If only!! The reality behind these roundtables is not only that they’re far from being “responsible” but they are also far from any of the promises they hold. There is no room for fair representation in a discussion behind close doors, especially when those most affected by soy expansion in the hands of large agribusinesses are denied the opportunity to share with an audience ignorant (or conveniently unaware) of their stories of violent evictions and other human rights abuses.
We invite you to view these video clips with your own eyes. They depict anything but an ‘open,’ ‘participatory’ meeting with a ‘transparent’ agenda - ‘closed,’ ‘exclusive,’ and ’secretive’ are more like it.
Earlier this spring the Student Trade Justice Campaign joined a coalition of truly representative groups, peoples and movements from north and south to send a clear message to members and participants of the RTRS: their vision of SOY is RESPONSIBLE for POVERTY, DEATH, AND DESTRUCTION.
During a plenary session of the 3rd conference of the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) some of the groups that signed the declaration (LINK TO DECLARATION that was already in the website, if needed?) denouncing the RTRS, many of whom traveled over 25 hours to be there, had the intention to enter through nonviolent means to express our rejection of the RTRS. Not only were we denied the opportunity to voice our concerns but we were also run out by Hilton’s security and Argentine police. More information about the action.
In late January, Student Trade Justice Campaign activists joined our allies at a press conference calling attention to the dark side of biofuels. The ideal of clean, green energy is increasingly becoming the latest public justification for global agribusiness’ practice of en-masse monoculture and its consequences: deforestation, soil damage, water contamination and loss of biodiversity, as well as profound violations of the economic, social, and cultural rights of the peoples to whom that land historically belongs. A video of the event was recorded, and a transcript of STJC’s portion of the statement is available:
Today, the greenwashing of this harsh reality continues through the World Wildlife Fund’s ‘Round Tables for Sustainable Business.’ Rural, indigenous, urban, and social justice movements from across the world, especially in Latin America, have repudiated the illusion of ‘corporate social responsibility’ that these meetings encourage, and repeatedly affirmed that “responsible, sustainable GM soy monoculture” is a dangerously incongruous notion on its face. But these testaments have not received the attention they merit, and so the roundtables are continuing this week on April 23 and 24 in Buenos Aires, Argentina with the Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS).
STJC views these roundtables manufacturing acceptance of the ongoing trend towards corporate control of our food systems, and all that comes with it: global loss of food sovereignty, environmental destruction and the violation of human rights. They also exemplify how our international trade and economic system is content to concern itself only with the rights and freedoms of the powerful. Consequently, STJC is renewing its call for a moratorium on agrofuels, and calls for a sober and critical look at the only guaranteed outcomes of these roundtables: ongoing marginalization of people and destruction of their lands and livelihoods.
Rainforest Action Network and Social Justice Groups
Call for Moratorium on Agrofuels
Citing environmental and human rights abuses linked to industrial biofuels production, groups announce opposition to federal agrofuels targets and incentives
SAN FRANCISCO – Representatives from Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Student Trade Justice Campaign, Food First and Grassroots International today called for a moratorium on all incentives and renewable fuels targets for agrofuels in pending federal energy legislation until standards can be developed to ensure that plant-based fuels such as biodiesel show significant environmental benefits over fossil fuels, and that they do not contribute to world hunger or human rights abuses.
The announcement, made at a press conference in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) San Francisco office, signaled the first formal opposition to the federal government’s push for agrofuels as a solution to the climate crisis. Also supporting the moratorium was Rafael Alegría, former president of Via Campesina, the largest family farmers’ organization in the world. More than 35 organizations around the world have signed on to the call for a U.S. moratorium.
As demand for agrofuels has grown in recent years, large-scale production has led to deforestation of the world’s rainforests, higher food prices, and widespread human rights abuses. Producing palm oil, one of the most popular sources of biodiesel, entails so much deforestation that, over its lifecycle, palm-based biodiesel can emit up to 10 times more carbon dioxide per gallon than gasoline. As industrial agrofuels plantations expand, they also displace subsistence farms and Indigenous communities. The United Nations has predicted that as many as 5 million Indigenous people worldwide could be adversely affected by the continued expansion of agrofuels. In recent weeks, the United Nations and the European Union have expressed reservations about widespread use of agrofuels.
