Concerns accompany Senegal biofuel experiment

Biofuel production will soon begin on 50,000 hectares of land in southern Senegal as part of President Wade's plan to reduce oil imports and to revive the rural economy. The experiment is a partnership between the Senegalese government and the Brazilian company Tecbio.

President Wade has said that he wants to replace the more than 30,000 barrels of oil the country consumes each day with renewable fuels. Wade's "Return to Agriculture Program" positions biofuel production as a way to revitalize the sagging rural economy by giving small-scale farmers a new cash crop to export. But where biofuel supporters see a green solution to their growing energy crisis, critics worry about the problematic, and possibly dangerous, trade offs in the rush to exploit environmental cash crops.

Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian environmentalist and member of the environmental group Global Forest Coalition calls biofuels a disaster in the making. "If people do not look at it critically, then the immediate response is 'yes let's go for it'," he said. "Biofuels at a limited level as a supplemental, community energy - no problem at all. When we are talking about using it as a major energy source, it is a wrong direction."

This is a trend that Maryam Niamir-Fuller has seen in developing countries. She is a UNDP technical advisor for the Global Environment Facility, which helps developing countries' environmental programs. "With this massive demand coming up, many countries see this as the new cash crop from which to try to get foreign exchange to fund heir economies. Yes, it can be a panacea, but it has got to be done right," she said. But she worries that in the rush to cash in on biofuels, increased demands on the land may lead to food security problems. "Some people are using the term food or fuel," she said. "Does the small-scale farmer focus on enhancing their own food security or do they convert everything to a cash crop, such as for biofuel?"

The Senegal Ministry of Energy's technical advisor for renewable energies, Alassane Niane, says there does not have to be a choice between food and fuel. He says that that some of the crops that may be grown to be converted to biofuels can also be consumed, such as sugar cane and wheat - that there is not a dichotomy like critics claim.

Nigerian environmentalist Bassey disagrees. "Those who believe that biofuel production will not harm the already precarious situation of food in Africa are just being too optimistic," he said.

Niamir-Fuller raises a second concern about potential land degradation. "How will the move to biofuel production affect land use? What impact might it have on land degradation, whether by overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides or by converting land that isn't suitable? It is kind of like mining the land to produce biofuels," she said.

Her third concern is the effect on small-scale farmers. "In many countries where land tenure is very insecure, this demand for biofuel production can very easily result in expropriation of land from small landholders," said Maryam Niamir-Fuller.

A director of the project's technical partner Tecbio, Jose Neivas Santos, dismisses concerns about environmental and economic trade offs of biofuels. He says the technology to set up biofuel conversion plants costs less than what Senegal currently spends to cover its oil needs. He goes on to says biofuel use can cut carbon dioxide emissions and reduce dependence on non-renewable oils. He also says that there are almost no disadvantages to the technology used to produce biofuels.

The first phase of biofuel production in Senegal will plant jatropha plants, which is a wild plant largely available throughout Africa. It has been touted as an oil-rich plant that can be planted on marginal lands with little need for water or fertilizers, reaping returns once converted to biofuels. But analysts caution over-optimism, saying that more testing about the plant's yield and suitability needs to be conducted.

VOA News