By GRANT PECK / ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
The Irrawaddy News
A plan by Burma’s ruling military for large-scale growing of a promising but little-tested biofuel crop has turned into an agricultural debacle, activists linked with the exile-based opposition alleged in a report on Thursday.
The 48-page report, "Biofuel by Decree: Unmasking Burma's Bio-energy Fiasco," was produced by the Ethnic Community Development Forum, a self-described alliance of seven community development organizations from Burma.
Though not directly political, the groups are all associated with the exile-based opposition to Burma’s military government.
The fiercely critical report, which says the biofuel policy hurts an already ailing agriculture industry, comes as biofuels draw intense scrutiny over whether their benefits in replacing petroleum fuels offset the resources they take from food production.
The forum said the report is based on government documents and press accounts, as well as 131 interviews carried out in all seven states of Burma between November 2006 and April 2006.
"A draconian campaign by Burma's military to grow 8 million acres of the Jatropha curcas tree for biofuel production is resulting in forced labor and land confiscation throughout the country, while evidence of crop failure and mismanagement expose the program as a fiasco," alleges the report.
It recounts how the leader of the Burmese junta, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, in December 2005 publicly ordered the campaign to plant the jatropha crop—better known as physic nut.
The five-year plan was to plant the crop across 202,000 hectares of each state and division in the country, a total of 3,237,000 hectares—an area roughly the size of Belgium.
The report charges that "farmers, civil servants, teachers, schoolchildren, nurses and prisoners have been forced to purchase seeds, fulfill planting quotas and establish biofuel plantations in service to the 'national cause."'
"They must plant the trees along roadsides, in housing, school and hospital compounds, in cemeteries and religious grounds, and on lands formerly producing rice," it says.
It alleges that people "have been fined, beaten, and arrested for not participating," and that food security is being threatened because physic nut is being planted on land usually used for stable crops.
The crop has promise as a biofuel, with greater yields of oil per hectare than other biofuels and one-fifth the carbon emissions. But poor management has doomed efforts to use it in Burma, where the yield so far appears to have been too low to be of much use, the report says.
Some 800 refugees who fled to Thailand from Burma’s Shan State have even cited the program as the reason for fleeing their country, the report says.
"It will not be successful," said one farmer quoted in the report. "You see, the soldiers carry guns. They don't know anything about agriculture."
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has suggested biofuel crops may be causing shortages of food staples and rises in food prices.
An e-mailed request for comment sent to the Burmese government spokesperson was not answered before release of the report.
However, in January 2006, according to the report, Agriculture Minister Col Aung Thaung said the production of physic nut for biodiesel was the only way Burma could cope with a chronic oil shortage.
Burma in the past few years has become a major producer of natural gas, but lacks the infrastructure to make efficient use of it and instead exports it for desperately needed foreign reserves.
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