Agribusiness giants ADM and Cargill have lobbied aggressively for government targets and subsidies for agrofuels. An ADM subsidiary, the Wilmar Group, is the largest producer of palm-based biodiesel in the world and is clearing tropical rainforests in Indonesia that are among the last remaining habitats of the endangered orangutan. Cargill is pushing palm oil production into Papua New Guinea, home of the world’s third largest intact rainforest. Cargill also operates an illegal soy port in the Brazilian city of Santarem, in the heart of the Amazon. Deforestation rates have doubled in the region since the port opened. Soy is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon, and ADM, Cargill and U.S. agribusiness Bunge account for 60 percent of its funding.
SUPPORTING STATEMENTS:
Mike Brune, Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network, said: “Politicians paint agrofuels as the fuels of the future. But the fuels of the future shouldn’t emit more greenhouse gases than gasoline, degrade priceless ecosystems, and force people off their land. The future demands better solutions.”
Eric Holt Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First, said: “The side effects of biofuels—the rise in food costs, shrinking water tables, deforestation and displacement of rural people—are rarely discussed. The question is not whether ethanol and biodiesel have a place in our future, but whether or not we allow a handful of global corporations to transform our food and fuel systems, destroy the planet’s biodiversity and impoverish the countryside.”
Nikhil Aziz, Executive Director of Grassroots International, said: “This new ‘green rush’ is a reckless race towards disaster – one that endangers food security for millions, while doing little to help stem the negative impacts of climate change. We have the science and the resources needed for real solutions, we just need the politicians to climb their way out of corporate pockets.”
Lorena Rodriguez organizer with the Student Trade Justice Campaign, said: “We support this moratorium because we believe that industrial agriculture, core to the agenda in free trade and investment agreements continue to serve the interest of large agribusinesses at the expense of the livelihoods of small farmers and indigenous people throughout the world.”
Rachel Smolker of the Global Justice Ecology Project said: “Proponents of biofuels claim that the problems created by using food crops will be solved when the next generation of cellulosic technologies becomes viable, but as the chair of our House Agriculture Committee stated just a few days ago, that may not happen for 10 years, if ever. Those technologies depend heavily on biotechnology like genetically engineered trees, which could contaminate native forests with unpredictable and irreversible consequences.”
Take Action on Food Sovereignty on January 26th - International Day of Action!
Join Via Campesina and other organizations worldwide in demanding Food Sovereignty and an end to the corporate control of our food system by global agribusiness
On January 26 people from all around the world will take creative action in their community. This will manifest in many ways, from nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience, street theater, convergences, teach-ins and other activities and events. Grassroots movements around the world are making their voices heard and saying “Another World is Possible” in coordination with the World Social Forum.
In solidarity with global farmer’s movement Via Campesina who has called for action on this day, the Student Trade Justice Campaign, the Rainforest Action Network and Rising Tide North America are calling for individuals and grassroots groups to take action to demand food sovereignty by rejecting the industrialized food system controlled by international institutions and global agribusinesses and promoting the transition to sustainable, small-scale, decentralized local food systems.
Why are we calling for this? Because people’s lives depend on it!! Our globalized food system, and the increasing push for industrial-scale agrofuels are pushing people off their lands around the world and depriving small farmers, Indigenous communities, and millions of people everywhere from access to land and resources to grow their own food. While this may seem archaic to many people in the US who buy their food at the supermarket, 70% of the world population make a living though producing food.
Transitioning to local food systems is a direct response to fighting climate change, preserving forests, and other ecosystems that are critical to the earth’s carbon cycling capacity as well as standing in solidarity with farmers, Indigenous communities and landless people worldwide.
This transition is necessary to prepare ourselves for the changing climate by taking back control and local ownership of land, seeds, biodiversity, water and where and how we produce our food.
