Africa

During his first stint critics accused him of dismissing Africa, so what will happen under Trump 2.0?

Fifteen finalists, from countries including Kenya, Indonesia, the UK and Nepal, were competing for a £1 million Earthshot Awards prize.

The beauty queen didn't appear in court, and neither did the prosecution.

Imane Khelif, 25, won gold in the women's welterweight category at the Paris Games.

Imane Khelif, 25, won gold in the women's welterweight category at the Paris Games.

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Nov 6 2024 (IPS)

 

More durable than bronze, higher than Pharaoh’s
pyramids is the monument I have made,
a shape that angry wind or hungry rain
cannot demolish, nor the innumerable ranks
of the years that march in centuries.
I shall not wholly die:
some part of me will cheat the goddess of death.

Thus wrote, not without reason, in 23 BCE the proud and self-conscious Horace. So far, he has been quite right – ancient monuments have crumbled, or disappeared completely, while his poetry still remains. However, you might ask – for how much longer? Latin is already dead, at least as a spoken language, while its connoisseurs are dwindling. Pessimists may contradict Horace’s optimism with Thomas à Kempis phrase from 1418: O quam cito transit gloria mundi, how quickly the glory of the world passes away. As a matter of fact, more and more people, in particular youngsters, have a diminishing interest in the written word, in particular in the form of longer texts like novels and newspaper editorials, preferring short messages and slogans that are easy to understand and preferably not longer than half a page.

Nevertheless, some human creations remain for a very long time. The most potent form of nuclear waste does, according to most scientists, need to be safely stored away for up to one million years, the time needed to ensure radioactive decay, i.e. actually a far longer stretch of time than the period that has passed since the first Neanderthals appeared on earth.

How may we be able to warn future generations about lethal dangers buried beneath Earth’s surface? Thousands of years from now, our descendants can probably not understand any of the writing systems currently in use. And how can we now adequately predict which future geological upheavals lay in store? Nuclear waste is drilled deep down into primeval rock, but can it really be guaranteed that cracks cannot occur, that atomic waste will not sip into underground water resources? Considering who little was expected from the effects of climate change just a few years ago, it makes you wonder about the safe future of our planet and the shortsighted damage we are doing to it.

In 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was inaugurated on the Norwegian island of Spitzbergen. It is intended to be a secure backup facility for the world’s crop diversity. More than 100 metres below earth, in the tunnels of an abandoned coal mine, the Seed Vault currently conserves 1,280,677 accessions, representing more than 13,000 years of agricultural history.

By the inauguration of this unique seed-bank it was said that the deep-frozen plant material would be safe from any temperature change and water damage, resting as it was under Arctic permafrost. However, already in 2016, an unusually large amount of water seeped in to the Vault’s entrance tunnel, 100 metres underground. The water flow was stopped just before it reached the precious plant material, though the incident indicated that the frozen permafrost no longer is a guarantee for safeguarding the Vault – Arctic temperatures are now rising four times faster than in the rest of the world making the permafrost melt at an unexpected speed. Improvements to the Vault have been made to prevent water intrusion, the tunnel walls have been made “waterproof” and above ground, draining ditches now surround the entrance to the Vault.

Filled with pride, hope and expectations Horace wrote that his poems would survive for thousands of years. Nevertheless, he could not have predicted how humans now are destroying our shared environment. Authors have for more than a hundred years warned us about what is currently happening. First it was mainly science fiction writers who produced terrifying dystopias about what could happen to our planet if we continue to abuse its natural resources, depleting its organic life, and destroying its life preserving beauty. This literary trend is still alive, particularly after the nuclear bombs that in 1945 wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the melt down of the nuclear reactor in Tjernobyl. One disturbing and well written example of such dystopias is the Russian author Tatyana Tolstaya’s novel The Slynx from year 2000.

