Americas Program Report
Colombia’s Palm Oil Biodiesel Push
Tatiana Roa Avendaño | February 2, 2007
Translated from: El biodiesel de la palma aceitera en Colombia
Translated by: Nick Henry, IRC
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
americas.irc-online.org
The western world, especially the North, has surrendered to its
addiction to fossil fuels. This course has set in motion a process that
can no longer be questioned: climate change. Many proposals have
attempted to confront it, but the majority of them keep humanity on its
current suicide course. Megaprojects to produce biofuels purport to be
a solution. But have the people proposing such alternatives even
stopped to consider their potential impact on ecosystems, communities,
and cultures? This article lays out the steps that have paved the way
for these projects, focusing especially on the ramifications of the
African palm, from which one type of biofuel is derived.
Biofuels have their own history. To be brief, we'll recall that during
the energy crisis of 1973, Brazil refitted a portion of its sugar mills
to produce ethanol, and in so doing became the leading exporter
worldwide. Today, Colombia wants to follow suit and produce biofuels,
particularly bioethanol and biodiesel.
Legislation Begins
In 2001, the passing of Law 693—to which 2004's Law 939 is tied—set the
stage for the production of biofuels. Law 693 stipulates that Colombian
gasoline must be 10% ethanol by 2009 and over the course of 15-20
years, it must gradually reach 25%. Law 939 seeks to promote biodiesel
by requiring diesel gasoline for regular diesel engines to be 5%
biodiesel.
Since the end of 2005, production levels from the sugar mills in Cauca,
Providencia, Manuelita, and Mayagüez (all located in the Cauca
Valley Province), as well as the Risaralda refinery, have neared one
million liters of bioethanol a day, all of which goes to cover the
demand from the western part of the country and the Bogota Plateau.
Moreover, there is talk of constructing some 27 more plants across 17
provinces to extend the 10% mixture with gasoline to the rest of the
country. In accordance with the projections of the National Fuel
Federation, by 2010, Colombia could double its internal consumption of
biofuels simply by raising the mixing percentage to 15%. By then,
Colombia will have a total export capacity of 2.3 million liters of
ethanol a day.
The Palm Tree for Biodiesel
Legislation similar to that mentioned above is being drafted for
biodiesel, which can be derived from the African palm tree. This tree
has nutritional benefits for which it is already known: 600,000 tons of
palm oil are produced annually. But in this case, it is biodiesel that
we are most interested in.
Before citing statistics, it's important to mention that the major
beneficiaries of bioethanol legislation and that being drafted for
biodiesel are the above-mentioned sugar cane agroindustries in the
Cauca Valley, one of Colombia's western provinces, and in the case of
biodiesel, the palm tree agroindustry.
However, the country's diesel consumption for automotive transport is
growing at a faster pace than regular gas consumption. In fact, the
demand exceeds the refining capacity of Ecopetrol (the state-owned oil
company), so 5% of internal diesel consumption must now be served with
imports. Thus, there is an opening for African palm tree
agribusinesses, which have been gradually increasing their production.
Growth and the Market
In Colombia, the expansion of this crop has been steady. In the
mid-1960s, 18,000 hectares were in production. In 2003, some 188,000
hectares were in production, and today there are around 300,000. In
addition, seven palm processing plants are under construction in
different sections of the country, which will cost approximately one
hundred million dollars. According to the Colombia palm workers union,
Fedepalma, in 2001 Colombia became the largest palm oil producer in the
Americas and the fourth worldwide, after Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Nigeria. It exports 35% of its total production.
Nevertheless, several economic studies consider the international
market for palm oil to be very unstable, since global production rises
each day and prices continue to fall. However, palm oil agroindustrial
projects have continued to be a priority for the current government and
they are being pushed primarily in regions such as the Colombian
Pacific , the eastern plains, and the Caribbean coast, where the soil
and climate conditions are optimal for the crop. The goal is to reach a
million hectares within the next few years.
What Lies Beyond
Individuals studying these agroindustrial development projects have
denounced the growing of the crop as a way of laundering money from
drug trafficking and as a mechanism for paramilitaries to forcefully
remove the population to acquire important resource-rich areas. Their
strategy has been to displace the people, and once the territory is
abandoned, the palm tree agribusinesses occupy them. Jiguamiando and
Curvarado, both Pacific coast provinces, are glaring examples of this
strategy—the Urapalma company illegally occupied these Afro-Colombian
territories.
