Sunday, October 19, 2008 Expert decries biofuel production By Cong B. Corrales
A COALITION of environmentalists has found an international ally in its battle against the construction of a city-pushed bio-ethanol processing plant in the upland barangays of Cagayan de Oro City.
Kagay-an Watershed Alliance (KAWAL) found an ally in Camila Moreno, a Brazilian researcher on land rights from Brazil.
Moreno, during a forum on biofuels (i.e. ethanol), told participants that biofuel production will not only be detrimental to the environment but will also threaten food security and rural livelihood.
She said 60 percent of the global food crisis is due to biofuel production.
She added that 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.
The forum was 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).
It was held at Cronin Multi-purpose Hall, St. Augustine's Cathedral.
Friday'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.