After some kind of nuclear disaster, disfigured people survive in what was once Moscow. They depend on mice for food and clothing, and know almost nothing about the past. Most of them cannot read and write, though a handful of people who live in this nightmarish reality remember how life was before the Blast, before civilization collapsed and brought culture down with it. These people occasionally quote poetry and dream of bringing about a cultural renaissance, though the reader understands they are a dying breed and there is almost nothing left to resurrect. Books still exist, but anyone found with one of them is hunted down and severely punished, while their books are confiscated, all in the name of stopping “freethinking.”

Is a nuclear catastrophe necessary for us all to end up in such misery? The author Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta. He grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and is currently living in New York. In his non-fiction book The Great Derangement, Gosh wonders why an extremely dangerous threat like climate change is not overshadowing cultural expressions. He emphasizes that the frightening effects of climate change are already with us. They are evident everywhere, though strangely enough people are still listening to dangerous climate change deniers, like the increasingly deranged Donald Trump. According to Gosh, depictions of the threat of climate change can no longer be banished to science fiction, but has to be convincingly expressed in all strands of art, literature, theatre, and movies. Gosh provides an example of this in his own novel Gun Island, which takes its starting point in Sunderbans, a huge West Bengali mangrove forest, currently threatened by polluting biochemical industries and rising sea levels. The novel deals with the vulnerability of climatological migrants and the ongoing, galloping destruction of human and animal habitats. As a story coloured by magic realism it ranges from Bangladesh, which climate change threatens with almost complete annihilation, to Venice, this dreamlike treasure house of amazing art that likewise appears to be doomed to disappear.

Gosh’s novel leads us back to Spitzbergen. Close to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is another abandoned coal mine, even deeper than the one where the Seed Vault is accommodated. At the depth of 300 metres, we find the vaults of the Arctic World Archive (AWA), where governments, associations and private persons are welcomed, for a fee, to store what they assume to be world heritage. Down deep below, under permafrost (so far) we find copies and microfilm of a wide assortment of items that AWA is guaranteeing to safeguard for at least 2000 years. Here the Vatican has sent copies and microfilms of its vast collection of inestimable manuscripts, an organisation called Linga Aeterna is preserving recordings of 500 languages on the brink of extinction, the Polish Government has deposited copies of literary works and Chopin’s manuscripts. Here we find a wide collection of movies and rock music, as well as blueprints of architectural-, industrial, and car designs from the World’s biggest firms, etc., etc.

Thoughtful speculators and depositors are by AWA treated with advertising materials and movies reminding them of threats to the cultural heritage, like war and terrorism with footage showing the destruction of the immense Buddha in Bamiyan and how ISIS destroyed priceless cultural treasures in Palmyra and Mosul. Other disasters are highlighted, not the least those triggered off by climate change, which if nothing is done to stop it, will around 2050 have placed most of Florida, Bangladesh and the Maldives under water and completely inundated and destroyed Venice.

Spitzbergen is not the only place harbouring deposits of cultural heritage. In the salt mines of Hallstatt in Austria the so-called Memory of Mankind stores, within specifically designed, “indestructible” ceramic containers, huge amounts of microfilm and copies of valuable art and manuscripts. Libraries and archives around the world also shelter underground labyrinths, filled with books, magazines, and documents.

However, the question remains – for how long time will these enormous deposits be able to withstand the drastic changes that menace our Earth, and will future generations, if they now survive what threatens us all, be able to find these deposits of human endeavour, be interested in them, or even be able to understand them? Will our descendants be capable of benefitting from all that presumably has been preserved in these secluded places – or will they like the miserable creatures of Tolstoya’s depressing wasteland either despise all of it, or consider these items to be dangerous? Let us at least for the moment appreciate the written treasures left to us by poets like Horace and teach our children to appreciate what our ancestors have left behind, learn from it and also value, and enjoy what is written today.

