep an entire classroom in giggles. Yet this argument has
a darker side, because the search by politicians for a way to bring down
carbon emissions is driving up food costs and enouraging destruction of
land.
It's not hard to see why politicians are attracted to biofuels. On the one
hand they have fossil fuels which are mucky and expensive. On the other
there are plants such as corn, palm oil, sugar cane and other agricultural
products, which are increasingly viable sources of energy. Put the two
together and you get a biofuel bandwagon. The EU has a target that at least
10% of fuel will come from plants by 2020, while Gordon Brown greeted the
authoritative report by Nicholas Stern last year by trumpeting his
enthusiasm for biofuels (while bypassing the inconvenient fact that he had
kept fuel duty frozen for years). Their most prominent supporter is George
Bush, who laid out ambitious targets for their use in this January's state
of the union address.
This enthusiasm, however, is likely to come at a cost to the world's poor.
Diverting crops away from food into fuel runs the risk of increasing hunger
for the poor. There are already some warning signs. Wholesale corn prices
have rocketed, which caused 75,000 protesters to march through downtown
Mexico City against dearer tortillas a few months ago. It has also made
animal feed dearer, which has helped push up the cost of pork for the
Chinese. Higher prices do not just affect poor countries, which is why
American farmers are now feeding their herds Hersheys and pretzels, and
Germans are upset to see beer prices go up as a result of a shortage of
hops. But for China, still a developing country, to see the price of its
staple meat rise 43% in the first three weeks of May alone is a much bigger
hardship. In some cases the risk is of destruction of land. Palm oil is
another potential biofuel, so farmers are chopping down forests to make way
for palm trees. The conservationist Richard Leakey has warned that the
orangutan is endangered by the drive for biofuels, while the UN has also
shown green fuels the red light.
By adopting biofuels, politicians in rich countries effectively avoid taking
harder, unpopular decisions, such as limiting consumption, either with
tighter caps on emissions or higher taxes. They effectively push the problem
of dealing with environmental damage on to the shoulders of the poor.
However funny biofuels may sound, the politicians' craze for them has
serious side-effects.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/energy/story/0,,2095349,00.html
Massacres and paramilitary land seizures behind the biofuel revolution
· Colombian farmers driven out as armed groups profit
· Lucrative 'green' crop less risky to grow than coca
Oliver Balch in Mutat and Rory Carroll in Cartagena
Tuesday June 5, 2007
The Guardian <
http://www.guardian.co.uk>
Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for
plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an
environmentally friendly source of energy.
Surging demand for "green" fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to
seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of
families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation,
swelling Colombia's population of 3 million displaced people and adding to
one of the world's worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo.
Article
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Several companies were collaborating by falsifying deeds to claim ownership
of the land, said Andres Castro, the general secretary of Fedepalma, the
national federation of palm oil producers.
"As a consequence of the development of palm by secretive business practices
and the use of threats, people have been displaced and [the businesses] have
claimed land for themselves," he said. His claim was backed up by witnesses
and groups such as Christian Aid and the National Indigenous Organisation of
Colombia.
The revelations tarnish what has been considered an economic and
environmental success story. The fruit of the palm oil tree produces a
vegetable oil also used in cooking, employs 80,000 people, and is
increasingly being turned into biofuel.
"Four years ago Colombia had 172,000 hectares of palm oil," President Alvaro
Uribe told the Guardian. "This year we expect to finish with nearly
400,000."
"Four years ago Colombia didn't produce a litre of biofuel. Today, because
of our administration, Colombia produces 1.2m litres per day." Investment in
new installations would continue to boost production, he added.
However the lawlessness created by four decades of insurgency in the
countryside has enabled rightwing paramilitaries, and also possibly leftwing
rebels, to join the boom. Unlike coca, the armed groups' main income source,
palm oil is a legal crop and therefore safe from state-backed eradication
efforts.
Farmers who have been forced off their land at gunpoint say that in many
cases their banana groves and cattle grazing fields were turned into palm
oil plantations. Luis Hernandez (not his real name) fled his 170-hectare
plot outside the town of Mutata in Antioquia province nine years ago after
his father-in-law and several neighbours were gunned down. When he and other
survivors were able to return recently, they found the land was in the hands
of a local palm producer.
"The company tells me that it has legal papers for the land, but I don't
know how that can be, as I have land titles dating back 20 years," said Mr
Hernandez. He suspects palm companies collaborated with the paramilitaries.
"I don't know if there was an official agreement between them, but a
relationship of some sort definitely exists."
A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80% of palm
oil land titles in some areas. "If there have been abuses and the titles are
shown to be false, then the land needs to be returned and all the weight of
the law needs to be brought down on those that are responsible," said Dr
Castro, of the producers' association.
Christian Aid is funding an effort to protect peasants who are trying to
reclaim land from the paramilitaries, said Dominic Nutt, who has visited the
plantations. "It is the dark side of biofuel."
The paramilitary groups, first formed in the 80s by businessmen, landowners
and drug lords to fend off guerrillas, became a powerful illegal army which
stole land, sold drugs and massacred civilians. Under a peace deal with the
government they have officially disbanded but many observers say remnants
remain active.
Displacement continues, with an average of 200,000 cases registered every
year over the past four years, according to the UN High Commission for
Refugees, with most coming from palm oil-growing areas on the Caribbean
coast. "We can't keep up, they just keep coming," said Ludiz Ruda, of the
Hijos de Maria school in a shantytown outside the coastal city of Cartagena.
Since opening last year it had been swamped with impoverished newcomers, she
said. "More than 80% are refugees."
Cocaine output rises regardless
Coca production in Colombia has surged despite US-funded eradication
efforts, according to an estimate that casts fresh doubt on Washington's
"war on drugs". Satellite imagery collated by the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy survey suggests that cultivation of coca, the
raw ingredient of cocaine, jumped 8% last year to 156,000 hectares.
The estimate was made public before a trip to Washington this week by
President Alvaro Uribe. If confirmed, it would be the third consecutive rise
in production, and a blow to the US strategy of bolstering Colombia's
security forces to help them destroy the crops.
Under its Plan Colombia project, Washington has funnelled more than $5bn
(£2.5bn) in mostly military aid to its South American ally since 2000 - its
biggest aid project outside Afghanistan and the Middle East. The Democrats
say the security forces are accused of human rights abuses and complicity
with traffickers.
Mr Uribe revealed the unpublished findings in an effort to get the bad news
out of the way before he started lobbying Congress; the White House did not
immediately respond.
"They told me they were worried about revealing this number because of my
upcoming trip to the United States - that the Americans should reveal it,"
he said. "But that's why I'm revealing it. We're not trying to put makeup on
what is a serious matter."
Plan Colombia began in 1999 and was supposed to halve production of coca
within five years, using sprayer planes and officers on the ground. But the
latest estimate suggests that since then it has risen 27%.
Last month Mr Uribe trumpeted a UN report that said cultivation was down to
79,000 hectares. The conflicting figures were incomprehensible and
disorienting, said the president: "Could it be we've worked in vain? That
all our work hasn't produced the desired results?"
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