African NGOs call for moratorium on biofuels

African Future, 20 February - Uproar is slowly spreading among African
civil society organisations and scientists, fearing that the biofuel
revolution will bring more food insecurity, higher food prices and
hunger to the continent. A petition calling for a "moratorium on new
agrofuel developments in Africa" has so far been signed by over 30
NGOs all over the continent.

Biofuels have already revolutionised agriculture in the US, Brazil and
parts of Asia, and if EU energy commitments are lived up to, soon will
do so in Europe. Now, foreign investors are queuing at African
government offices to realise giant biofuel projects on this fertile
continent, promising a new "green revolution", greater independence
from the oil market and even fuel export possibilities.

And they are successful. So successful that the petitioners fear a
quick negative impact on African food security, which is already
endangered by rising world market prices for basic foods. "Investors
are rushing to privatise our land for their plantations, while our
governments willingly allocate millions of hectares from the 70% of
Africa’s land that is still communally owned," the petition warns.
"Jatropha" is being pushed as one of the new miracle crops for African
small farmers to produce fuel, and the impact is already being felt
around the continent.

In Tanzania, thousands of farmers growing rice and maize are already
being evicted from fertile areas of land with good access to water,
for biofuel sugar cane and jatropha plantations on newly privatised
land. Villages are being cleared, but families have been given minimal
compensation or opportunities for their loss of land, community and
way of life, according to the petitioners.

Millions of hectares in Ethiopia have been identified as suitable for
biofuel production, and many foreign companies have already been
allocated land from farmland, forests and wilderness areas. Even
protected areas are not safe from the spread of biofuels. One European
investor has been granted 13,000 hectares of land in Oromia state; 87%
of which is the Babile Elephant Sanctuary, a home to rare and
endangered elephants.

In Zambia, jatropha cultivation is booming without privatisation.
Foreign investors are using contracts with a large number out-growers
that last up to 30 years. The petitioners fear that the out-growers
have been tricked: "These contracts serve to transfer control over
production from the farmer to the company, through a system of loans,
numerous extra charges and service payments, and prices determined by
the company. Under such a system of dependence, farmers are likely to
increase their indebtedness to the company, until they may be obliged
to hand over their land altogether."

In West Africa, jatropha is already being grown in Togo, Ghana,
Senegal, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger. Senegal's President Abdoulaye
Wade has placed fuel crops at the heart of an agriculture renewal
programme in his country. In Ghana one company is planning to plant
one million hectares of jatropha with support of the government, while
in Benin another company has obtained permission to plant a quarter of
a million hectares of biofuel crops. Farmers in Benin and in many
other countries in the region have, on the average, no more than 1
hectare to grow there products and the biofuels are expected to make a
serious dent into their food production.

The petitioners therefore hold that the biofuel revolution is "geared
to replace millions of hectares of local agricultural systems, and the
rural communities working in them, with large plantations. It is
oriented to substitute biodiversity-based indigenous cropping, grazing
and pasture farming systems by monocultures and genetically engineered
agrofuel crops." In agreement with several new scientific analyses,
they hold that "the current push for agrofuels exacerbate, rather than
solve, the problem of climate change."

"Among Africa’s many challenges, food security is one of the most
serious. A full car tank of ethanol uses the same amount of grain that
can feed a child for a year. We do not understand how our governments
can willingly take our food, land and water to meet the fuel luxuries
of the wealthy in the North, when we already face problems of food
security and environmental destruction at home," the petition reads.

The call for a moratorium on new biofuel developments in Africa is in
line with warnings from the main UN agencies involved in agriculture
and food aid, WFP and FAO, registering that the increased acreage used
for biofuels is already contributing to higher food prices and may
lead to more hunger in the world. Indeed, already in October last
year, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler,
in his annual report called for a world-wide 5-year moratorium on
building biofuel manufacturing plants that use food stocks.

By Rainer Chr. Hennig
http://www.afrol.com/articles/28075