Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 12 • Number 30 • 18th September 2008

UN Expert: Increased Agrofuels Production Has Human Rights Implications

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A UN expert says the production of agrofuels has intensified the global food crisis and could thus infringe upon human rights. The expert’s report, which was released last week, says governments should refrain from investing further in bioethanol and biodiesel until a system is put in place to ensure that agrofuels that do not meet environmental and human rights standards can be banned from international trade.

“The current path in the development of agrofuels for transport is not sustainable…if such development goes unchecked, further violations of the right to food will result,” UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, said in the report.

De Schutter presented his conclusions to the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva on 10 September. The report, which was commissioned at the UN Special Session on the Global Food Crisis in May, concluded that the world’s poor are not going hungry because there is not enough food to go around; rather, they are left empty-handed because the food that is available is too expensive for them to buy.

Several factors, such as population growth, speculation in commodities markets and changing dietary habits worldwide, have contributed to the recent rise in prices, De Schutter said. But he also noted that increased production of plant-derived transport fuels has helped make food more expensive by causing a significant amount of arable land to be shifted from food production to the production of bioethanol and biodiesel.

While a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of trade talks at the WTO could help ensure food access for the world’s poor, De Schutter cautioned that “not any agreement will do.”

“The international trade system needs to be equitable if it is to contribute to the objective of food security,” he said. “There is a real risk that export-led agricultural development will further marginalise the position of smallholders, worsening their food security instead of improving it.”

Focussing on the issue of agrofuels, De Schutter said that increased production of bioethanol and biodiesel could have serious human rights implications beyond the negative impact on access to food. The shift in production away from food crops has also driven up the price of farmland, in some cases so much so as to make it unaffordable for small-scale producers. In extreme cases, De Schutter said, the push to create of new mega-plantations could drive indigenous people off their land and erode agricultural working conditions in the developing world.

Moreover, agrofuels production could widen the gap between rich and poor, De Schutter found. “When produced in developing countries in order to satisfy the growth of demand in industrialised countries, agrofuels may lead to distorted development, benefiting only a minority, and worsening the lot of many others,” he said in the report.

From an environmental standpoint, the report cited growing evidence that many agrofuels use up vast amounts of water, energy and fertile cropland, thus making them unsustainable in the long run.

Sustainability standards for biofuels?

De Schutter recommended that the Human Rights Council begin looking at the food crisis - and agrofuels production - from a human rights perspective, a framework which he said would allow a consideration of the trade-offs between the consumer costs and producer gains associated with high food prices.

He cited a “need to strengthen the protection of the human rights of the most vulnerable groups including land-users whose land tenure is insecure, landless labourers, women, the displaced, indigenous people, minorities, the disabled and the rural and urban poor.”

De Schutter also said that the Council should work to build an international consensus on agrofuels, so as to avoid “the negative impact of its development on the international price of staple food commodities.” He also stressed the importance of ensuring “that the production of agrofuels respects the full range of human rights and does not result in distorted development in producer countries.”

To that end, De Schutter said that countries should be allowed to refuse imports of agrofuels from states that fail to meet sustainability and human rights standards, which could include labour conditions. He said that a waiver from the WTO could allow states to discriminate in such a way - a practise that would normally be illegal under world trade rules.

But the Rapporteur’s criticism of agrofuels was not uniform across the board. While De Schutter says that corn-derived biofuels have clearly had a negative impact on food security, he was less pessimistic about biofuels produced from sugarcane - the prime source of Brazilian agrofuel. Production from sugarcane “may lead to increased welfare and reduced poverty, due to income-earning opportunities, with positive implications for food security,” he said.

Biofuels not to blame: Critics

A Brazilian representative who attended De Schutter’s presentation responded by emphasising that biofuels were “not the villain” in the global food crisis, and that increased biofuels production could in fact make an important contribution to economic and social development.

The US agrofuels industry responded forcefully to de Schutter’s findings: “The latest attempt to scapegoat the biofuel industry is little more than a recitation of other baseless attacks,” National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe said in a statement. “Biofuels have a marginal effect on the increase in food prices and the major driving force behind food price increases is the skyrocketing price of petroleum,” the statement said.

A confidential World Bank document that concluded that biofuels have caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent caused a similar stir when it was reported on by the UK’s The Guardian newspaper in July.

NGO report takes aim at Latin biofuels

In related news, a recent report by Amsterdam-based NGO Friends of the Earth International slammed agrofuels production in Latin America, concluding that rapid development of plant-derived fuels is threatening biodiversity, accelerating deforestation and spreading poor labour conditions in the region.

“More agrofuels means that agribusiness companies, financial speculators and big landowners will make vast profits at the expense of people and the environment,” Paul de Clerck, Corporate Campaigner for Friends of the Earth International, said.

While the report, titled “Fuelling destruction in Latin America,” targeted several Latin American countries, it singled out Brazil, the region’s biggest ethanol producer, for especially harsh labour conditions for its sugarcane cutters, as well as its extensive use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers in agrofuels production.

The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (ÚNICA) issued a statement rebutting the NGO report, claiming that the information it provided was “out of context, inaccurate and generally outdated.”

ÚNICA President Marcos Jank said that Brazil had made significant strides towards increasing the sustainability of its agrofuels production by reducing associated carbon dioxide emissions, creating jobs and developing new technologies. “The Brazilian experience is the longest and most successful effort at large-scale, sustainable production and use of a biofuels in the world to date,” Jank said in the statement.

ICTSD reporting; “Unchecked biofuels could lead to food shortages: UN expert,” AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 9 September 2008; “UN report: biofuels adding to food crisis,” VOICE OF AMERICA NEWS, 10 September 2008; “Skyrocketing prices continue to threaten the right to food, UN expert says,” UN NEWS SERVICE, 10 September 2008.