Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa has said the cultivation of bio-fuel crops required massive tracts of land and extensive application of fertilisers. He said this could result in displacement of indigenous people and environmental degradation respectively, neither of which his government would allow.
Mwanawasa said that the Cabinet refused to allocate 25,000 hectares of land in Mpika to an investor, later reducing it to 10,000 hectares because local communities would have been displaced, apart from possible dangers on the environment. He said despite the economic gains that Zambia could get from the cultivation of bio-fuel crops, he did not favour environmental degradation and displacement of the locals.
According to a UN report quoted by Mwanawasa , indigenous people were being pushed out of their land to make way for an expansion of bio-fuel crops around the world. UN chair of the Permanent Forum on indigenous issues, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, said some of the native people most at risk live in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce 80 per cent of the world’s palm oil - one of the crops used to make bio-fuels.
The UN warned that the benefits of the alternative energy source might be offset by serious environmental problems and increased food prices for poor people in the developing world. “Many bio-fuel crops, the report states, require the best land to grow, diverting food crops and causing prices for staples like maize and sugar to rise.They also require large amounts of water and environment-damaging chemical fertilisers,” the report said.
Mwanawasa said, “We are still researching the issue.If we discover that there is more harm than good to be caused, the nation should understand why we may distance ourselves from growing jatropha and palm oil.”
Zambia Daily Mail
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