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Arte reportage
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Présenté par : Nathalie Georges, Andrea Fies |
Février 2009
"Les promoteurs des biocarburants les présentaient comme «l'énergie verte» de demain. C'est pourtant bien l'exploitation intensive de l'huile de palme qui a placé l'Indonésie au troisième rang
des pays les plus pollueurs de la planète.
Selon Greenpeace, l'équivalent d'un terrain de football est brûlé toutes les dix secondes dans ce pays pour remplacer les forêts tropicales par des plantations lucratives de palmiers à huile. Le
désastre écologique qu'entraîne la culture de cette nouvelle manne ne s'arrête pas là. Sur l'île de Bornéo, la déforestation favorise l'érosion des sols.
La culture massive de palmiers à huile provoque également un drame social en Indonésie. Les paysans de l'île de Sumatra, dépossédés de leurs terres au profit des sociétés de plantation, peinent à
obtenir quelques hectares en guise d'indemnisation."
Orangutans and Palm Oil: Viral Internet Advert to raise awareness of one of the risks of adopting palm oil as a biofuel in Europe. This advert focuses on the
impacts on biodiversity with the orangutan representing a flagship species that whose greatest threat today is the loss of forest for oil palm plantations.
Made in collaboration with Greenpeace, EnoughsEnough and Films4Conservation. Find out more at www.films4.org/palmoil
Internal World Bank Study Delivers Blow to Plant Energy Drive
by Aditya Chakrabortty
LONDON - Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank
report obtained by the Guardian.
The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.
Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.
“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.
The news comes at a critical point in the world’s negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.
It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a “significant” part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.
“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”
Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.
President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.”
Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.
Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.
“Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.
It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.
Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.
The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.
Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.
“It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices,” said Dr David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, last night. “All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change.”
Friends of the Earth International urges banks to stop fuelling harmful agrofuel boom
BRUSSELS (Belgium) / MONTEVIDEO (Uruguay), 19 May 2008 – Many major European banks are funding the rapid expansion of agrofuel production in Latin America, leading to large scale deforestation, increasing human right abuses and threatening food sovereignty, according to a new report released today. [1]
The report - released by Friends of the Earth Europe amid global worries about the increasing impacts of rising food prices - calls for an end to investments by European banks in harmful agrofuel projects. [2]
Agrofuels have been blamed as a major factor driving up food prices. According to the UN and the World Bank, 100 million more people are currently facing severe hunger due to higher prices for basic foods. [3]
The report ‘European financing of agrofuel production in Latin America’ documents how major European banks, such as Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Axa, HSBC, UBS and Credit Suisse are investing billions of Euros in the production and trade of sugar cane, soybeans and palm oil in Latin American countries.
Fuels from sugar cane, soybeans and palm oil are increasingly used in Europe. Their large scale production in countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Colombia is extremely controversial as it leads to the destruction of the Amazon and other valuable ecosystems, as well as to the contamination of drinking water. Large scale plantations also lead to human rights violations against peasants, with working conditions on some plantations in Brazil classed as modern slave labour.
At the same time agrofuel companies are making record profits, enabled by loans, investments and other financial support from private banks. All major European banks have invested billions of Euros over recent years in agrofuel producing companies such as Cargill, Bunge, ADM, Cosan and Brasil Ecodiesel. Several of these companies have been involved in, and convicted of, illegal activities in Latin America. [4]
Some examples of European banks involvement:
* in 2007 Deutsche Bank owned 35 per cent of the shares of Brasil Ecodiesel
*Bunge currently has credit facilities worth more than a billion Euro from banks such as Barclays, BBVA, BNP Paris, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, KBC and Credit Suisse
*in 2007 Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse provided financial services totalling more than a billion Euros to Cosan
Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth International corporate campaign coordinator, said:
“Agrofuels are a booming business and banks are out to make maximum money while millions of people are suffering from lack of food and the environment is being destroyed. Banks should immediately stop their investments in such harmful agrofuel development.”
