South America, Soja and food manufacturing
President Lula praises to the manufacturing of agrofuels as a weapon against poverty and climate change. Now he wants to export the controversial model of success in Africa.
Honors Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has already received many. There is hardly one will be the outgoing Brazilian President have been looking forward to the title as "Champion in the global battle against hunger," which he was awarded the World Food manufacturing Program of the United Nations in May. The British charity Action Aid Brazil has the leading position in reducing poverty.
Many Brazilians still remember emotional Lula's inaugural speech on New Year's 2003rd "Change," was his motto, and he promised that he would not rest until all his countrymen could afford three meals a day. Almost eight years later, many figures are impressive: around 20 million of the 194 million Brazilians have risen out of poverty into the lower middle class. The income of the poorest tenth grew by eight percent annually, the real minimum wage by 54 percent.
granted via the social program "Bolsa Familia" (family grant), the monthly subsidy of the equivalent of ten to 91 € per household purchasing power is strengthened by over twelve million poor families. Lula is also why 80 percent approval is even more popular than in January 2003, the election victory of his Wunschnachfolgerin Dilma Rousseff in October, only as a formality.
But the record also has its dark sides. In the crisis year 2009, the Brazilian survived almost unscathed, the income of the poorest Brazilians again grew the slowest. Around 15 million people still live in abject poverty. For all its merits was "Bolsa Família" just above all a "project of power", with the safe, the government criticized votes, Frei Betto, an old friend of the heads of state. The recipients were kept in dependence on the state, "there is no exit door," says the Dominican priest left, the beginning of the first Lula government, the previous program, "Fome Zero" (zero hunger led "). The consideration was designed as part of a package of measures, Betto says, "about literacy, promotion of cooperatives, vocational training and land reform." But all that got stuck in its infancy. The activists of the MST lament the lack of agrarian reform. Multinational corporations, financial capital and Brazilian landowners had concluded an effective alliance for the use of agricultural land, is MST leader João Pedro Stedile coordinator. In a study presented to the UN Research Institute for Social Development two weeks ago, they say, Brasilia was not yet in spite of all the positive social programs "the structural causes of poverty and inequalities addressed.
Under Lula the concentration of land ownership has actually increased - also because of the cultivation of sugar cane and soybeans for the manufacturing of agrofuels. In January, the ethanol giant Cosan ended because of slave labor even picked up briefly on a black list of Labour - until a hasty judge the measure again.
The extension of the sugar cane plantations are still small farmers and Indians ousted from their land, while soy fields and herds of cattle are moving further and further to the Amazon rainforest. And from the biodiesel manufacturing will benefit not announced as family businesses, but particularly large Sojakonzerne. Nevertheless, Lula wants to export this model to Africa. Together with the EU, Brazil and Mozambique has recently set up a working group on "sustainable development of bioenergy". A similar triangular cooperation is planned with other countries.
The transaction was beneficial for all involved, it is argued: Brazilian sugar and ethanol companies could be put manufacturing in Mozambique circumvent EU import duties, which do not apply to the former Portuguese colony. The EU would approve additional suppliers for agrofuels - is to finally, according to the current EU Directive produced energy from renewable sources by 2020, fifth, tenth in the transportation sector. In Mozambique, eventually incur new jobs.
"We will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate growth in developing countries," Lula said that biofuels praises for years as a weapon against poverty and climate change. With the EU, he wants to forge an "alliance against poverty in Africa and Latin America." The environmental organization Friends of the Earth, however, considers it for "immoral" to grow in a country with many starving sugar cane and oil plant Jatropha in order to produce agrofuels for European cars. Because such plantations would be widened, in Mozambique already displaced small farmers from their land and limited food manufacturing, says activist Anabela Lemos, Mozambique.
In Brazil, such criticism fades largely unheard. Lula geriert itself as the redeemer who manages to satisfy rich and poor, the agribusiness and small farmers. The business-magazine "Economist" estimates it because it stabilizes the capitalism, the Left in Latin America, praising his own foreign policy. Also for the Canadian nutritionists and genetic engineering critic Pat Mooney, the head of the renowned non-governmental organization ETC Group, Lula da Silva is one of hope. "Obviously, to achieve the four major UN organizations dealing with food and agriculture, its duties," he recognized. "So the question is how do we create an institutional model to manage the crisis?"
Therefore, Mooney hopes that Lula is elected in June 2011 as the new head of the FAO, the UN Organization for Food and Agriculture. "We need someone with a lot of prestige that can cut down on the table so that the system finally starts to work. The one thing about his job would be the political commitment to end hunger, "said Mooney. "He has the potential to lift this obligation to the world's highest political level."