Blue Future by Maude Barlow

Author:Maude Barlow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2013-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

BRAZIL IN THE LEAD

Brazil and the United States produce almost 90 percent of the world’s biofuels. Brazil is the leading manufacturer and exporter of sugarcane ethanol, and most cars in Brazil now run on a mixture of ethanol and gasoline. Brazil currently produces 28 billion litres of sugarcane ethanol (2 billion litres of which is exported) and wants to be producing 200 billion litres by 2020, although the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that it will likely be closer to 44 billion litres.190

It takes a great deal of water to produce this biofuel. Cornell professor Pimentel estimates that it takes 2,655 litres of water if the crop is irrigated (1,720 litres if it is rain-fed) to produce one litre, counting the water used to grow the sugar cane as well as that used in the production process.191 Scientists A. Y. Hoekstra and P. W. Gerbens-Leenes corroborate this figure in a study for UNESCO.192 Currently 7 trillion litres of water are extracted every year to produce ethanol in Brazil. In less than a decade this figure could reach an astonishing 65 trillion litres of water.

Biofuel production in Brazil destroys forests, which are cut down to make way for the vast sugarcane fields; threatens the savannahs and the Amazon River Basin; and contaminates the water and soil with chemical fertilizers. Small farmers and indigenous landholders have been forced off their land to make way for the new agribusiness. Two-thirds of the Cerrado, the world’s most diverse savannah — it lies between the Amazon and the Atlantic rainforest and is known by the locals as the “Father of Water” — has been degraded for cattle ranching and sugarcane production. The Ipojuca River in north-

eastern Brazil has been contaminated by nitrate leaching, acidification, and oxygen imbalance from biofuel production. Many rural streams and rivers have dried up as large biofuel farms move in and draw from them.

All this places the Guaraní Aquifer — the world’s largest, lying beneath Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay — at risk. Water is being extracted from the aquifer faster than it can be recharged. High salt levels and reduced water pressure result, possibly rendering the extraction process very difficult in the future. Heavy metals, toxins from the mining and forestry industries, urban sprawl, poorly treated sewage, phosphorus, fertilizers, agro-chemicals, and multipoint contamination combine to spill a witch’s brew of poison into the aquifer. Karin Kemper, a senior water resources specialist with the World Bank, says, “The Guarani is a striking example of an international water body threatened by environmental degradation. Without better management, the aquifer is likely to suffer from pollution and rapid depletion. Uncontrolled exploitation could reduce it from a strategic water reserve to a degraded resource that is a focus of conflict in the region.”194

The big agro-companies are given preferential access to the waters of the region over local needs. Global agribusiness companies such as Cargill, the world’s leading sugar producer and trader, and energy giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP, are piling into Brazil in anticipation of huge growth in the biofuels industry.

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