You can TAKE ACTION in a variety of ways. Some ideas include: organizing a demonstration at a supermarket chain, or a large-scale agrofuels refinery that isn’t community based, or finding out what agribusiness facilities are located in your town and take action against them using non-violent direct action, civil disobedience, banner hangs, flyering, and creative street theater. If action isn’t your cup of tea you can organize a local foods dinner to bring farmers and eaters together in your community and facilitate a discussion about what food sovereignty looks like in your community.
Why take action on food sovereignty?
Check out our two pager on the importance of community based food systems.
We suggest gathering with your friends to organizing actions outside key supermarket chains in your community. Using some of our materials, you can pass out flyers with information about why we should demand food sovereignty and challenge the corporate control over our food system as well as promote the transition to sustainable, small-scale, decentralized local food networks.
Here are 20 additional ways in which you can promote local food sovereignty.
To find out more contact lorena(_AT_)tradejusticecampaign.org
Sign up here if you are planning on taking action in your local community: http://wsf2008.net/eng
The Community Food Security Coalition recently released a MUST-READ report on the impact of agrofuels on food security. The report includes a first-hand perspective on the fuel versus food debate through testimonials and case studies from the very communities that are trying to feed themselves. If you’re an anti-hunger advocate, part of the food security movement, concerned about the corporate control of our food system or an activist working in the broader area of food, environmental and health justice, you definitely WANT to read this report!
Dec. 4, 2007Contact: Holly Shulman (202) 454-5108
Bill Holland (202) 454-5190
In Peru Trade Vote, Senate Democrats Break With Base, Dismiss Widespread Public Opposition to More-of-the-Same Trade Policy and Join GOP to Vote for Another Bush NAFTA Expansion
Pushed by Corporations
Seven of Nine Senate Freshmen Democrats Oppose Expanding NAFTA to Peru
Statement of Lori M. Wallach
Director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch Division
Although not one U.S. labor, environmental, Latino, consumer, faith or family farm group supported the Peru free trade agreement (FTA), a majority of Senate Democrats today broke with their base, dismissed widespread public opposition to more-of-the-same trade policy and joined Republicans to deliver another Bush NAFTA expansion to the large corporations pushing this deal.
The debate in the Senate contrasts with that in the House of Representatives last month. There was little focus on the Peru NAFTA expansion deal in the Senate, but in the House an intense, multi-month debate resulted in a majority of House Democrats, including 12 of 18 House committee chairs, voting against the Peru pact and signaling that it is not an acceptable model for future trade agreements.
The breakdown of this vote vividly demonstrates two phenomena: the distance between most senators and the American public on trade issues, and the depth of the American publics negative opinion about NAFTA-style trade deals. All but two of nine Democratic freshmen senators who recently campaigned extensively in their states opposed the Peru NAFTA expansion today. Most of the Democratic presidential candidates oppose it, including Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut.
In contrast to most of the Democratic presidential candidates who oppose the Peru NAFTA expansion, Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois support it. Clinton and Obamas support for the Peru FTA - after both opposed the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which contained identical provisions and now campaign against NAFTA in Iowa, should make voters wonder just what sort of trade policy Clinton and Obama really support. None of the senators running for president voted today, although all four have issued public statements taking positions on the Peru pact.
Clintons support for the Peru FTA suggests that her recent call for a time-out on trade agreements apparently begins only after she votes for one more NAFTA-style agreement. The fact that Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to announce his support for the Peru NAFTA expansion two months ago makes his recent attacks on Clinton regarding NAFTA bizarre.
Neither Clinton nor Obama has made clear which of the objectionable NAFTA foreign investor privileges - imported food safety limits, service sector privatization and deregulation, Buy America bans and other provisions - would be eliminated in potential Clinton or Obama-negotiated agreements. Voters across the country who have suffered the real-life damage from NAFTA deserve to know how all this anti-NAFTA talk from Clinton and Obama would translate if either were elected president.
In key early primary states, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and both Iowa freshmen Democratic House members opposed the Peru NAFTA expansion, as did both New Hampshire Democratic House members.
