The image of biofuels is rapidly tarnishing. Already under fire for displacing food production and tropical forests, they are now charged with marginalising poor rural women.
In a report published on 21 April, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization concludes that women subsistence farmers will be evicted to make way for huge biofuel plantations. The most vulnerable women already suffer extreme inequalities in African, Asian and Caribbean countries. These same countries are now hoping to cash in on the growing demand for biofuels in rich western countries.
鈥淭hese women don鈥檛 have access to land, or the land they do occupy is owned by men,鈥� says report author, Yianna Lambrou. 鈥淪o if the men decide to set up a biofuel plant, the women would simply be evicted.鈥� That would push them onto marginal land barely capable of supporting crops, and also deny them easy access to water, as biofuel production would have first claim on the supply.
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Even if jobs are on offer at a biofuel plant, they鈥檒l go mainly to men, and any women employed will receive lower wages for the same job, Lambrou says.
She believes that governments need to plan in advance to prevent these problems either by helping women form cooperatives to raise capital for their own biofuel plantations, or by experimenting with combining smaller-scale biofuel production with the methods of subsistence farming already in use in the area.
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