(Bio)Fueling Injustice? - Europafrica

mechanisms in African countries to protect vulnerable populations and ensure that
their rights are respected are weak and largely ineffective. 369 The lack of information
and consultation observed in many cases is confirmed by the Malian example in 4.2.
And when the law is breached, victims have no real recourse they can turn to.
As a result, agrofuel land deals generally fail to profit to the local population, and in
some cases, to the host states’ interests. 370 Benefiting from bi-lateral investment
treaties or a legal environment that strongly protect them, 371 large investors try to use
the governance gap of the host countries to secure the best possible deals. 372
Moreover, it has for instance been reported that in Mozambique, national economic
priorities give district authorities stronger incentives to promote the interests of
investors over local communities. 373 This finding reflects a broader study on agrofuel
land deals which concludes that in actual negotiations, host government agencies
invariably align with the investor rather than the local people. 374
The amount of money at stake in agrofuel-related projects and the promises made at
to the populations also create tensions in host countries, at the national and at the
local level, within the communities. Governments are for instance often eager to
declare land to be unused or unoccupied to attract foreign investments, although there
may be multiple claims on the same land, creating major conflicts for example in
Tanzania and Ethiopia. 375 The Senegalese case study presented above demonstrates
how glossy infrastructure development and wage promises can lead a peaceful
community to tear over the desirability of an investment project. Undelivered services,
high level of inequalities, and appropriation of the resources by foreigners or local
elites generate additional resentment and lay the ground for conflicts. 376 This can have
dramatic consequences, as it was recently the case in Fanaye (northern Senegal),
where a disputed biofuels project triggered violent clashes between villagers during
which 2 people were been killed and 22 other injured. The residents the village,
situated in the Senegal River valley, near the Mauritanian border, one of the country's
main areas of agricultural production, attacked each other with sticks and machetes in
a dispute over the project which will see 20,000 hectares given to an Italian investor to
cultivate sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels. IT was reported that a local
organisation defending land rights in the village said the project would lead to
“displacement of villages, destruction of cattle and desecration of cemeteries and
mosques.” 377
Such potential for conflicts has been anticipated by the World Bank, which warned in
2009 that rising demand for bioenergy may lead to rapid expansion of large
plantations which could, where land rights are not well defined, result in conflict.
Source of conflicts specifically identified include land appropriation by large private
entities, forced reallocations by the government in places where the land is owned by
the state, or government mandates to plant certain crops. 378 Furthermore, large-scale
intensive agrofuel production similar to that in Latin America would, according to the
Bank, likely result in some land-use conflicts. 379 These risks outlined by the World
Bank exactly correspond to the agrofuel investment situation in Africa, and the
example of other continents show what Africa can expect if agrofuels keep on
developing.
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