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July 17, 2007

This May, activists carried out a series of actions in opposition to the International Biofuels Congress in Buenos Aires, in which Al Gore was the keynote speaker. Community resistance against the imposition of agrofuels transnational industry on Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil is growing rapidly.  This is the story of biofuels as told by  the leaders of a bicycle protest against the First Interamerican Biofuels Congress in the Hotel Presidente Alvear in Buenos Aires:

Why are we demonstrating? With ex-Vice President Al Gore as keynote speaker, the Biofuels Congress is a presentation of agrofuel business initiatives, investors, government officials and transnational corporations, all dedicated to the expansion of the agrofuel industry.

The agrofuels industry is not a solution to our current climate, ecological, social and economic problems! It will only make things worse. We must reduce petroleum dependency by reducing consumption. The key to this is a return to local production of  goods and fuels.

However, the major transnational corporations are seizing upon the green image of agrofuels, to consolidate power and promote the continued growth of agrofuel consumption, at the cost of deforestation and transformation of our agriculture to produce fuels, not food. The industrial production of agrofuels requires huge monocrop plantations. They use genetically modified seeds and huge quantities of petroleum-based agrotoxins and fertilizers. This causes the destruction of ecosystems and is not sustainable, healthy, or ecological.

Small farmers are being evicted for the expansion of monocrops, medium farmers forced to rent their lands to the soybean speculation pools. This means fewer jobs due to the mechanization of agroindustry. A small portion of society benefits, as well as the transnational monopoly corporations who provide shipping, machines, technology and supplies, such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Nidera, Bunge, ADM, Cargill, Repsol-YPF, Petrobrás, Shell, Exxon, Mobil, BP, etc.

Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina are being developed for corporate profits and power at the expense of biodiversity, culture, sustainability, and present and future food sovereignty. For this we say “no more” to these destructive interventions in our land, people and nature.

The ex-Vice President Al Gore participated in the closing of the First Interamerican Biofuels Congress, carried out on May 11 in Buenos Aires. The principal hosts of the event were multinational petroleum firms Repsol and YPF, and the sadly-celebré Argentine province of Santiago del Estero. In this region, a large-scale deforestation and repression of rural populations campaign is well under way for the purpose of planting genetically modified soy. The mere presence of Al Gore in this meeting has served as a media and propaganda coup in favor of the agrofuels industry.

In March of this year, along with members of various civil society organizations from Europe and Latin America, we wrote to Al Gore, requesting a meeting. We awaited the opportunity to present him with our worries about the sweeping changes in political policies which are promoting agrofuels without taking into account, among other things, the severe negative impact of intensive agriculture required for the production of  so-called “biofuels.”
Palm and soybean oil are the principal supplies for the production of biodiesel, which, beginning in 2010, will exponentially increase to meet demand legislated by Europe and the United States. This will increase the severity of the negative environmental and social impacts in an irreversible manner.

Two weeks ago, we again wrote to Al Gore’s office, reminding him that we wished to have a meeting with him, but this final request was also ignored. In the congress in Buenos Aires, Al Gore, like many others, asked for safeguards in the production of agrofuels. He concluded  that the production of agrofuels “could be the solution of the climate crisis, without damaging the environment.” In his speech he did not mention the uncontrolled use of agrochemical pesticides in the huge palm and soy plantations, nor the super-nitrogenated fertilizers which are part of the technological packet utilized.

And to our understanding, the proposals for reduction of consumption in his and other industrialized countries which consume an absolute part of the world’s energy, are not serious and do not take into account the
urgency for the radical change of lifestyle necessary in the face of the climate change.

Al Gore does not take into account the reality shown by current industrial monocrop production of raw materials for agrofuels, which is causing the desertification of the finest lands in this world. This production, right now, even before production goals proposed by the soon-to-be-massive consumers of agrofuels, are already causing the expulsion of small farmers and indigenous persons from their lands, the abandonment of subsistence farming and local food production. This exodus is carried out through chemical fumigations and directly at the hands of police, military and paramilitary forces.

The current soy production is imposed upon these lands to produce feedstock for the massive cow and chicken factory farms of Europe. This has already caused deforestation of native forests throughout the world and has increased the levels of illnesses both zootoxic and caused by fumigation and use of pesticides on the monocrops. Soy kills – as much by its use and abuse of agrotoxins as its role in replacing the production of food for the Argentine and Paraguayan people, destroying our food sovereignty.

If Al Gore really is worried about the environment, he should get serious and work toward a moratorium against proposals to use agrofuels to replace fossil fuels. He should listen to the voices of the victims of the modes of production of agrofuels in the countries which produce the raw materials. Al Gore should be a bit more realistic, re-read the letter we sent him and take note that there is no way of producing agrofuels in a “sustainable or responsible” manner to maintain the level of energy gluttony of the “developed” countries.

–Grupo de Reflexión Rural,
Argentina, May 15, 2007