BIOENERGY AND FOOD SECURITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES PERSPECTIVE
- Introduction
Bioenergy is a typology of renewable energy source (RES) that is defined, in general as that capturing its energy from ongoing natural processes, like sunshine, wind, flowing water, geothermal heat flows and biological processes, and whose energy flow is replaced by a constant natural process in a short period of time (University of Massachusetts, 1997). RES are very different in their nature and their possible uses, going from hydroelectric power (which is the most widespread) to solar, tidal, wind and biomass energy. This last type, also called bioenergy, is the focus of the present article; in particular, we will concentrate our attention on biofuels, a type of biomass obtained by the oil of the so-called energy crops, like sugar cane, soy, maize and sunflower.
After the energy crises of the 1970s, RES in general have gained increasing attention due to the emergence of problematic issues related to the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, in terms of their exhaustibility , polluting emissions and wastes, and rising and unstable prices.
Nowadays, this interest has been increased by the international debate on greenhouse gases, its effects in global climate and the way in which they could be faced.
The concern and the implications connected to the promotion of the bioenergy sector assume specific characters when referred to industrialized or developing countries.
In spite of being the main biomass producers and consumers, developing countries are not yet involved in the recently born bioenergy market, with few relevant exceptions, consisting in Brazil and some Asian countries (European Commission, 2006); on the opposite, they are mainly using biomass in unsustainable ways and are expected to increase dramatically their demand for fossil fuels in the next future, as a consequence of urbanisation and rise in income (International Energy Agency, 2004). This is the reason why the international community is trying to stimulate a sensible change in their energy consumption patterns, in line with the goals of a global reduction of polluting emissions. This pressure calls for consistent analysis aimed at understanding the potential positive and negative impacts of the possible change. A key area that still needs to be developed refers to the relation existing between bioenergy production and food security, given that they both rely on the agricultural sector and on its resources: in this perspective, an assessment of the potential effects of bioenergy on food security becomes of primary importance, since developing countries show a higher and more complex vulnerability with respect to this issue.
Various international meetings have been focused on the need for a reduction in greenhouse gases emissions. In 1988, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), together with the World Meteorological Organization, created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which began to consider global warming as a real and urgent environmental problem. In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the Earth Summit) set out an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge of climate change (United Nations, 1992) and drafted the so-called Agenda 21, a plan of action to be taken globally in order to pursue environmentally sustainable development (United Nations, 2005; Brundtland, 1997). In December 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was drafted, establishing an international plan to prevent climate change, on the basis of the information provided by IPCC on the level of global CO2 emissions reductions needed(United Nations, 1998); although the text of the Protocol had been adopted unanimously, it only entered into force in 2005 and it has not yet been ratified by some of the most polluting countries in the world (namely, USA and China).
The World Summit on Sustainable Development held in 2002 in Johannesburg reaffirmed the commitment to the Rio principles and to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 (United Nations, 2000; United Nations, 2005): for the first time, a specific focus was put on developing countries, in relation to energetic and environmental issues. The Johannesburg Declaration went further, stating that energy must be considered a human need, like other basic needs (United Nations, 2004): given that almost two billion people have no access to modern energy services (The World Bank, 2000), one of the main challenges to be faced in order to ensure sustainable development lies in finding a balance between the growing energy demand and its impact on environment (United Nations Development Programme, 2007; Stockholm Environment Institute, 2005). In this way, given also its link with food security, bioenergy began to be considered an effective instrument in the way to achieve the MDGs (Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2007).
In this framework, some experiences collected by the World Bank in Bangladesh, Lao PDR, Bolivia and Sierra Leone, show that the promotion of RES can play a significant role (The World Bank, 2006), and bioenergy in particular, given its local availability and its tight connection with rural activities. Besides, as food security and environmental sustainability can often reinforce each other, bioenergy can be seen as an important tool to face undernourishment (Italian Biomass Association, 2003; Hall and House, 1995).
In spite of these potential positive effects, some criticism have arisen, regarding the prospect of an extensive production and use of bioenergy in developing countries.
The main aspect of the debate refers to the opportunity cost of land and leads to the consideration that the achievement of food security by a country and its bioenergy production face a sort of competition: in fact, the cultivation of energy crops would compete with that of food crops mainly over land, but also over water and other inputs.