The communities of Choco only just received titles for their land in
November of 2000, after years of repeated violations of their human,
economic, social, and cultural rights, and nine years after the
National Constitution officially recognized the territorial rights of
black and indigenous communities.
The recognition of land ownership was given when the communities were
in a state of a displacement. Upon returning, they found that their
land had been swept clean for the growing of palm trees, and nearly the
entirety of their towns and villages had disappeared due to palm oil,
abandonment, destruction of their dwellings, and the disappearance of
their trails and roads, thus making communication between communities
all but impossible. As a result, the social fabric has collapsed.
Consequently, the communities have begun a lengthy judicial process of
denouncement to recover their territory, which has been characterized
by gross irregularities in favor of the palm tree agroindustry.
Replicas in the South
Something similar is occurring in the Tumaco region (in southern
Colombia, on the border with Ecuador). The communities have also
suffered forced displacement and threats, and in this context the
companies or the state itself have proposed that community leaders can
stay on their land if they become “rural sector business leaders.” In
other words, they are forced into the middle of productive alliances or
chains with businesses leaders from the palm-growing industry. In this
way, land that was previously rainforest is becoming palm tree
monoculture, thus dispossessing black communities of their culture and
territory while destroying some of the most biologically diverse areas
in the world.
Last June, President Uribe addressed Fedepalma's congress, convoked at
Villavicencio, saying the following: “I strongly request [the Secretary
of Agriculture] to lock up the business community of Tumaco together
with our Afro-descendent compatriots and not let them leave the room,
keep them there untill they come to an agreement. There is no other
choice…. Lock them up and propose that they … that the state … come to
an agreement about the use of land, and the government will supply
venture capital. And give them a deadline and tell them: Gentleman, we
are in session, and we will not leave here until we have an agreement …
because we must recognize the good and the bad. Here in Meta and in
Casanare and with what's beginning in Guaviare, we've had powerful palm
tree growth, but none in Tumaco. And Tumaco, with its highway, and a
little to the north, the Guapi area, El Charco has excellent conditions
but not one palm tree, just coca, which we need to eradicate….”
These declarations incited the wrath of Afro-Colombian communities, who
responded with force to the president of the Republic: “If palm oil,
Mr. President, is your pilot megaproject, it will not be in our ethnic
territories. Worse yet, if it were, it would bring with it grave
environmental, social, and cultural damages. This we can affirm based
on having lived with the palm tree monoculture from the late ‘70s to
the present, in other words, for more than 35 years, suffering all the
while the impacts of 20,000 hectares of a crop forced upon us ‘deep
inside this plantation, comrade,' which continues to violently expand
further into our collective territory.”1
With the addition of biodiesel proposals, business leaders from the
palm industry and their advocates now have more incentives to continue
growing. And yet, the history of the plantations continues to be
painful. They are stained with the blood and tears of black and
campesino communities from the Pacific, Magdalena Medio, and Caribbean
coast. It is the silent history of disappeared forests transformed into
plantations. It is the history of ancestral cultures transformed into a
palm-dependent proletariat. It is these voices demanding a halt to the
destruction called for biodiesel defenders.
Endnotes
Letter to the president of the Republic from ethnic territory
authorities and legal representatives of the Community Councils of
Black Communities from the ethnic territory Kurrulao (South Pacific
Colombia).
Translated for the Americas Program by Nick Henry, IRC.
Tatiana Roa Avendaño is a member of Censat Agua Viva and Amigos
de la Tierra/Colombia. This article was published on
www.biodiversidadla.org, an organization associated with the
Environment and Biodiversity Issue Area of IRC’s Americas Program,
found at www.americaspolicy.org.
For More Information
Defensoría del Pueblo. Resolución Defensorial. No. 39,
2005.
El Espectador . “Ley de tierras podría prestarse al lavado de
activos,” October 21, 2006.
Gestión del Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural – Incoder,
August 2006.
Salinas, Yamile. Los vericuetos de la palma aceitera. Abdala Friday,
Nov. 10, 2006.
Procuraduría General de la Nación. “Análisis de la
ejecución de la Reforma Agraria y la Gestión del
Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural – Incoder,” August 2006.
BiodiversidadLA
www.biodiversidadla.org
Censat Agua Viva
Centro Nacional de Salud, Ambiente y Trabajo
Bogotá, Colombia
www.censat.org
email: todos@censat.org
Fedepalma. www.fedepalma.org
Revista Semillas, www.semillas.org.co