19.11.2008
International Seminar
Agrofuels: an Obstacle to Food and Energy Sovereignty

São Paulo, November 17 to 19

We, organizations and social movements of Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Bolivia, El Salvador, México, Ecuador, Paraguay, Thailand, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and United States meeting in Sao Paulo from the 17^th to the 19^th of November, 2008:

Disagree completely with the promotion strategy regarding agrofuels, we understand that agrofuels are not vectors of neither development or sustainability. This strategy represents an obstacle to the necessary structural change in the production and consumption model of food and energy which have a direct effect to the current climate change crisis.

We affirm that:

The industrial agriculture context where agrofuels belong to, is intrinsically unsustainable, since it only promotes monoculture expansion, land concentration, extensive agrochemicals use, excessive use of natural resources like biodiversity, water and soil. Agrofuels represent a grave threat to food production and food security. Independently of the species used for energy production, whether food species or not, in essence they compete for arable land and water.

Industrial scale agrofuels production, together with agribusiness are expanding the agricultural front – the impacts of which and their cumulative effects are the main vectors of deforestation and ecosystem destruction throughout the world, and in Brazil are responsible for the destruction of the Amazon, Cerrado (Savannah) and other ecosystems.

In Brazil, the sugar-ethanol sector is heavily depended on public financing: the promotion of governmental programs on agrofuels has been historically linked to direct incentives and subsidies (like public financing from BNDES mainly derived from the Workers’ Fund - FAT) and indirect (as tolerance of fiscal evasion and debt relief).

The sugar-ethanol sector counts with consistent governmental tolerance to its noncompliance with labour and environmental legislation: amongst the impacts of ethanol production in Brazil we highlight the overexploitation of labour force, inhuman working conditions and the extensive use of slave labour; soil, air and water contamination and biodiversity reduction; rising land prices and land concentration which compromise even more agrarian reform programs and promote concomitantly a brutal process of invasion of traditional and indigenous territories and the expropriation of the land of small and medium farmers; and the threat to food production for the whole country. Foreign domination on land resources through purchasing or leasing contracts for the production of agroenergy is also a recent and very worrying development, since it compromises the availability of arable lands and the structural conditions of food production.

We denounce the strategy of international diffusion of the agribusiness model promoted by the Brazilian Government, through the actions of most of the cabinet members and in particular the Ministry of Foreign Relations and also of financial and research institutions like BNDES and Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), which will reproduce the impacts and structural problems of the sector in African, Latin American and Caribbean countries.

We question the agrofuels expansion strategy through global markets: we radically oppose the agreement of technology diffusion signed between Brazil and USA which seeks to establish ethanol as a mere commodity. We oppose the targets set by the EU and USA for the substitution of fossil fuels with agrofuels, something which will significantly increase the demand for agrofuels production lands in the countries of the Global South.

We alert that no zoning or environmental and social criteria are able to turn sustainable the current export oriented agribusiness model: the proposals for socio-environmental certification of agrofuels, based on various existing experiences (such as FSC, RTSPO, RTSB), do not minimize but rather cover the impacts and serve mainly as a legitimization instrument of international commercialization. Sugarcane agroecological zoning which is proposed by the Brazilian Government, same as diffusing concepts like idle, degraded or marginal lands, legitimizes the expropriation of territories for the expansion of monocultures, while occulting the related social conflicts.

We reaffirm our decades long struggle against transgenic plants: the advance of agrofuels, second generation ethanol and bio-plastics production includes structural components of biotechnology, transgenic modification and synthetic biology, factors that represent a new complex threat for biodiversity.

The current production and consumption model promoted by northern countries is unsustainable and places at risk life on our planet. Facing this structural crisis of the capitalist system with impacts in the energy, environmental, alimentary, financial and ethical dimensions of modern life, we urgently need to rethink our social and cultural models.

We defend energy sovereignty as an alternative, but not at the expense of food sovereignty:

Food and energy sovereignty is the exercise of the right of people to plan, produce and control energy and food resources in their territories in order to satisfy their needs that:

• requires a new planning of our mode of life inside society and the relations between the rural and urban populations.

• presupposes a food system adapted to an agrarian reform based on agroecological principles and to the particularities of each biome, as a real alternative to the reality of slave labour, overexploitation of rural workers and land concentration; the strengthening of rural and local economies; the valorisation of special alimentary and cultural habits; reduction of the kilometric distance between the production and consumption places and the establishment of fair and solidarity trade relations.

This system is also less dependent, more efficient and can be self-sufficient energetically. It is more appropriate and resistant and can be a real solution to the climate crisis provoked by the agro-industrial and oil-dependent production model which is reproduced in the agrofuels production systems which we oppose.

Energy sovereignty presupposes a new energy production and consumption model and transport structures based on rationality, economy, transformation of the current consumption patterns, reduction of the current global flux of commodities and energy in this globalized economic system, and definitely an efficient public transport system to substitute the current private transport model. It also presupposes the substitution of fossil fuels with renewable energy produced in a decentralized manner and focussed on local demands coupled with appropriate technical assistance and research guided by the real interests of the people.

The price of energy should be determined by the real production cost and not by financial speculation and definitely cannot be under the control of big financial groups.

Food and energy sovereignty should be based on the principles of democracy and decentralization, with popular participation in planning, decision making and management of food and energy production, including control of public financial resources and solidarity between the peoples and considering the different potentialities, needs and appropriate solutions for each country or region.

Energy and food are rights of the people which derived from our earth, water and natural diversity resources and cannot be treated as commodities.