In this contest, the article aims at providing a critical review of the recent literature on bioenergy and developing countries perspective, especially referring to its relation with food security, giving also a description of the industrialized countries interests. It is organized as follows: after a reference to the actual bioenergy production and trade situation, the first section is dedicated to the investigation of energy security concern, shared by both industrialized and developing countries. The second section gets into the specific interest of developing countries, especially regarding its relation with food security. The different dimensions of food security, identified according to the definition proposed by the World Food Summit in 1996, namely food availability, access to food, food utilization and stability (Sassi, 2006), will be taken into account and analysed specific sub-sections, in the attempt to overcome the traditional Malthusian perspective focused only on food production. Finally, in our conclusion, we will point out the main critical issues related to the promotion of bioenergy in developing countries, focusing on the potential positive effects as well as the trade-offs with food security, and underlying the need for further research in order to provide a comprehensive analysis of the bioenergy impact on food security.
- Bioenergy market and energy security
According to the data of the International Energy Agency, RES only represent the 13.1% of the world total primary energy supply (TPES)[1]; within this group, biomass (both traditional and commercial) accounts for almost 80% of total RES, while solar, wind, geothermal and tidal energy together account for less than 4%.
With respect to the difference in the type of available (and most adopted) biomass, the literature distinguishes between traditional and commercial biomass. Traditional biomass includes fuels that are not traded, like charcoal, fuelwood, dung and farm residues; it is mainly consumed in developing countries[2], often in an unsustainable way[3] in the residential sector for cooking and heating (IEA, 2004). On the other hand, commercial biomass includes all other fuels, in particular bio-ethanol and bio-diesel, which are taken up both in the residential sector and in the industrial sector, to produce heat and also electric power; it is adopted mainly in industrialized countries, but it is gaining increasing importance in many developing countries, especially in Asia and Latin America, where the production of biofuels is raising and it is starting to be exported (IEA, 2004), as in the case of Brazil (Ferreira Batista, 2003).
In 2003, the world bioenergy production and consumption have been concentrated for the 86% in developing countries, mainly in the form of traditional biomass. Focusing just on commercial biomass, the above figure changes profoundly: Brazil remains the only relevant bio-ethanol producer and exporter, together with the USA, accounting for about the 90% of world production; while bio-diesel production is concentrated in France and Germany, that account for 88% of world production (International Food Policy Research Institute, 2006).
Beside its link with sustainable development (due to a reduction in fossil fuels and traditional biomass use), bioenergy has a political and an economic value, both for industrialized and for developing countries.
A primary political reason for the promotion of biomass as a clean energy source is related to the need to comply with the commitment undertaken after the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol[4], which is proving to have a rising consideration within the international public opinion and the international political arena. Other political reasons can also be identified, which are linked to the agriculture and energetic policies adopted in industrialized countries.
On one hand, the promotion of biofuels production is related to the objective to find alternative and more productive uses of set-aside lands. At regional and national level, the support is usually granted through traditional agricultural programmes: the European Union’s Common Agriculture Policy is a typical example (European Commission, 2004).
On the other hand, beside being a useful instrument for the agricultural policy, since it provides new economic opportunities in rural areas (European Commission, 2005), the promotion of bioenergy is also related to the aim that many industrialized countries have towards the achievement of energetic self-sufficiency, or at least of a significant reduction of their external dependence on energy (especially oil and natural gas) exporting countries[5].
A reduction in energy imports will be likely to have positive leakages in the medium term, on the economic growth of a country, via a sensible decrease of the inflationary pressures due to the rising prices of fossil fuels: in fact, aggregate production, as well as the competitiveness of the industrial sector, could be benefited by a reduction in raw material costs (International Monetary Fund, 2006).
If we consider developing countries as essentially defined by an underdeveloped industrial sector and, consequently, by relatively lower energetic needs, compared to those of industrialized countries, it should be concluded that the above described political and economic values of biomass production for energy purposes are relatively less relevant for them. Nevertheless, it should be first considered the evident exception of emerging countries, like for example China, India and Brazil: due to their rapidly increasing energy demand, they completely share with industrialized countries the concern on energy security issues. This interest is strengthened by the fact that bioenergy can be also an instrument for agricultural policy (Kammen, 2006), creating new employment and business opportunities in rural areas, where the majority of developing countries’ population lives.
