(Bio)Fueling Injustice? - Europafrica

The Markala Sugar Project will also have major impact on the access to land of the
local population that depend almost exclusively on farming, which is practised on 95%
of the cultivated land area. According to the ESIA, a population of 155,902 from 1,718
households and 64 localities will be directly affected by the project, as their farmland
and pastures will be transformed into sugar cane plantations. One thousand six
hundred forty four inhabitants (i.e. 127 households from 23 localities 135 ), will have to be
replaced and resettled, thus losing their homes and means of subsistence. The
remaining population is living in localities adjoining the territory of MSP and will in
many cases also lose access to their means of subsistence by losing their land and
the forests they depend on. 136 Although compensation of the communities affected by
the project in kind and/or cash, and in the form of assistance is foreseen by the
Resettlement Action Plan, this poses major threats to the access to food for the
concerned communities. The Resettlement Action Plan does not contain details about
the compensation for the affected communities which is all the more worrying since
Malian law does not regulate compensation processes in detail and there is “a juridical
void regarding the dealing with collateral damages of expropriation.” 137
According to the ESIA, the affected population will suffer from a decline in food
production that will strike particularly hard the resettled population. The population in
the ON depending almost exclusively on farming and livestock keeping, food insecurity
is likely to increase. As the ESIA puts is, “the retreat of the lands will have a negative
impact on the ability of the affected population to provide for their alimentation needs,
because the lands that constitute their principal source of production will be
transformed into sugar cane plantations.” 138 This applies to farmland but also to land
that is used as pasture for livestock keeping. The cutting down of the trees in the area
will also have major impacts on the food security and livelihoods of the local
communities as they utilise products from the trees as food, animal feed, construction
material and source of energy or as an additional source of income.
Although the project developers stress the possible creation of jobs that might
eventually provide sufficient income for households to buy food and alleviate poverty,
the monoculture sugar project as it is conceived will very likely weaken overall food
security in the long term as it leads to the destruction of diversity and the selfsufficiency
of the local population. This makes them vulnerable when food prices
increase and in times of food shortages. The loss of the local population’s traditional
livelihood and their independence is even more severe as population will entirely
depend on one crop (sugar cane) to be sold to one company (SoSuMar). The
promises of the project developers to develop and distribute the zones between the
irrigated surfaces for the cultivation of foodcrops and vegetables will not be sufficient to
alleviate the negative overall impacts on food security.
The ESIA states that the affected population has to be assisted in providing their
means of subsistence during the so-called transition period between the beginning of
the transformation of the land into sugar cane plantations and the expected outcomes
in terms of income generation. However, no information was available on what the
assistance will look like.
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