Main sources: Gosh, Amitav (2016) The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. University of Chicago Press. Gosh, Amitav (2019) Gun Island. London: John Murray. Horatius Flaccus, Quintus (1967) The Odes of Horace Translated by James Michie. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics. Stagliano, Riccardo (2024) “A futura memoria”, Il Venerdi di Repubblica, 25 ottubre. Tolstaya, Tatyana (2016) The Slynx. New York Review of Books.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Submerged structure in Tubigon, Philippines. Credit: Greenpeace
 
In the Philippines, a group of islands is rapidly sinking due to an unprecedented rise in sea levels. This blog dives into how these coastal communities are utilizing marine resources and ecosystems to find solutions and build resilience against climate risks.

By Anne Cortez
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 6 2024 (IPS)

Imagine living with water up to your knees for half of the year, where homes are flooded, and people constantly fear that the sea might one day engulf the town and everyone in it.

This is the reality for the sinking islands in the Philippines—a cluster of four island barangays in Tubigon located in the south-central region of Bohol. Here, the sea level is rising at an alarming rate of 10.8 millimeters per year, three times faster than the global average. If this continues, these islands could disappear by 2100.

Tubigon sank by one meter after being hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake over a decade ago. While still recovering, the islands were devastated by a super typhoon in 2021, unleashing four-meter-high tidal waves that destroyed over 1.7 million homes and displaced more than 3 million people. This year, the islands were declared inhabitable by the government.

Existential Climate Threats to Coastal Communities

Coastal communities like the Philippines are severely threatened by accelerating sea level rise compounded by extreme weather events. Similar to small island developing states, also known as SIDS, low-lying coastal areas are the most vulnerable to climate change.

Their geographic location leaves them highly-exposed to natural disasters and hazards like cyclones and tidal flooding. These vulnerabilities exacerbate coastal communities’ unique development challenges.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that with the current 1.5 degree temperature increase, global sea levels will continue to rise and low-lying coastal regions are to experience extreme sea events such as storm surges and massive tides annually by 2050.

SIDS, including Tuvalu and the Maldives, along with the sinking islands of Tubigon, are proof of the existential threats of climate change. These communities are at risk of vanishing unless urgent action is taken.

Bouncing Back from Climate Risks

While island communities are under threat, they are not powerless. Many of them have shown commitment to addressing climate-related risks in their national climate action plans. Their goal is to build climate resilience.

The term “resilience” is often mentioned in climate change discussions, but what does it really mean? It comes from the Latin verb resilire, meaning “to bounce back.” Resilience refers to the ability to recover from risks, which, in the context of climate change, is determined by the degree of vulnerability and exposure to climate-related threats.

For coastal communities and low-lying islands, rising sea levels pose a significant risk, so they must build resilience to endure and recover from climate-related hazards and disasters.

Turning to Blue Carbon Ecosystems for Solutions

Many SIDS set a good example in piloting measures to build resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Similarly, the residents of Tubigon, many of whom are fisherfolks, have learned to adapt to the rising tides.

The local community has developed resilience strategies and initiatives to help them sustain their lives on the islands. One promising solution involves utilizing the sea and its resources, part of what is called the blue carbon ecosystem.

Blue carbon ecosystem is a collective term for natural marine resources such as mangroves, seagrasses, and marshes known for their ability to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Research shows that these coastal resources can transfer and store carbon ten times more effective than tropical forests.

These ecosystems also support fishery production, protect shorelines and reduce flooding, and provide habitats for wildlife and migratory species. Studies indicate that conserving blue carbon ecosystems is a timely and cost-effective strategy to help coastal communities adapt to climate change.

Harnessing Coastal Resources for Climate Change Adaptation

Tubigon and the Bohol region have long implemented measures to protect their blue carbon ecosystems, helping residents adapt to climate-related risks. Their strategy is two-fold: eliminating destructive fishing practices and conserving coastal resources particularly mangroves.

The local community has designated bantay dagat (which translates literally to sea protectors) to patrol its marine area spanning 156 hectares of coral reefs and 335 hectares of mangroves. These protectors report illegal fishing activities and safeguard the mangrove forests.

Over time, many locals have transitioned from destructive fishing methods, such as dynamite and cyanide use, to more sustainable aquaculture and alternative livelihoods, including crab and squid jigging, grouper farming, and ecotourism.

