Biofuelwatch actively supports the campaign for an EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures. Agroenergy monocultures are linked to accelerated climate change, deforestation, the impoverishment and dispossession of local communities, bio-diversity losses, human rights abuses, water and soil degradation, loss of food sovereignty and food security.

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Photo from Interfaith Commission for Justice and Peace, Colombia. Click image for more.

Afro-Colombian communities in Bajo Atrato, Choco are cutting down oil palms to reclaim the land which has been illegally occupied by palm oil companies, so that they can grow food again.

Agrofuels are making commodities like palm oil, soya and corn more expensive and this in turn is pushing up the price of land. Agribusiness and other companies are gaining control of community lands, displacing small farmers, indigenous peoples and others, or setting up contract farming agreements where farmers lose control over what they can grow. Large numbers of civil society groups and social movements in the South have signed declarations condemning agrofuel policies. In many countries, communities are actively resisting and defending their lands and rights. In Sarawak, Malaysia, indigenous Penan people stopped a palm oil company which had made false promises from entering their land. In Indonesia, there have been many incidents with villagers reclaiming land taken from them illegally by oil palm companies. In Paraguay, peasant organisations and social movements are resisting the destruction of their communities and environment for soya plantations. At the beginning of October, there were around 130 ‘protest camps’ set up at the margins of soya plantations and farmers have pledged to stop pesticide spraying. In Ghana, civil society groups recently stopped an illegal land-grab of 38,000 hectares by a Norwegian biodiesel company. Those are just a few examples of communities in the South resisting the agribusiness take-over of their land, which is accelerating because of biofuel expansion. However, unless biofuel targets and incentives can be stopped in the EU and elsewhere, violence against communities defending their livelihoods and environment is likely to escalate.