My Wit's End

Expert decries biofuel production

Cagayan de Oro City — KAGAY-AN Watershed Alliance (KAWAL), a local coalition of environmentalists, have found an international ally in their battle against the construction of a city-pushed bio-ethanol processing plant in the upland barangays of Cagayan de Oro City.

 In a forum on biofuels (i.e. ethanol) organized by the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro (ACDO) and the Xavier University College of Agriculture (XUCA) together with the Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (SEARICE) and Third World Network (TWN) held at Cronin Multi-purpose Hall, St. Augustine’s Cathedral, the forum’s Brazilian keynote speaker said biofuel production will not only be detrimental to the environment but will also threaten food security and rural livelihood.
 
 Camila Moreno, a researcher on land rights from Brazil, told the forum’s participants that 60 percent of the global food crisis is due to biofuel production.

 She said First World countries are creating “artificial markets” for biofuels thereby making the subtropical countries, mostly underdeveloped countries like the Philippines, their producers.

 Brazil, she said, has been producing ethanol for the last 30 years.

 ”They make us their producers because our countries can have at least two harvests per year,” Moreno said

 Moreno illustrated the irony in producing biofuels saying you would have to spend more fuel in producing biofuels, such as biodiesel and ethanol, compared to the bofuels’ output in terms of energy.

 ”This is not new, and the pattern in the production in all countries producing ethanol is the same. They (US, UK, China) know how to use the state power instruments into making the local markets of third world countries enslaven with theirs,” Moreno said.

 Moreno decried the fact that local governments are conditioning the public’s mind to accept the entry of bio-ethanol production as beneficial for the local economies.

 ”Third world countries should re-localize their economies so that they will not be overly dependent on the global market,” Moreno said.

       Moreno is a researcher at Terra de Direitos, a Brazilian non-government organization working on land rights.
      
       She works on social and environmental impacts of biotechnology and agribusiness expansion in Brazil and Latin America.

 Yesterday’s forum on biofuels was also sponsored by the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), Justice and Peace Desk-Diocese of Marbel and Lay Forum Philippines.