Moreover, particular focus is given to mangrove conservation. The vast mangrove area in Tubigon is considered a valuable blue ecosystem resource playing an important role in sequestering carbon. Experts estimate that a 4-decade mangrove plantation can store over 370 tons of carbon per hectare.

Additionally, mangroves act as natural seawalls, reducing wave energy and shielding residents from rising sea levels and tidal flooding. By investing in the preservation of blue carbon ecosystems, coastal communities like Tubigon tap into an essential resource that supports their livelihoods and enhances their resilience to the effects of climate change.

Turning the Tide

The islands of Tubigon stay afloat amidst the intensifying battle against climate threats. Most recently, the Philippines joined an alliance to build the resilience of coastal communities. It was also selected as the host of a fund dedicated to supporting countries to respond to loss and damage, enabling them to recover and rebuild from the adverse effects of the climate crisis.

Allowing islands to sink and entire communities to disappear is unimaginable, especially when we have the resources and tools to address the planet’s most significant crisis. Time is running out, but there is still hope to turn the tide.

This article is originally published in Global Dev as part of its Climate Resilience series.

Anne Cortez is a communications and knowledge management consultant with over a decade of experience working with governments, academic institutions, and international organizations including the UN, ADB, and The Asia Foundation. She has spearheaded and managed development programs and capacity building initiatives promoting climate action, digital inclusion, and health equity across Asia and the Pacific. Previously, she led the knowledge and communications team at the UN think tank for global health based in Malaysia, and the social mobilization division at the Department of Education in the Philippines. Anne has a master’s degree in international studies and an undergraduate degree in communications. Learn more about her work here.

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President Bola Tinubu says he was a key figure in the military and pivotal to security operations.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov 6 2024 (IPS)

Despite earlier income convergence among nations, many low-income countries (LICs) and people are falling further behind. Worse, the number of poor and hungry has been increasing again after declining for decades.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

After the post-Second World War ‘Golden Age’ ended over half a century ago, the world has seen unequal and uneven economic growth, industrialisation, and poverty reduction. Income divergence and convergence have involved inequalities within and among countries.

While some national-level income inequalities have fallen, North-South disparities have trended unevenly, partly due to the quantitative influence of China’s and India’s large economies.

Dividing billions
Paul Collier’s original ‘Bottom Billion’ included 58 developing countries. By 2021, they had 1.4 billion people. Failing to grow sustainably, poverty in these nations has persisted.

Despite rejecting the World Bank’s LICs and the UN’s least-developed countries, Collier and his World Bank colleagues’ revival of his Bottom Billion notion offers a valuable review of recent distributional trends.

Without supporting evidence, the authors insist most developing nations were similar at independence, with little significant difference between the Bottom Billion and the “growing” Five Billion.

Per capita incomes of most Bottom Billion countries have not risen much. Although much of the world has grown since the 1960s, many of the poorest nations have fallen further behind, albeit unevenly.

Slow economic growth and rapid population increase have reduced per capita incomes. Most Bottom Billion countries have barely grown since and are now much worse off than the ‘Lucky Billion’ of 38 rich member nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Poverty is increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, overall poverty is worsening as African populations continue to grow faster as the poor have more children to improve family circumstances.

Average output per capita of OECD member countries rose by half, from under $30,000 in 1990 to almost $45,000 in 2021. Even the poorest OECD nations are at least upper-middle-income countries.

Despite some convergence, world inequality continued to grow unevenly after 2000. The average per capita income gap between developing countries and prosperous economies has not narrowed since the turn of the century.

In recent decades, sustained high-growth episodes have mainly been in East and South Asia. Average output per capita in such ‘emerging markets’ almost tripled from under $5,000 in 1990 to nearly $15,000 by 2021.

Convergence?
Angus Maddison found divergence among world regions over the last two millennia but agreed that recent Asian growth has made convergence more plausible.

Since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, extended periods of divergence have been interrupted by brief episodes of convergence. Between 1870 and 1990, the ratio of the highest to the lowest incomes increased tenfold.

