Addax
Bioenergy, part of privately-owned Swiss Addax & Oryx Group, says it went
through long consultations with locals when it won a lease for around 50,000
hectares (123,600 acres) for ethanol sugarcane in the poor West African
country’s center.
Despite
that, a land dispute has flared up, one that highlights a major obstacle to
efforts to tackle climate change by growing fuel in some of the world’s poorest
places.
“We were
tricked. We feel the way we’re being treated is not in line with our
agreement,” said rice farmer Alie Bangura, 68. “They promised things when we
gave up our land that didn’t happen.”
Addax
says a large share of a competitive $12 per hectare goes directly to farmers,
rather than via landlords or officials, and that a development program to help
farmers improve yields will ensure all villages have enough to eat.
Proponents
of biofuel crops in rural Africa say they will help fight climate change, meet
Africa’s own chronic energy shortages and give badly needed income from
under-used farmland; critics say they take food out of hungry mouths by turning
arable land over to feed cars, stoking tension with communities.
As
environment ministers gathered in the Mexican resort of Cancun on Sunday for UN
talks aiming for agreement on steps to slow down global warming, biofuels are
likely to get little attention as doubts grow about whether they are realistic.
By one
estimate, satisfying the EU’s biofuel targets alone will require an additional
4.5 million hectares of land by 2020, an area the size of Denmark.
”
Environmental
groups have become alarmed at the pace with which vast tracts in Africa are
being bought up for fuel crops.
A study
by Friends of the Earth in August said biofuel demand was driving a new “land
grab” in Africa, with at least 5 million hectares (19,300 sq miles) acquired by
foreign firms to grow crops in 11 countries it had studied.
Ethiopia
has earmarked 700,000 hectares for sugarcane and up to 23 million for jatropha.
In Tanzania, rice farmers have been forced off their land to make way for
sugarcane, the group says.
Kenya and
Angola each have received proposals for the use of 500,000 hectares for
biofuels and a plan for 400,000 hectares of oil palms is underway in Benin.
Environmentalists are worried.
“The rush
is definitely still ongoing. It is quite alarming the rate of land acquisitions
by large companies,” Greenpeace Africa director Olivia Langhoff told Reuters by
phone.
“It’s
doubtful that Africans will see any benefits. There’s very little involvement
from local communities or farmers.”
Langhoff
said that in many cases promises are made that only fallow or marginal land
will be used, but the plantation expands into good land as demand increases,
squeezing out food crops.
Residents
near the Addax plantation, many of whom signed away their land with thumb
prints because they can’t write, say they thought the farm wouldn’t affect
their fields in what they call “bolilands,” seasonally waterlogged areas
suitable for rice growing, because the sugarcane is being planted in drier
areas.
But
irrigation channels dug up by the company have drained some of the bolilands,
they say, damaging their rice fields. Other food crops of theirs such as
cassava and wild palm trees used for cooking oil were razed when it developed
the land.
“Even if
Addax leaves the bolilands we will not be able to work,” said farmer Abdulai
Serry in Lungi Ache village. “They have dug up canals and the water is no
longer settling.”
Addax,
which negotiated the lease directly with local people for its Sierra Leone
plantation, says the villagers were consulted about the projects impacts and a
local lawyer represented them, a rare example of a truly grassroots deal.
“Some of
those who complain, it’s out of ignorance,” Addax social affairs manager
Aminata Kamara told Reuters. “When they see outside people, they don’t see the
benefits they will get.”
But on a
continent where most people in rural areas live off subsistence farming and
soaring populations compete for dwindling earth, conflicts over arable land are
common. Adding foreign buyers in the mix can be explosive.
In 2008
high food prices prompted countries like China, and Saudi Arabia to seek
farmland abroad, sparking protests. A lease by South Korea’s Daewoo for nearly
half of the arable land in Madagascar, an island bigger than France, triggered
a wave of protests that eventually ousted President Marc Ravalomanana.
And, as
in Indonesia, natural forest might be cleared to grow fuel, making net carbon
emissions bigger than fossil fuels.
In the
Democratic Republic of Congo, home of the world’s second-biggest tropical
forest, China’s ZTE Agribusiness plans a million hectare palm farm.
Environmentalists fear massive deforestation.
Biofuel
produced this way is also likely to fall foul of European environmental rules.
Most
environment experts think biofuels do have a future in Africa, but only if
properly managed.
“Biofuels
can in Africa improve access to fuels ... and contribute to reducing greenhouse
emissions, but biofuels are certainly not the silver bullet,” said the United
Nations’ Environment Program spokesman Nick Nuttall. “Africa needs to be
careful about the choices it makes with biofuel production.”
