Maria Luisa Mendonça, Fabio T. Pitta, Carlos Vinicius Xavier
18 July 2013
Paper
An examination of ethanol production in Brazil, highlighting the role of financial capital, the territorial expansion of agribusiness and the impacts on labour relations and indigenous peoples and peasant farmers.
Is there such a thing as clean coal, gas and nuclear power? What is the actual meaning of clean energy as mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union speech? And will it have any effect on climate change?
The green potential of agrofuels has been wasted by businesses that put profits above environmental protection, which has led to an absurd situation where an energy source that should be sustainable actually increases human and ecological damage.
Saturnino 'Jun' M Borras Jr. is a Filipino political activist and academic who has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. He was part of the core organising team that established the international peasant movement La Via Campesina and has written extensively on land issues and agrarian movements. He is currently a...
The Sustainable Energy and Economy Network (SEEN) based in the US works in partnership with citizens groups nationally and globally on environment, human rights and development issues with a focus on energy, climate change, environmental justice, gender equity, and economic issues, particularly as these play out in North-South relations.
Rising Tide North America is part of the international Rising Tide grassroots network of groups and individuals who take direct action to confront the roots causes of climate change and promote local, community-based solutions to the climate crisis.
The mission of Global Justice Ecology Project, based in the US, is to build local, national and international alliances with action to address the common root causes of social injustice, economic domination and environmental destruction.
Biofuelwatch actively supports the campaign for an EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures. Agroenergy monocultures are linked to accelerated climate change, deforestation, the impoverishment and dispossession of local communities, bio-diversity losses, human rights abuses, water and soil degradation, loss of food sovereignty and food security.
Climate change is a social issue and it will always be connected with concrete, specific struggles over fossil fuel exploitation, pollution, health, agriculture, livelihoods or access to energy.
The possible impact of agrofuels on the human right to adequate food for the most oppressed and marginalised social groups must be considered prior to applying policies and programmes that encourage the production, investment and trade of agrofuels.
The European Commission’s draft EU Renewable Energy Directive, published today, ignores numerous recent warnings on the environmental and social damage of its proposed 10 per cent target for agrofuel use in the transport sector by 2020.