That the Senate passed a NAFTA-style trade agreement by a wide margin is not unexpected, as even the highly controversial NAFTA had 61 in favor, including 27 Democrats, in 1994. The Morocco and Bahrain FTAs were passed by voice vote in 2004; 80 senators voted for the Australia FTA also in 2004; 83 voted for China permanent normal trade relations in 2000; the Singapore FTA in 2000 obtained 66 votes; and the Chile FTA got 65. In 2005, CAFTA, which obtained no votes from numerous prospective Democratic presidential candidates who had never before opposed a pact, was the closest Senate trade vote ever at 54-45.
The passage of the Peru FTA, which was overwhelmingly opposed in the United States and Peru, is bad foreign policy, bad domestic policy and egregiously bad politics. Both of Perus labor federations, its major indigenous peoples organization and its archbishop called on the U.S. Congress to oppose the deal based on the damage it is projected to cause Perus small farmers and environment.
The Peru NAFTA expansion replicates many of the CAFTA provisions that led most Democratic senators to oppose that pact. This includes: foreign investor privileges that create incentives for U.S. firms to move offshore and expose basic environmental, health, zoning and other laws to attack in foreign tribunals; bans on Buy America and anti-offshoring policies; limits on food import safety standards and inspection rates; and NAFTA-style agriculture rules that are projected to displace tens of thousands of Perus Andean farmers and thus increase coca production and immigration. The pact also contains terms that could subject Peru to compensation claims for reversing its unpopular Social Security privatization, the same system Democrats fought against at home.
Repeated polling shows that the American public, both Democrats and Republicans, have negative feelings about current U.S. trade policies and the effects on their lives. Democrats in 2006 gained a majority in Congress with scores of candidates winning in campaigns focused on changing the NAFTA trade model.
The message of the midterm elections was loud and clear: Voters want a new direction on trade. Congress public approval rating will not be helped by ignoring this call and passing another Bush NAFTA expansion.
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Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy
Paying the price
RONNIE HALL reports from the Bali summit on why market-based solutions are not the answer to the problems of climate change.
GOVERNMENT negotiators jetting into Bali for this week’s make-or-break climate change summit should set aside their last-minute economic briefings and carbon trade forecasts and look out of the window.
Hopefully, they will know enough about the mechanics of climate change to be scared by what they see - serried ranks of sterile oil palms as far as the eye can see.
Indonesia’s once sprawling, untamed tropical forests, seething with life and a key part of the planet’s climate-regulating mechanism, are nearly gone, siphoned off into the illegal timber trade or razed to make way for exports of palm oil, which are used in a staggeringly wide range of consumer products, from biscuits to biofuels. The latter, because the forests have been ripped out, are also bad for the climate.
The carbon released by this wholesale destruction puts Indonesia right up there with China and the US in terms of greenhouse gases emitted - these countries are culprits numbers one, two and three, respectively.
Deforestation is responsible for a whopping one fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions - more than that of the world’s cars, ships and planes combined.
Ten years after signing the Kyoto Protocol, governments could quite literally be accused of fiddling while the earth burns. As this thirteenth meeting of governments who have signed the United Nation’s framework convention on climate change (UNFCC) and its Kyoto Protocol gets under way, governments are way behind on their emissions-reduction commitments and showing little sign of making real, lasting and effective commitments that could pull us back from the brink.
What governments do this month in Bali really, really matters. Even now we will be extremely hard-pushed to keep temperature increases from climbing more than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
This is the point at which severe environmental impacts are expected to start kicking in. Critically, we have just 10 to 15 years to reverse emissions before runaway climate change takes hold, with dying forests and melting permafrost, for example, emitting ever more CO2, leading to spiralling climate change. This is the time for definitive action.
For all of Gordon Brown’s recent promises about a new industrial revolution in Britain, with the British economy morphing into a vibrant low-carbon economy and Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions set to be down to a not quite good enough 60 per cent by 2050, Britain isn’t doing well at present.
Not only is it not on schedule to meet this target, but it has also actively lobbied against European renewable energy targets. Britain has excellent renewable energy sources but we generate a paltry 2 per cent of our energy from them. Why?
We need real action, now, not rhetoric.