Friends of the Earth is also calling on the European Commission to revise its plans for a mandatory 10% target for the use of agrofuels in transport by 2020, which it says will exacerbate the problems associated with the production of agrofuels. Agrofuels are billed as a solution toclimate change but growing scientific evidence shows that they may actually increase rather than decrease greenhouse gas emissions, especially if wider knock-on effects, such as changes in land use, are taken into account.
Using crops to feed cars instead of people is a false solution to climate change, ”added Mr de Clerck.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
In Brussels, Belgium: Paul de Clerck, Friends of the Earth International: Mobile: +32494380959, or email paul@milieudefensie.nl
In Montevideo, Uruguay: Carlos Santos, Friends of the Earth Uruguay: Mobile: +5491160191836 / +59898889498 or email carlos.santos@redes.org.uy
NOTES
[1] The full report ’European financing of agrofuel production in Latin America‘ is online at:
http://www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/financers_report_May08.pdf_
[2] Biofuels are plants grown to make fuel instead of food. When they are grown in intensive agricultural systems, such as environmentally-damaging large-scale monoculture plantations, they are called agrofuels’.
[3] This estimate was cited by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on April 29 2008 when he announced a new task force to tackle the global food crisis.
[4] In March 2007, the Supreme Court in Brazil judged that Cargill operated illegally while constructing a terminal on the banks of the
Tapajos River to facilitate exports of soy beans without proper Environmental Impact Assessment. See fact sheet at:
http://www.foeeurope.org/corporates/cases/Cargill_Factsheet_May08.pdf
A demonstrator eats grass in front of a U.N. Brazilian peacekeeping soldier during a protest against
the high cost of living in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Source: Biston.com
The world's most powerful finance ministers and central bankers are meeting in Washington tomorrow; but as they preoccupy themselves with the global credit crunch, another crisis, far more grave, is facing the world's poorest people.
A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world's most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages grow and cereal prices soar. It threatens to become the biggest crisis of the 21st century.
This week crowds of hungry demonstrators in Haiti stormed the presidential palace in the capital, Port-au-Prince, in protests over food prices. And a crisis gripped the Philippines as massive queues formed to buy rice from government stocks.
There have been riots in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso and protests in Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt and Morocco. Mexico has had "tortilla riots" and, in Yemen, children have marched to draw attention to their hunger.
The global price of wheat has risen by 130 per cent in the past year. Rice has rocketed by 74 per cent in the same period. It went up by more than 10 per cent in a single day last Friday – to an all-time high as African and Asian importers competed for the diminishing supply on international markets in an attempt to head off the mounting social unrest. The International Rice Research Institute warned yesterday that prices will keep going up.
The buffers stocks of staple foods that governments once held are being steadily exhausted.
Rising prices have triggered a food crisis in 36 countries, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The hike in prices means the World Food Programme is cutting food handout rations to some 73 million people in 78 countries. The threat of malnutrition on a massive scale is looming.
The impact is beginning to be felt in the rich world, too. More expensive wheat has caused large rises in the cost of pasta and bread in Italy where consumer groups staged a one-day strike that brought pasta consumption down 5 per cent. The price of miso, a fermented rice and barley mixture, is up in Japan. France and Australia have launched national inquiries into rising food prices and are pressing food producers and supermarkets to absorb price rises. In Britain, the price of bread is rising in line with the cost of wheat.
Governments have begun to negotiate secretive barter arrangements as the price of agricultural commodities leap to record highs. Ukraine and Libya are close to a deal on wheat. Egypt and Syria have signed a rice-for-wheat swap. The Philippines has just failed in a rice deal with Vietnam.
All across the world, cereals, meat, eggs and dairy products are becoming dearer. "Food prices are now rising at rates that few of us can ever have seen before in our lifetimes," said John Powell of the World Food Programme. Prices are likely to remain high for at least 10 years, the Food and Agriculture Organisation is projecting.
