(Bio)Fueling Injustice? - Europafrica

9. Conclusion: the way forward
9.1. The wrong model
It has been shown how agrofuels have direct and multi-faceted impacts on local
populations in Africa. It can be put back in the context of the definition of land grabbing
given in section 1.2. Two essential dimensions that define when a land deal is
considered as “land grab” were identified: 1) the effect of a land deal on the
nonredistribution/(re)concentration of land, and 2) its effect on the character, direction
and orientation of land-use change, i.e. its effect on food security and the environment.
Based on this definition, agrofuel land deals for export appear to constitute the most
clear-cut and some of the worst cases of land grabbing. Indeed, land grabbing for
agrofuels not only leads to the concentration of the land away from small-scale
farmers, but it also involves the production of non-food crops for exports on unused or
food producing land, which is one of the typical negative cases.
Coming back to what were identified as the main arguments in favour of biofuels
(greenhouse gas savings, energy security, and rural development), it is clear that
these objectives are not realised. This is in substance what the French national auditor
concludes, noting that the only real positive effect of the 15 years of biofuel policies in
France are on the domestic agriculture and that these biofuel policies have had little
effect on other areas such as energy independence and GHG savings. 516 Thus, even
by calculating the costs and benefits of biofuel policies, as suggested by a human
rights expert, the dramatic social impact cannot be decently compensated by a more
than uncertain putative environmental benefit. 517 In fact, as “the industrialized countries
of the North are very interested in the production of the countries of the southern
hemisphere” to meet their biofuel needs, 518 they use the lands of African and other
countries as support to their own interests and demands, rather than to help local
people. In such cases, all happens as if the EU imposed a new “Co2 imperialism”
over Africa.
Said differently, it seems to make little sense that up to 10% of the total cultivated
land could be used for biofuel production in 2030, whereas 307 million people suffer
from hunger in Africa, with Mozambique and Ethiopia leading the way on the
development of agrofuels, whereas more than a third of the population of these
countries is malnourished. 519 In a world where 1 billion people are hungry, it is
expected that between 2011 and 2020, largely driven by biofuel mandates and support
policies, 21% of the global coarse grains production’s increase, 29% of the global
vegetable oil production’s increase and 68% of the global sugar cane production’s
increase by 2020 will be used to fill in our tanks rather than to feed people. 520
The current support of biofuels also makes little sense, since, if the demand for food is
naturally limited by human demand for food, the demand for biofuels is almost
infinite without a risk of saturation of the markets before long. 521 Thus, unless the
technology rapidly makes enormous progress, when policies such as in the EU start
encouraging agrofuels, it creates a demand potentially without limits, and it
mechanically engenders in the middle or long term an incommensurate pressure on
land. This is just not sustainable.
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