In fact it is money - more specifically, the estimated costs of trying to stop and also adapt to climate change and how capital markets might be induced to fund all this - that has been at the heart of talks leading up to Bali.
Indeed, it seems that whether governments are prepared to commit to any further emissions reductions may depend upon the answer to this particular question - who will pay for it?
Governments north and south, many transnational companies and a new breed of “carbon traders” are all solidly behind the idea of using carbon markets to get us out of what is, whichever way you look at it, a very tight spot.
Carbon markets allocate pollution rights to greenhouse gas-emitting industries, which then trade amongst themselves, with the aid of a few brokers, of course.
In theory, this means that the cleanest, most efficient companies make a tidy profit and dirty polluting industries can stick with business as usual as long as they pay for emissions abatement somewhere else.
Somewhat too conveniently, carbon markets look like a financial win-win option for almost all those people involved in making decisions this week in Bali.
They could save governments in the north a tidy packet, since over-consuming industrialised countries are already formally responsible for their past carbon profligacy.
They could also, supposedly, generate income for countries in the south. And they could create a new and fabulously rich seam of virtual carbon for financiers, including the World Bank, to mine and trade without getting their hands dirty.
There are some uncertainties - carbon traders may be reluctant to include deforestation in existing markets right now, for example, in case the current carbon price drops, but general interest in market-oriented solutions is, to put it mildly, sky high.
Might there be a hidden catch, however? Well, yes, unfortunately there is.
The really inconvenient truth is that carbon “offsets” based on market mechanisms are more likely to harm than help. They tend to discourage efforts to cut emissions at source.
They also undermine investment in increased energy efficiency in industrialised countries because companies can offset their emissions more cheaply by investing in developing countries.
Some governments’ proposals to include deforestation in carbon markets, in order to help finance reduced deforestation rates, could also discourage tropical forest-owning governments from taking quick, cheap and effective action - by simply banning logging, for example.
It could also work against countries that have already made efforts to protect or restore their forests.
As with all markets, the price of carbon can also change quickly and swiftly. Unpredictable external factors mean that outcomes are typically difficult to predict and control, as in any market.
The world’s most significant carbon trading experiment to-date, the $25 billion (£12.2 billion) European emissions trading scheme, was too lenient in allocating pollution rights to big business when it was set up.
The EU has now fallen behind schedule for meeting its Kyoto target of an 8 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2012 and the price of carbon has plummeted, further reducing industry’s incentives to increase energy efficiency.
Other market-oriented schemes, such as voluntary offset schemes - the kind that you might decide to participate in so that you can jet off on holiday with a clear conscience - and projects funded by governments under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism have also been beset with problems.
They have resulted in a range of unsuitable and locally inappropriate projects, including tree planting projects that have led to the sometimes brutal evictions of forest-dependent communities from their traditional territories on the basis that they pose a threat to forests.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Indigenous people living in forests have the greatest knowledge about and the most interest in caring for and keeping their forests standing and have every right to stay on their lands.
This has now been formally recognised by the United Nations, although many government negotiators don’t seem to have noticed this fact yet.
Needless to say, the companies involved in all these projects have done very well, thank you, and will no doubt be present in Bali to make sure that the “carbon rush” continues.
My guess is that for them the “CCC” in UNFCCC stands for commercial carbon contract, not climate change convention.
However, civil society organisations and indigenous peoples from around the world are also here in Bali to call for real, lasting and effective action. There are plenty of cheap, tried and tested solutions available, we just have to be willing to pay for them.
Ronnie Hall is international campaigns co-ordinator for the Global Forest Coalition.
ON THE INTERNET: www.globalforestcoalition.org < http://www.globalforestcoalition.org>
December 3 – 14, 2007 will see more than 10,000 representatives of Government and civil society gather in Bali for a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This is the international treaty under which the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated. The Protocol expires in 2012, and Bali is supposed to begin negotiations on a post Kyoto framework.
In 2007, no one can deny that man-made climate change is taking place. However, the commitment to mitigate and help the vulnerable to adapt does not match the recognition of the disaster.