The remaining ‘Five Billion’ are between the Bottom and Lucky Billions. Successful ‘developing market economies’ include large, populous, rapidly growing economies like India and China, as well as small petroleum-rich states.

The Lucky Billion were already well ahead in 1990 and have remained better off since. The incomes of some of the Five Billion have risen rapidly to converge with the Lucky Billion, but the Bottom Billion are not much better off.

Some studies claim these Five Billion grew fast enough for incomes to converge worldwide. Rejecting counterclaims of divergence, the authors insist on ‘unconditional convergence’, regardless of countries’ starting positions.

Other research claims unconditional worldwide convergence as poor nations catch up. Income convergence in the 1990s and 2004-14 suggests higher primary commodity prices financed growth during the latter ‘Golden Decade’, enabling brief LIC progress, including in Africa.

This last brief growth acceleration collapsed with most commodity prices a decade ago. The Bottom Billion’s average income growth rate briefly exceeded the OECD’s during 2004-14

But the episode is wrongly seen as proof of longer-term convergence. Few developing nations have narrowed the average gap in per capita incomes with rich countries. Trends can mislead if not interpreted in context.

For years, China’s average income was below the world’s mean. This previously supported claims of worldwide convergence but will change as China’s mean income overtakes the world average.

But overall convergence can coexist with some countries and people slipping further behind while the number in ‘extreme poverty’ rises. However, data limitations and methodological disagreements make consensus unlikely.

Falling further behind
World output (in constant US dollars) more than doubled from $36 trillion in 1990 to $87 trillion by 2021. While a few developing economies have made rapid progress and more have made modest advances, many have been left behind.

As growth has been higher in East Asia and India, World Bank estimates of the poor fell from 1990 until the pandemic, although the number in ‘extreme poverty’ increased.

Despite continuing growth until the 2008 global financial crisis and declining poverty before the pandemic, many developing countries’ per capita incomes continue to fall further behind.

Hunger numbers have risen in the last decade, while the number of poor has increased since the pandemic. Ongoing economic stagnation has been worse for the Bottom Billion, who have struggled to cope with higher interest rates and capital flight since 2022.

Meanwhile, hunger numbers have been rising for a decade, while the number of poor has increased since the pandemic. Worse, higher interest rates recently have worsened the ongoing economic stagnation.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Travellers are advised to avoid the Lebombo border crossing until the situation is stabilised.

Cart laden with firewood in Gonzoma, Zimbabwe. Woodpoaching for household fuel is having an impact on forests in Zimbabwe. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe, Nov 6 2024 (IPS)

Linet Makwera (28) has a baby strapped on her back as she totters barefoot, picking tiny pieces of wood on both sides of a dusty and narrow road, peering fearfully at people passing by along the road in Chimanimani’s Mutambara area in Gonzoma village located in Zimbabwe’s Manicaland Province, east of the country.

Her fears, Makwera says, are the patrolling plain clothes police officers, who often target people, cutting down the few available trees in search of firewood.

In the midst of firewood shortages countrywide, more than 300,000 trees were destroyed between 2000 and 2010, according to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

In fact, in 2011, the Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe found out that the country was losing about 330,000 hectares of forests per year. According to Global Forest Watch in 2010, Zimbabwe had 1.01 Mha of natural forest, extending over 2.7 percent of its land area. In 2023, it lost 4.67 kha of natural forest, equivalent to 3.27 Mt of CO₂ emissions.

A slight drop from the previous one, currently, Zimbabwe’s annual deforestation rate is estimated to be at 262,348.98 hectares per annum, the Forestry Commission says.

According to UNDP in 2022, the use of local forests for fuel wood has also been one of the many drivers of deforestation in the country.

UNDP has been on record, saying presently, fuel wood accounts for over 60 percent of the total energy supply in the country and almost 98 percent of rural people rely on fuel wood for cooking and heating.

