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Whose Biomass?A tale of two bioeconomiesEvangelists of the new bioeconomy like to frame it as a returnto a previous, sustainable economy, in which humancivilization relied on the natural bounty of the present ratherthan robbing from the mineral deposits of the past. But whilethe global economy as a whole might have taken a centurylongdetour from that bio-based economy, billions of peopledid not. They – that is, peasants, indigenous peoples,pastoralists, fisherfolk, forest dwellers and other traditionalcommunities – remained independent of the hydrocarboneconomy; however, as climate change accelerates, they arepaying its costs…• Two centuries after the industrial revolution began burningcoal, three billion people, two-thirds of whom live in theglobal South, still depend upon firewood as their primarysource of fuel for heat and cooking. 66• One hundred thirty years after Edison enabled electricitydistribution, 1.6 billion people have no access to electricitywhether sourced from coal, wind, water or woodchips. 67• One hundred forty years after Siegfried Marcus firstattached a combustion engine to a vehicle, 2 billion peoplestill rely on animals as their main source of power foragriculture and transport; indeed, half of the farmland in theglobal South is tilled exclusively by animals. 68These biodiversity-based economies dependon exactly the same natural resources(plants, land, water, animal products)that the new bioeconomy intends tocapture for conversion into industrialchemicals and energy. Moreover, theso-called ‘biomass’ that industryintends to grab is not only alreadyused as a resource by thesecommunities, but it is alsointerdependently connected with theircultures and knowledge systems.The Land Grab: current rush to buy land in the globalSouth. The past few years have witnessed a massiveupswing in the number of deals buying and leasingagricultural land in the tropics by Northern investors andstates. The term was coined by civil society organizationGRAIN.An existingbioeconomy alreadydepends on biomassfor fuel, power andmaterials.Photo: Adam Jones“Land bestsuited for biomassgeneration (Latin America,Sub-Saharan Africa) is the leastutilized.”– Presentation by Steven Chu (nowU.S. Secretary of State for Energy)at the Asia Pacific PartnershipConference, Berkeley, USA,19 April 2006Marginal Lands forMaximal ProfitBiomass advocates refer to “marginal,”“unproductive,” “idle,” “degraded” and“abandoned” lands and “wastelands” asthe target for biomass extraction,claiming that as many as 500 millionhectares of abandoned or marginal landare available worldwide for growingbiomass crops. 69 Such claims appear to bebased on satellite data showing areas offormer cropland. However, a closer look atthese “marginal lands” from ground level revealsthat they are often where marginalized people subsist. Farfrom being ‘abandoned’ or ‘degraded,’ their uses are merelyinvisible to a system that recognizes only private ownershipand industrial agriculture (and carries out its assessments fromouter space).The New Biomassters 15