Mitigation requires material changes in production and consumption patterns. Globalisation has pushed production and consumption worldwide to higher carbon dioxide emissions. WTO rules of trade liberalization are in effect rules that force countries on a high emissions pathway. Similarly, World Bank lending for super highways and thermal power plant, industrial agriculture and corporate retail coerces countries to emit more greenhouse gases. And giant corporations such as Cargill and Walmart carry major responsibility in destroying local, sustainable economies and pushing society after society into dependence on an ecologically destructive global economy. Cargill is an important player in spreading soya cultivation in the Amazon, and palmoil plantations in the rainforest of Indonesia thus increasing emissions both by the burning of forests and destruction of the massive carbon sink in rainforests and peat lands. And Walmart’s model of long distance centralized trade is a recipe for increasing the carbon dioxide burden in the atmosphere.
The first step in mitigation requires a focus on real actions of real actors. Real actions are actions such as a shift from ecological farming and local food system. Real actors include global agribusiness, the WTO, the World Bank. Real actions involve destruction of rural economies with low emission to urban sprawl designed and planned by builders and construction companies. Real actions involve destruction of sustainable transport systems based on renewable energy and public transport to private automobiles. Real actors pushing this transition to non-sustainability in mobility are the oil companies and automobile corporations.
Kyoto totally avoided the material challenge of stopping activities that lead to higher emissions and the political challenge of regulation of the polluters and making the polluters pay in accordance with principles adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio. Instead, Kyoto put in place the mechanism of emissions trading which in effect rewarded the polluters by assigning them rights to the atmosphere and trading in these rights to pollute. Today, the emissions trading market has reached $ 30 billion and is expected to go up to $ 1 trillion. Carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase, while profits from “hot air” also increase. I call it “hot air” both because it is literally hot air leading to global warming and because it is metaphorically hot air, based on the fictitious economy of finance which has overtaken the real economy, both in size and in our perception. A casino economy has allowed corporations and their owners to multiply their wealth without limit, and without any relationship to the real world. Yet this hungry money then seeks to own the real resources of people – the land and the forests, the farms and the food, and turn them into cash. Unless we return to the real world, we will not find the solutions that will help mitigate climate change.
Another false solution to climate change is the promotion of biofuels based on corn and soya, palmoil and jatropha.
Biofuels, fuels from biomass, continue to be the most important energy source for the poor in the world. The ecological biodiverse farm is not just a source of food; it is a source of energy. Energy for cooking the food comes from the inedible biomass like cow dung cakes, stalks of millets and pulses, agro-forestry species on village wood lots. Managed sustainably, village commons have been a source of decentralized energy for centuries.
Industrial biofuels are not the fuels of the poor; they are the foods of the poor, transformed into heat, electricity, and transport. Liquid biofuels, in particular ethanol and bio-diesel, are one of the fastest growing sectors of production, driven by the search of alternatives to fossil fuels both to avoid the catastrophe of peak oil and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. President Bush is trying to pass legislation to require the use of 35 billion gallons of biofuels by 2017. M. Alexander of the Sustainable Development Department of FAO has stated: “The gradual move away from oil has begun. Over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels providing a full 25 per cent of the world’s energy needs.”
Global production of biofuels alone has doubled in the last five years and will likely double again in the next four. Among countries that have enacted a new pro-biofuel policy in recent years are Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Columbia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand and Zambia.
There are two types of industrial biofuels – ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol can be produced from products rich in saccharose such as sugarcane and molasses, substances rich in starch such as maize, barley and wheat. Ethanol is blended with petrol. Biodiesel is produced from vegetable only such as palm oil, soya oil, and rapeseed oil. Biodiesel is blended with diesel.
Representatives of organizations and social movements from Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Columbia, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic in a declaration titled “Full Tanks at the Cost of Empty Stomachs”, wrote “The current model of production of bio-energy is sustained by the same elements that have always caused the oppression of our people’s appropriation of territory, of natural resources, and the labor force.”
And Fidel Castro in an article titled “Food stuff as Imperial weapon: Biofuels and Global Hunger” has said:
More than three billion people are being condemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst.
