Biofuels Project Pushing Thousands of People into Hunger in Africa

Bio­fu­els Project Push­ing Thou­sands of Peo­ple into Hunger in Africa

- Sep­tem­ber 4, 2013. Source: ActionAid

A bio­fu­els project praised by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion as envi­ron­men­tal­ly and social­ly respon­si­ble is push­ing thou­sands of peo­ple into pover­ty in one of the poor­est coun­tries in the world, a new Action­Aid report said today.

The report comes as MEPs pre­pare to take a crit­i­cal vote on EU bio­fu­el poli­cies next week.

When Addax Bioen­er­gy short­ly begins export­ing ethanol from a sug­ar cane plan­ta­tion in Sier­ra Leone to the EU to be used in petrol, it will be the first bio­fu­els to be export­ed from Africa to Europe in com­mer­cial quantities.

The EU claims that it does not import bio­fu­els crops from Africa’s poor­est coun­tries because of the poten­tial impact that its bio­fu­el poli­cies have on decreas­ing the amount of land that can be used to grow food and there­fore increas­ing hunger.

 Action­Aid has found evi­dence from vis­its to the Addax project in the Bom­bali dis­trict of Sier­ra Leone and from car­ry­ing out 100 inter­views with local peo­ple that the project is hav­ing neg­a­tive effects on many of the 13,000 peo­ple in 60 villages.

 Tim Rice, ActionAid’s bio­fu­els pol­i­cy advi­sor and author of the report, Bro­ken Promis­es, said: “In the area where the com­pa­ny has start­ed its bio­fu­els plan­ta­tion, com­mu­ni­ties are say­ing that food pro­duc­tion has dropped and hunger is wide­spread. Peo­ple have lost their land but are get­ting very lit­tle in way of com­pen­sa­tion from Addax. The fact that this is done in the name of EU ‘green’ poli­cies is shocking.”

ActionAid’s sur­vey of local peo­ple reveals that 90 per cent said that hunger was due to the loss of land to Addax, while 78 per cent said that they have nev­er seen a land lease agree­ment from the company.

The Addax project, fund­ed by the African Devel­op­ment Bank and five Euro­pean bilat­er­al insti­tu­tions, recent­ly received a sus­tain­able cer­tifi­cate from the Round­table for Sus­tain­able Bio­ma­te­r­i­al (RSB), despite Action­Aid find­ing many flaws in the project’s sustainability.

 Speak­ing in Brus­sels, Abass Kar­mara, Pro­grammes Coor­di­na­tor of the Sier­ra Leone Net­work on the Right to Food said: “Addax has been cit­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion as a case of best prac­tice in land invest­ments. In real­i­ty, it is only the best of a bad bunch. What we are see­ing is a litany of bro­ken promises.”

 The EU’s Renew­able Ener­gy Direc­tive, which requires 10 per cent of all ener­gy used in EU trans­port to come from renew­able sources by 2020, pro­motes bio­fu­els as a green­er alter­na­tive to fos­sil fuels. But research has shown that rather than cut­ting green­house gas emis­sions, many bio­fu­els increase them.

Mean­while, in sub-Saha­ran African six mil­lion hectares of land – 38 times the size of Lon­don – are now under the con­trol of Euro­pean com­pa­nies seek­ing to prof­it from Europe’s bio­fu­el policies.

On 11 Sep­tem­ber MEPs will vote on EU bio­fu­els pol­i­cy. They have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to change the dam­ag­ing EU poli­cies that dri­ve the rush for land grabs from com­pa­nies such as Addax.

Action­Aid is urg­ing MEPs to vote to min­imise the use of land-based bio­fu­els that can count towards tar­gets in EU bio­fu­el leg­is­la­tion, with a view to phase out the use of such bio­fu­els entire­ly by 2020.