The Forestry Commission says up to 11 million tons of firewood are needed for domestic cooking, heating and tobacco curing every year in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is ranked top of the United Nations-ranked Least Developed Countries (LDCs) that have battled the highest rate of deforestation in the world, as many rural dwellers here depend on firewood for cooking.

Yet still, even as the felling of trees for firewood gets worse and worse in Zimbabwe, it is a crime for anybody to be found cutting trees for any purpose without the authorities’ blessing.

If caught on the wrong side of the law, a wood poacher can be fined USD 200 to 5,000

Like many villagers domiciled in her remote area, Makwera has to battle with firewood deficits as the forests disappear under massive deforestation.

But the laws prohibiting people from cutting down trees have also meant hard times for many, like Makwera.

Yet despite her struggles to find firewood often in order to cook food for her family, she (Makwera) has had to soldier on, just like many other villagers in her area.

With even the hills and mountains now running out of firewood in Makwera’s village, life has never been the same for the villagers, as they do not have electricity, which, even though it might have been there, would not have saved any purpose amid daily power cuts gripping the Southern African nation.

“Finding firewood is now a huge challenge. Yes, we buy. We have no choice. We suffer to find the firewood. In the hills and mountains where we used to find firewood, there is now nothing,” Makwera told IPS.

Named using vernacular Shona, a tsotso stove typically is a tin with holes pricked into it, with a few tiny sticks stashed inside the home-made stove to produce some fire heat needed for cooking.

Stung by the growing firewood deficits, Zimbabwean villagers are even resorting to buying firewood from woodpoachers moving around in scotch carts touting for customers.

Such are many, like 33-year-old Tigere Mhike, also a resident of Gonzoma village, who said he has been for a long time earning his living through selling firewood to the desperate villagers.

He does this illegally, and in order to escape the wrath of law enforcers, Mhike said he and his assistant often operate under the cover of darkness in their search for the wooden gold.

“Where we live here, there are now too many people who are crowded. Some pieces of land that had plenty of firewood are now occupied by more and more people. We now have to travel very long distances, waking up very early in the mornings sometimes at 2am to go and search for firewood so that we deliver to the villagers wanting the firewood. We sell one scotch-cart full of firewood at 25 (US) dollars,” Mhike told IPS.

Amid incessant droughts actuated by climate change that have also led to the gradual disappearance of Zimbabwe’s forests, with the use of tsotso stoves requiring fewer wood sticks to produce the cooking heat, villagers here have said they are gradually adapting to the crisis.

Even to environmental experts like Batanai Mutasa, part of the panacea to surmount firewood deficits has turned out to be the now popular tsotso stoves in the face of Zimbabwe’s laws forbidding the cutting down of trees.

Mutasa is also the spokesman for the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), a non-governmental organization comprising of legal minds fighting for this country’s environment.

As the trees disappear amid firewood poaching in Zimbabwe’s villages like Gonzoma in Manicaland Province, Mutasa has a piece of advice.

“My advice to people struggling to find firewood in remote areas is that they should work together to find other means that protect our trees from being damaged, things like using biogas or stoves that don’t require much firewood like tsotso stoves,” he (Mutasa) told IPS.

In worst case scenarios, said Mutasa, to preserve forests as they search for firewood, people should resort to just plucking off branches from the surviving trees to use these to make fire, leaving the trees alive.

Mutasa said: “Mainly, people should make it their habit to plant and replant trees. People can team up with authorities in their villages to fight off woodpoachers in their areas.”

Another Gonzoma villager, Mzilikazi Rusawo, in his early sixties, said faced with desperate times in their search for firewood as the few forests are jealously guarded by law enforcers, they now have to seek permission from authorities before they cut selected trees for firewood.

“The law does not allow us to just cut down trees for firewood anyhow. We actually seek permission from authorities before cutting trees for firewood, which we do with care—sparsely cutting down the trees in order to leave many other trees standing,” Rusawo told IPS.

For the Zimbabwean government, the options are, however, fast running out as rural dwellers battle with firewood shortages.

Some of the options can not be afforded by many residents in rural areas in a country where more than 90 percent are jobless, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).