The biofuel sector worldwide has grown rapidly. United states and Brazil have established ethanol industries and the European Union is also fast catching up to explore the potential market. Governments all over the world are encouraging biofuel production with favourable policies. United states is pushing the other third world nations of the world to go in for biofuel production so that their energy needs get met at the expense of plundering others resources.
Inevitably this massive increase in the demand for grains is going to come at the expense of the satisfaction of human needs, with poor people priced out of the food market. On February 28, the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement released a statement noting that “the expansion of the production of biofuels aggravates hunger in the world. We cannot maintain our tanks full while stomachs go empty.”
The diversion of food for fuel has already increased the price of corn and soya. There have been riots in Mexico because of the price rise of tortillas. And this is just the beginning. Imagine the land needed for providing 25% of the oil from food.
One tonne of corn produces 413 litres of ethanol. 35 million gallons of ethanol requires 320 million tons of corn. The U.S. produced 280.2 million tons of corn in 2005. As a result of NAFTA, the U.S. made Mexico dependent on U.S. corn, and destroyed the small farms of Mexico. This was in fact the basis of the Zopatista uprising. As a result of corn being diverted to biofuels, prices of corn have increased in Mexico.
Industrial biofuels are being promoted as a source of renewable energy and as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are two ecological reasons why converting crops like soya, corn and palm oil into liquid fuels can actually aggravate climate chaos and the CO2 burden.
Firstly, deforestation caused by expanding soya plantations and palm oil plantations is leading to increased CO2 emissions. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1.6 billion tons or 25 to 30 per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year comes from deforestation. By 2022, biofuel plantations could destroy 98% of Indonesia’s rainforests.
According to Wetlands International, destruction of South East Asia pert lands for palm oil plantations is contributing to 8% of the global CO2 emissions. According to Delft Hydraulics, every tonne of palm oil results in 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions or 10 times as much as petroleum producers. However, this additional burden on the atmosphere is treated as a clean development mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions. Biofuels are thus contributing to the same global warming that they are supposed to reduce. (World Rainforest Bulletin No.112, Nov 2006, Page 22)
Further, the conversion of biomass to liquid fuel uses more fossil fuels than it substitutes.
One gallon of ethanol production requires 28,000 kcal. This provides 19,400 kcal of energy. Thus the energy efficiency is — 43%.
The U.S. will use 20% of its corn to produce 5 billion gallons of ethanol which will substitute 1% of oil use. If 100% of corn was used, only 7% of the total oil would be substituted. This is clearly not a solution either to peak oil or climate chaos. (David Pimental at IFG conference on “The Triple Crisis”, London, Feb 23-25, 2007)
And it is a source of other crisis. 1700 gallons of water are used to produce a gallon of ethanol. Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer, more insecticides, more herbicides than any other crop.
These false solutions will increase the climate crisis while aggravating and deepening inequality, hunger and poverty.
Real solutions exist which can mitigate climate change while reducing hunger and poverty.
According to the Stern Report, agriculture accounts for 14% emissions, land use (referring largely to deforestation) accounts for 18%, and transport accounts for 14%. The increasing transport of fresh food, which could be grown locally, is part of these 14% emissions.
Not all agricultural systems however contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial chemical agriculture, also called the Green Revolution when introduced in Third World countries, is the major source of three greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and methane. Carbon dioxide is emitted from using fossil fuels for machines and pumping of ground water, and the production of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Chemical fertilizers also emit nitrogen oxygen, which is 300 times more lethal than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. And grain fed factory farming is a major source of methane. Studies indicate that a shift from grain fed to predominantly grass fed organic diet could reduce methane emission from livestock by upto 50%.
Ecological, organic agriculture reduces emissions both by reducing dependence on fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers and intensive feed, as well as absorbing more carbon in the soil. Our studies show an increase of carbon sequestration of upto 200% in biodiverse organic systems.
