Are plants, trees, and forests the new oil fields?

OPINION

We couldn’t help but connect the dots between three news stories out this week.

In linking them we discern a pattern worthy of attention.

The color of future oil-fields is green

The first story was provocatively titled Earth Grab: The Rush to Make Agriculture the New Fuel for the Global Economy. Published by the online PR marketing digest, Marketwire, the item discussed the emergence of a so-called global “bio-economy,” driven largely by the private sector’s interest in the fuel-producing potential of plants. The press release was put out by Food Secure Canada, an outfit that bills itself as a “Canadian organization which works to unite people and organizations working for food security across Canada and globally.“

The article paints a grim picture of the potentially negative consequences of  this “bio-economy” on developing countries:

The emerging global bio-economy is worth trillions, and it threatens to eat up our crops, forests and other plant life,” said Jim Thomas of ETC Group, an international research institute based in Ottawa, Canada. “However, what’s being sold as a ‘green’ switch from fossil fuels to plant-based production, is in fact a red-hot resource grab on the lands, livelihoods, knowledge and resources of the peoples of the Global South.”

Based on this scenario, Brazil is seen as one of the worst offenders, and Camila Moreno, Friends of the Earth, Brazil states Brazil becomes the number one bio-energy oilfield. “Brazil wants to become the Saudi Arabia of biofuels,” said Moreno. “Not only are our country’s land and biomass up for grabs, but Brazilian corporations are actively grabbing land in other countries.”

Those are very troubling allegations for Brazil and other nations and institutions interested in developing clean, sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.  Yet nowhere are improved biofuels more important than in sub-Saharan African and Asian countries whose societies presently depend on the unsustainable consumption of woody biomass.

Wild, wild Africa

The second article is a Reuters story, whose title reads: S.Korea to farm Tanzania site in early 2011. The article describes South Korea’s plan to invest $50M to produce food on 15,000 acres of leased Tanzanian territory. The announcement comes on the heals of a number of recent stories documenting China, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E’s growing interest in cultivating crops in Africa to support domestic demand in their countries.

The Reuters article describes Tanzania as having “44 million hectares of arable land, of which the government says about 10.8 million is in use.”

There is little doubt that we live in a globalized world where commodities, manufactured products, and services are traded constantly on multiple platforms around the globe. The Earth IS, indeed, flat, as Thomas Friedman writes, and there’s not much we can do about  it.

One can also envision how developing sustainable, alternative fuel sources for energy-poor economies might be an attractive and important component of economic development for impoverished countries. For example, ethanol can be used to power vehicles and home cookstoves. And if it can be produced locally with minimal impact on local ecosystems and with a small carbon footprint, than it should be welcomed. Whether this scenario prevails remains to be seen.

Al Gore’s apostasis of corn-based ethanol

The third story is a mea-culpa from the apostle of Climate Change, Al Gore, who admitted his support for corn-based ethanol as viable substitute for fossil fuels was a mistake. Speaking at conference in Athens, Gore said, “It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol,” Gore said at a green energy conference in Athens, Greece, according to Reuters. First generation refers to the most basic, energy-intensive process of converting corn to ethanol for use as a motor vehicle fuel additive.

On reflection, Gore said the energy conversion ratios — how much energy is produced in the process — “are at best very small.” “One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee,” he said, “and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Federal ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year, Reuters said, and the bio-fuel industry faced criticism in 2008 as food prices rose with ethanol consuming ever more of the corn crop and drawing down feedstocks. Gore now favors second-generation ethanol, using farm waste and switchgrass to produce the fuel.

Bird-dogging Africa’s green-rush

For the record, at The Charcoal Project we believe ethanol can be a very useful homefuel alternative to solid biomass fuel, like wood, charcoal, and animal dung. One good example is the great work that Project Gaia is doing in Haiti to provide sustainable biofuel alternatives.

Nevertheless, the three seemingly unrelated articles discussed above suggest that concern about a land grab in Africa for the production of industrial-scale, ethanol-producing crops may well be justified.

Bird-dogging the “African agricultural green-rush” is everyone’s responsibility.

–Kim