“Firewood shortages are a huge challenge for all people living in rural areas, but it is not only firewood that can be used for cooking. People can also use biogas,” Joyce Chapungu, spokesperson for the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), told IPS.

With the retail price of biogas in Zimbabwe going for approximately two dollars per kilogram, not many rural residents can afford buying the cooking gas.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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David Lammy is on his first visit to the continent since he became foreign secretary.

David Lammy is on his first visit to the continent since he became foreign secretary.

David Lammy is on his first visit to the continent since he became foreign secretary.

Prince William warns that wildlife crime has "ripple effects" that are "profound for us all".

Algerian Kamel Daoud wins the Prix Goncourt for his novel Houris, a searing account of his country’s 1990s conflict.

Algerian Kamel Daoud wins the Prix Goncourt for his novel Houris, a searing account of his country’s 1990s conflict.

Algerian Kamel Daoud wins the Prix Goncourt for his novel Houris, a searing account of his country’s 1990s conflict.

This G20 ministerial meeting, held in Rio de Janeiro on February 28 this year, discussed the global energy transition, with biofuels as a central issue. Credit: Paulo Pinto / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 5 2024 (IPS)

Holding this year’s presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) large industrial and emerging economies is allowing Brazil to push forward the dream of creating a global biofuels market without the current trade barriers.

Brazil is trying, at least since the beginning of this century, to free up global trade in ethanol, but so far without success. The scenario is more favourable now, with the worsening of the climate crisis and other countries joining the production and consumption of bioenergy.

Presiding the G20 this year, Brazil is in charge of the issues and projects to be discussed, creating working groups and promoting agreements, which will crystallise at the group’s annual summit to be held on 18-19 November in Rio de Janeiro.“There is a conflict of interests, of split personality. If Brazil wants to lead in biofuels, it must rule out new oil exploration”: Pedro de Camargo Neto.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has promoted social issues and included biofuels as a central aspect of the energy transition. Several of its proposals were approved in sectoral working groups or meetings of ministers, experts and civil society throughout 2024.

“The current context, driven by Brazil’s more active leadership in the G20 and regulatory progress on alternative fuels, offers a more optimistic outlook for the country’s success in expanding its biofuels market,” summarised Rafaela Guedes, senior fellow at the Brazilian Centre for International Relations (Cebri).

“The focus is no longer limited to ethanol,” she said in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro. New products, such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and bio-bunker for maritime transport, open up multiple markets and reduce the risk of dominant suppliers.

These are joined by biodiesel and green diesel, both derived from animal and vegetable inputs but different in their production process and properties, the latter being chemically identical to fossil diesel.

Then there is ethanol, already produced on a large scale, and biomethane, equivalent to natural gas and the product of refining biogas extracted from animal manure, and agricultural, urban and industrial waste.

All these products gained new regulations and incentives in Brazil through the so-called Future Fuels Law, passed by the legislative National Congress in September and effective from 8 October 2024.

The new legislation should attract investment and reduce trade barriers by defining rules and standards in a country that leads biofuel production and presents itself as “a supplier and also a strategic partner for innovation and energy security”, said Guedes, an economist specialising in energy transition.

The biogas and biomethane plant of Cocal, a company that produces ethanol and sugar from sugarcane and biogas, biomethane and other derivatives from waste, in Narandiba, in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Fear of dependence

Ethanol thrived as a free trade fuel partly out of fear of being held hostage by a few producers. Brazil and the US account for around 80% of its global production, with 35.4 billion litres and 58 billion litres respectively in 2023.

Brazil tried to encourage production in countries with high production or potential for increased sugar cane planting, such as India, Cuba and Mexico, in order to lower barriers to international ethanol trade.

In addition to the fear of dependency, environmental and food security concerns remain another stumbling block. It is argued, especially in Europe, that bioenergy takes land away from food production.

That was the claim of Cuba, which until the 1980s was the world’s largest exporter of sugar, but whose sugar cane production subsequently fell to the point where it is now practically limited to supplying the domestic market of 10 million inhabitants, who are suffering from a severe energy crisis.