Finally, it must be also considered the projection of the International Energy Agency, according to which two thirds of the increase in the world primary energy demand in the next decades will be originated by developing countries (IEA, 2004).
- Food security: a primary concern for developing countries
Together with its political value in terms of energy security, bioenergy production has a peculiar relevance in developing countries, due to its potential links with food security issues. This relationship needs to be analysed considering the effects of bioenergy production and consumption on all the different determinants of food security.
One of the most accepted definition food security is that adopted by the World Food Summit in 1996 (FAO, 1996). It describes food security at the household, national, regional and global level as a situation in which all people, at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The concept has four basic distinct but interrelated dimensions. They are food availability, access to food, food utilisation and stability (Sassi, 2006)[6].
Due to the multidimensional character of food security, a comprehensive analysis of the implications of bioenergy production and consumption on each of the dimensions of food security and their interaction is proposed in the following part of the article.
3.1Food availability
A relevant debate is ongoing in the literature concerning the relationship between food availability and biofuels production.
The main argument against energy crops is based on the assumption that they compete against food crops mainly over land, but also over water, labour and other inputs. According to this line of reasoning, an increase in energy crops production would inexorably cause a decline in food production, eventually leading to a worsening of a population’s food security.
Energy crops cultivations would affect negatively populations’ food security also due to the negative environmental impact of their intensive and extensive cultivation: on one hand, it would cause an increase in the widespread use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers; on the other hand, it would raise the risk of indiscriminate deforestation, like that occurred, for example, in Brazil after the launch of the National Alcohol Program, in 1975, to produce bio-ethanol from sugar-cane and soy for road transport (biodieselbr.com, 2007; Rother, 2006; Biofuelwatch, 2006).
Thus, the first objection against a widespread production of bio energy is based on the identification of a trade-off between energy crops and food production, which is supposed to cause a dramatic decrease not only in the local but also in the global food availability, ending in global food insecurity.
The main critiques against the above described claim are based on the consideration that food production is only one of the determinants of food security: other aspects must be taken into account.
Even limiting our consideration to the aspect of food production and availability, the objection against a large scale promotion of bio energy production seems to take into account neither the role of food trade in a context of world food surplus, produced particularly by the highly subsidised agricultures of OECD countries, nor the fact that energy crops can be often grown on set-aside or marginal lands[7], as in the case of Italy (Venturi and Scherpenzeel, 1999), nor even the higher productivity of tropical biomass compared to temperate biomass (Johnson and Yamba, 2005). However, regarding the possibility to use marginal lands, the recent Round Table on Sustainable Development held by the OECD in Paris has clearly pointed out that the fact that energy crops are a profitable cultivation will constitute an incentive to cultivate them in the most productive lands, thus ending up in the actual creation of a competition against food crops (OECD, 2007).
Finally, it seems important to underline the fact that bioenergy promotion could have some side effects that would turn significantly helpful also to food production: for example, in terms of bioenergy by-products, that could be used as natural fertilizers or animal feed (Italian Biomass Associatio, 2003; Rosillo-Calle, 2005); or in terms of the general upgrading of rural infrastructures and services, like electrification and irrigation systems, roads, access to inputs and credit (India Academy of Science, 2004); or in terms of a widespread increase in agricultural productivity (IEA, 2004).
Given all the above mentioned potential transformation in the rural territory, it is not easy to foresee the ultimate effect of biofuels production on food availability, even in the case in which an actual competition takes place, transforming previously producing food crops hectares in energy crops cultivated areas.
3.2Access to food
Concerning the access to food, the existing literature is specifically focused on its relationship with bioenergy production at individual/household level, at national and global level, and at territorial level.
At household level, bioenergy production could result in a rise in employment of the rural areas, since it is a labour-intensive activity that involves mainly rural populations[8].
The existing literature also emphasises that the promotion of bioenergy would positively affect women empowerment in two ways: on one hand, working directly in the production process, they would be granted access to a monetary income; on the other hand, the possibility to use affordable and locally available energy would reduce the time they spend to collect wood and charcoal, giving them the opportunity to use that time for other paid activities, either in the agricultural sector itself or in small commercial businesses (FAO, 2000). This empowerment will also benefit the household food security per se, as several studies have proved that an increase in a woman’s income is totally invested in the improvement of her family’s food security, especially child nutrition (FAO, 2003; Guha-Khasnobis and Hazarika, 2006).