5e. Biofuels Flashcards
Pan-African Non-Petroleum Producers formed in 2006. 15 nations that don’t produce petrol of their own and identified biofuels as a key resource strategy
Example of state agency
Molony & Smith (2010)
By 2007, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, argued that biofuels were a ‘crime against humanity.’
The social/environmental impacts of biofuels
* From a political economy perspective, biofuels are a bad idea because
* Many biofuel crops are already entrenched in industrial agricultural system;
* Already-vulnerable people will bear the disproportionate burden of biofuel development, since they are already structurally disempowered;
* Emerging biofuel alliances between govts and companies are putting further pressure on forests and marginalising the disempowered e.g. subsistence farmers - they are not truly ‘sustainable’ because they add to the pre-existing agroindustrial model
* When doubts arose about the benefits of biofuels, investors launched new alliances to continue advancing the industry
States in the Global South are powerful and seek to derive economic benefits. However, these will lessen as the biofuel sector grows. The rhetoric of sustainability makes biofuels difficult to critique. However, fundamentally, crops are simply being diverted from food to fuel production.
Dauvergne & Neville (2010)
A more positive overview of the potential of biofuels.
* New economic opportunity for poor rural farmers
* Reduced dependence on oil, reduced GHGs
* Greater energy security, reduced environmental impact
* Renewable and available throughout the world
Demirbas (2009)
The biofuels rush exemplify the shortcomings of market environmentalism and efforts to ‘green’ accumulation.
* They are ineffectual in reducing GHG
* They displace food producers
* They contributed to the 2008 food crisis (since land was diverted away from food)
* Food security cannot be guaranteed through corporate stewardship which created the dysfunctional system in the first place
A continued externalisation of capitalism’s costs that provides yet more opportunity for profit - another spatio-temporal fix.
Agrofuels in the food regime.
McMichael (2010)
- Local people have limited capacity to bargain or give consent to biofuel investments/initiatives
- Govts may offer tokenistic policy support to local rights/claims that often exclude women/pastoralists/Inidgenous people
- Biofuel expansion has led to land acquisition (both marginal and higher-value) but marginal lands are not marginal for everybody. These are likely to be under existing claims e.g. in Ethiopia, all land set aside for biofuel expansion has been labelled ‘wasteland’ but most will be in fact used for cultivation
- This is because private land ownership is not widespread e.g. in Africa, only 2-10% of the land is held under formal tenure (mostly urban)
- Land access entails rights that are acknowledged but not necessarily protected
- This means that government-allocated leases are the main way in which foreign investors acquire large tracts of land (e.g. 100% of leases in Mozambique)
- Thus, legal empowerment through legislative reform is intrinsically limited by the quality of laws and institutions
- The extent to which landholders can grant ‘free’ consent to commercial claims is limited
Over the heads of local people
Vermeulen & Cotula (2010)
Case study: the rapid expansion of oil palm and jatropha in S Mexio, and their partial failure through power and politics.
* Biofuel programmes provided prospects for political gains
* State and rural organisations colluding to support their own goals
* State intervention has been crucial for biofuel crops
* Regional leaders convinced state agencies or private actors to give assistance
* The peasant union’s Indigenous leader saw Jatropha as an opportunity to access state support and lobbied the state to include the southern rainforest in official definitions of areas with production potential. He brought in rural farmers to join the union by presenting biofuels as a development opportunity. This gave him more chance of winning the candidacy for municipal elections
Land-use decisions are embedded in social/political processes.
Rather than thinking simplistically in terms of governance/resistance, we can think about ‘hegemony’ - how do classes hold onto a political project advanced by a ruling class without being coerced into it?
Warning against over-emphasis on the state as a confined autonomous entity - it is relational and at odds with local actors
Why do smallholders plant biofuel crops?
Castellanos-Navarrete & Jansen (2017)
Case study: biofuels and the Brazilian National Biodiesel Programme, 2004.
The Brazilian government invested early in biofuels as a regional development strategy with a priority of social inclusion.
Firms that contracted with family farmers, offered technical assistance and guaranteed buying were given a ‘Social Fuel Certificate’ which enabled them to enter the biofuel market.
However, the structural weaknesses of the family farming sector - low land access, tired soils, rural exodus and lack of resources - meant that expectations were not met. Rather than the initially envisioned diversity of feedstock across regions, soy and animal fats dominated biodiesel production since they were the only materials with sufficient production scale to support large-scale biodiesel production.
Biodiesel is now becoming increasingly integrated into the strategies of agribusiness.
Wilkinson & Herrera (2010)
Biofuels in Brazil: debates and impacts
Biofuels in Brazil and land use change.
* Biofuels initially hailed as having significant potential to reduce GHG esp after oil price rises and fears of dependency
* Counter-arguments from environmentalists and those concerned about ‘marginalised’ land being used
* By 2008, FAO concluded that biofuels were partially behind food price rises
* Brazil is the 2nd largest liquid biofuel producer
* Paper finds that the expansion of sugarcane planting is associated with an equivalent reduction in pasture area and a decrease in cows, milk and beef production
* Need to understand biofuels in the context of other agricultural sectors
Example of hype: in 1997, the European Commission announced a plan to promote biofuel for transport so that it accounted for 12% of renewable energy by 2010
Novo et al (2010)