A complex interaction of factors has provoked the panic among dealers in international food markets.
Diets are changing radically in nations such as China, India, Brazil and Russia, where economic growth has boosted meat consumption. In China, it is up by 150 per cent since 1980. In India, it has risen by 40 per cent in the past 15 years. The demand for meat from across all developing countries has doubled since 1980.
Because cattle and chickens are fed on corn – it takes 8kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef – the price has risen.
The new market for biofuels has raised grain prices. Corn is being used to produce energy and the market is anticipating hugely increased production in the coming decade. George Bush wants 15 per cent of American cars to run on biofuels by 2017, which will mean trebling maize production. Europe has a set a transport fuels target of 5.75 per cent from biofuels by 2010. As a result, the price of corn has begun to track that of oil quite closely.
The soaring cost of oil, which last week topped $105 (£53) a barrel for the first time, has another impact. It increases the price of fertiliser, and also the costs of food processing and transport.
Climate change is taking its toll. Droughts and floods are affecting harvests.
Floods in central China this year displaced millions of people and devastated rice and corn crops. Overall China's grain harvest has fallen by 10 per cent over the past seven years. Last year, Australia experienced its worst drought for more than a century, causing the wheat harvest to fall by 60 per cent. The UK wheat harvest is expected to be 10 per cent down this year, partly because of the flooding.
Worldwide, an area of fertile soil the size of Ukraine is lost every year because of drought, deforestation and climate instability.
There is also increasing demand from a rising world population which is expected to grow from 6.2 billion today to 9.5 billion by 2050. The World Bank predicts global demand for food will double by 2030.
Government policies do not help: the rich world subsidises agriculture not to feed the world but to enrich its farmers.
There is an increasing recognition of the gravity of all of this among the leaders of the industrialised world. On Thursday, Gordon Brown called on the Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, the current chairman of the G8, to devise an international plan to deal with rising food prices with the World Bank, the IMF and the UN.
There is increasing concern about the rush to biofuels. Britain's new chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has said cutting down rainforest to produce biofuel crops was "profoundly stupid". It was, he said, "very hard to imagine how we can see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and, at the same time, meet the enormous increase in the demand for food".
Source: www.foeeurope.org
Lennart Båge, the president of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, suggested that those opposed to GM crops should take another look at the productivity gains they can unleash and bring changes as massive as the "green revolution" of the 1960s, when crop yields in India and other developing nations jumped because of of better seeds, fertilisers and improved irrigation.
That change brought down food prices, freeing millions from hunger. If world leaders cannot come up with something similar again, the food riots could spread across the globe.
by Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON - Growing more corn to meet the projected U.S. demand for ethanol could worsen an expanding “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that is bad for crawfish,
shrimp and local fisheries, researchers reported on Monday.
The dead zone is a huge area of water — some 7,700 square miles — that forms above the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico every summer. It contains very low levels of oxygen.
The dead zone starts in Midwestern corn country when farmers fertilize their fields with nitrogen. The fertilizer run-off flows down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, making algae bloom on the surface and cutting oxygen to creatures that live on the bottom.
The low levels of oxygen in the zone make it difficult for crustaceans and bottom-feeding fish to survive, said Simon Donner, who worked on the study published the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Crustaceans will likely struggle to stay alive, Donner said by telephone. Fish will swim out of the zone, potentially devastating local fisheries, he said.
“We’re already at a point where recommendations have been made that nitrogen levels in the Mississippi River have to decrease by up to … 55 percent in order to shrink the dead zone,” said Donner, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
“And now with this incentive to produce more corn and use more fertilizer, we’re pushing in the other direction,” Donner said. “The two policies are just completely incongruous.”
A recent Senate energy policy proposal recommended the manufacture of 15 billion to 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by the year 2022, Donner’s team found.
To reach that goal with corn-based ethanol would increase nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River by 10 to 18 percent, Donner said.
Editing by Eric Beech
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