But now India, previously reluctant, has joined ethanol production, as have other countries, since its consumption, blended with gasoline, has spread to more than 70 countries. Investment in biofuels has increased in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“This diversification of producers reduces the possibility of monopolies” and thus the fears of dependency, according to Guedes, who says growth in the production capacity of emerging countries and the consequent expansion of global supply are favourable factors for a freer global market for biofuels.

“India has invested heavily in biofuels in its energy security and emissions reduction strategy. Its policies of using agricultural waste to produce ethanol and biodiesel contribute to increasing its productive capacity, as a potential exporter in the medium term,” she cited as an example.

Other Asian and Latin American countries are using their abundant biomass and organic waste resources to produce bioenergy, biomethane and green diesel, in what represents another model.

Rafaela Guedes, an economist specialized in energy transition, believes conditions are favourable for the creation of an international biofuels market, as Brazil desires. Credit: Cebri

Inputs are waste, not food

Restrictions based on food security were also relaxed because biofuels are largely made from waste, whether agricultural, urban or industrial.

Second-generation (2G) ethanol, made from waste such as bagasse, is another solution. The United States and Brazil have plants producing it, which are set for rapid expansion.

In Brazil, Raizen, a large sugar and bioenergy producer with the participation of the British oil consortium Shell, has been operating its first 2G ethanol plants since 2015 and estimates that this technology can produce 50% more ethanol than a similar area planted with sugarcane.

Guedes also adds that the International Energy Agency has defined sustainable agricultural practices, such as crop-livestock-forest integration, which is expanding in Brazil, traceability in production chains and criteria for defining sustainable energy, which strengthen confidence in biofuels that benefit the climate.

These are policies that promote so-called low-carbon agriculture, preserve soil quality and ensure that Brazil’s agricultural frontiers can expand sustainably and without affecting food security, she said.

Ambiguity

But Brazil’s decision to promote biofuels, even internationally, causes bewilderment according to Pedro de Camargo Neto, a cattle rancher who leads a movement of agribusiness, that of large farmers, that seeks to reconcile his sector with environmentalism, after decades of stubborn antagonism.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (center) visited Raizen’s bioenergy park in Guariba, a sugarcane-producing municipality located 340 kilometers from São Paulo in southern Brazil, in May. Credit: Ricardo Stuckert / PR

“There is a conflict of interests, of split personality. If Brazil wants to lead in biofuels, it must rule out new oil exploration,” he told IPS by telephone from Bandeirantes, a municipality in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where he has a farm.

He criticizes the intention of Petrobras, the national oil company, to drill near the mouth of the Amazon River in search of oil deposits.

Large oil deposits are believed to exist in the Equatorial Margin in northern Brazil, an extension of the sea basin that already produces oil in Guyana and Suriname.

New and abundant stocks would make oil and gas cheaper, to the detriment of biofuels, argued Camargo, who has previously chaired the Brazilian Rural Society, a key farmers’ group, and held top positions in the agriculture ministry.

“Brazil does not know what it wants,” he said.

This is because it promotes a free and global market for biofuels, for economic and environmental reasons, and at the same time wants to become an oil producer, to the detriment of the climate and its own strategy.

The country currently ranks eighth in the world in oil production, with 4.3 million barrels (each holding 159 litres) per day on average in 2023.

The country should advocate international measures to make fossil fuels more expensive. This would enable a biofuels boom everywhere, with increased investment in a market in which Brazil is already a leader. Europe has already taken steps in this direction, Camargo said.

Oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon is blocked by demands from the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, which considered Petrobras’ evaluations and guarantees insufficient.

An authorisation or denial of exploratory drilling will be ‘technical’, based on local environmental impacts, according to Environment Minister Marina Silva.

This is a mistake, according to Camargo, who calls for a broader assessment, not because of the local consequences, but due to the global climatic effects, i.e. greenhouse gas emissions, and because of the economic strategy of prioritising biofuels, which also favours the country’s foreign policy.

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