When “ecological and organic” is combined with “direct and local”, emissions are further reduced by reducing energy use for “food miles”, packaging and refrigeration of food. And local food systems will reduce the pressure to expand agriculture in the rainforests of Brazil and Indonesia. We could, with a timely transition reduce emissions, increase food security and food quality and improve the resilience of rural communities to deal with the impact of climate change. The transition from the industrial globalised food system being imposed by WTO, the World Bank and Global Agribusinesses to ecological and local food systems is both a mitigation and adaption strategy. It protects the poor and it protects the planet. The post-Kyoto framework must include ecological agriculture as a climate solution.
The face of the environmental movement is changing. No longer strictly the domain of nature enthusiasts, a new socially conscious environmentalism is becoming mainstream. In Oakland, teenagers from poor neighborhoods are learning to install solar panels. In the Bronx, gardens are sprouting up on rooftops. Indigenous Americans in Hawaii, New Mexico and Minnesota are collaborating to keep their traditional food supplies free from genetically modified inbreeding. Social justice and environmental movements are creating alliances that broaden the possibility of who will benefit from the greening of America.
Building bridges between social justice activists and nature freaks isn’t as hard as it sounds, as demonstrated by the eighteenth annual Bioneers Conference October 19-21 in San Rafael, California. Since 1990, pathbreaking Bioneers–biological pioneers–have provided a forum for activists from around the globe to share visions of combined social and environmental sustainability. Farmers, scientists, educators and others gather to connect their issues and create solutions.
“When you take care of nature, you take care of people. And when you take care of people, you take care of nature,” Bioneers founder Kenny Ausubel said. From this vantage point, it makes sense to think about sustainability not only in terms of depleted natural resources like timber or fossil fuel, but also in terms of depleted human resources–such as the disproportionately high number of young black men who are imprisoned in America. It’s possible to talk about preserving the oil-rich wilderness of Alaska in the same breath as we talk about preserving the heart and soul of New Orleans.
CONTINUED BELOW
Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, calls this “social uplift environmentalism.” To counteract what he perceives as twenty years of racial segregation in the environmental movement, Jones said he envisions a world in which “a green wave lifts all boats.” His organization’s Green for All campaign aims to secure $1 billion in funding for “green-collar” job training across the country. Weatherizing buildings, harvesting solar power and constructing wind farms are jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas. Training a green-collar workforce can help lift people out of poverty while improving the ecology of our cities.
Majora Carter is the founder of Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx), an organization working for environmental justice in that low-income neighborhood. She believes no community should have to bear the brunt of environmental toxicity. Carter lives and works in a place where nearly one in four children has asthma as a result of diesel trucks idling for hours on their way to Manhattan. SSBx is developing the South Bronx Greenway to provide safe public outdoors space and to create better transportation policy. Another project, to remove a 1.25-mile stretch of unused highway running through residential neighborhoods, will make space for the things residents really need, like parks, housing and businesses. “You shouldn’t have to have a lot of green to be green,” she says.
The new environmentalism also means recognizing the direct link between cultural diversity and biodiversity, a connection that indigenous activist Winona LaDuke is trying to bring into the public discourse. “Wherever Indigenous peoples still remain, there is also a corresponding enclave of biodiversity,” she writes, and that variation of life-forms is vital to the health of any ecosystem. For twenty years she has fought to protect Manoomin, a wild rice that grows on the lakes in Northern Minnesota and is a sacred food to the Anishinaabeg people, from genetic engineering. Changing the DNA of traditional foods upsets the ecological systems in which they grow and impacts the people whose cultures depend on their cultivation. At the Bioneers conference LaDuke said: “I didn’t know what seed slavery was until I met up with Monsanto.” Keeping agri-giants like Monsanto away from traditional seed supplies and keeping Manoomin wild are two ways indigenous Americans are working to preserve native lands and cultures.
That the environmental movement has gone mainstream is a good thing because it creates the possibility of solving multiple interrelated problems at once. But this opportunity will be missed if the emerging eco-consciousness is co-opted by corporate sellers of hybrid cars and organic cotton Levi’s. Integrating more diverse voices into the environmental justice movement helps ensure that it is truly a people’s movement instead of a consumer movement. Bioneers are leading the way with their vision and willingness to forge alliances. After all, if green is the new black, everyone should be invited to the party.
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