Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Sifelani Tsiko
6 May 2008
opinion
Harare — AFRICA must safeguard its economic and social interest at the forthcoming ninth Conference of Parties to the Convention of Biological Bio-diversity and ensure that industrialised countries in the North do not sideline its concerns on agriculture, food security and agricultural bio-diversity conservation.
Participants to a three-day regional consultative workshop on preparations for the COP9-CBD scheduled to be held in Bonn, Germany (May 19 - 30) said African negotiators must take a firm stand particularly on issues related to the global agro-fuels production push, biosafety, farmers rights, emerging technologies and climate change.
These issues, the participants said, have serious implications on food security, agricultural bio-diversity conservation and sustainable use of the continent's biological resources.
The regional workshop, which was held recently in Darwendale, was organised by the Community Technology Development Trust to discuss critical issues affecting the continent's agro-bio-diversity and make recommendations to state parties and civil society going to COP9/MOP4 of the CBD.
"The main objective of this workshop is to deliberate and formulate positions on some of the critical issues that will be coming up for discussion during the COP9 such as agro-fuels production, biosafety, farmers rights, climate change, emerging technologies and access to and benefit sharing mechanism of genetic resources," said Mr Andrew Mushita, an agronomist and director of CTDT.
"We hope this workshop will enable us to critically analyse and make recommendations into issues affecting agro-bio-diversity within the country and also contribute to Zimbabwe and indeed other African member-states position at COP9/MOP4."
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity is the first global agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of all components of bio-diversity including plant genetic resources and species.
Governments from different parts of the world first signed the agreement at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
The CBD is made up of 188 national governments and one regional economic bloc.
The main objective of the CBD is the conservation of bio-diversity, the sustainable use of its components and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.
COP7 was held in Kualar Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2004 while COP8 was held in Curitiba, Brazil, in March 2006.
"We need to influence our delegates to take the right positions. We should know the delegates before hand and influence them to take our concerns on board to the negotiations," said Mr Patrick Kasasa, an agronomist and Africa region programme co-ordinator of the Community Bio-diversity Development and Conservation Africa.
He said Zimbabwe is a signatory to the convention and is required among other issues to integrate bio-diversity protection into relevant policies and programmes, identify and monitor activities that harm bio-diversity and protect bio-diversity through a range of measures to ensure sustainable use.
Prof Carol Thompson, a visiting political economist from the University of Arizona in the US, said African countries should reject the growing push for agro-fuels production arguing that it will lead to loss of land, food security and sovereignty and perpetuate a model of industrial agriculture that is not environmentally sustainable.
"The science behind agro-fuels is as controversial as the science behind genetically modified organisms. They (industrial North) have started calling Africa the "Green Opec of Africa," she said.
"Agro-fuels pose a huge threat to smallholder farmers. Land use in Africa will be firmly under foreign control and this will be for foreign consumption and not for Africa. This is something that needs serious discussion."
She said the push by the industrial North for agro-fuels would lead to the extensive growing of food crops for fuel leading to food insecurity, poverty and hunger.
"The impact of agro-fuels will be huge, the practice of monoculture will destroy bio-diversity, the growing of agro-fuel crops will open the way for the bulldozing of GM crops and trade agreements will be used as weapons of control. Labour will be subordinate to the whims of large and powerful conglomerates," Prof Thompson said.
She added that: "It's not about market issues, but profit. The single goal is profit, not sustainable and efficient use of resources. It is certainly not about people. Africa should not give land back to foreign control."
Lovemore Simwanda of Zambia echoed similar sentiments.
"Agro-fuels are a big threat to land ownership in Africa. It's really worrying that governments in the region are pushing people to grow jatropha without analysing the impact of agro-fuels on land use and the resultant rise in food prices."
"People are being pushed to sacrifice their land to plant jatropha.
"It's really worrying and people will lose their land to multinationals who want their agenda to succeed by all means necessary," said another delegate from Malawi.
Added Mr Mushita: "Its (agro-fuels agenda) perpetuating the same kind of development agenda. We are responding to the agenda of the North.
"We have so much solar here but we can't invest on solar energy development. African land will be used for cheap production. Our policymakers are running with agro-fuels issue driven by the North and I don't know why they can't see that this will not serve the interest of Africa in anyway."
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Certainly, food comes first as worldwide consumption increases, weather difficulties limit supplies and petroleum costs drive up prices. It's more important that we have food in our stomachs than fuel in our tanks. That said, there is plenty of land in Africa that can not support food crops and lays fallow. It is not unreasonable to want to leverage this unused land to generate some income and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
The bulk fuel market calls for bulk production that the small farmer will find difficult to compete in. Rather than shutting the door on all biofuel production, it is more prudent to set reasonable guidelines, such as:
1.) Do not use any land that can affectively grow food crops; 2.) Do not cut down any large trees, using land that was cleared long ago; 3.) Do not plant in large contiguous plots; 4.) Use sustainable practices in all aspects of operation; 5.) Drastically limit the use of petroleum in farm machinery, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides; 6.) Keep jobs, the resultant fuel and profits in-country; and 7.) Ensure that the local community shares in the profits.
Africa needs to leverage its own natural resources, not turn them over to outsiders or let them go to waste. We all need food and fuel and we need to become more self sufficient to keep money from flowing out of our countries.
Biofuels is a business Africa can accel at, we just need to use reasonable business models and to work together. We need to learn a lesson from the petroleum resources that leave the continent with little to show for it. We need African Biofuels for Africa.