8.2 Linking Bioeconomy Policy Strategies to Social Impacts
183
lands, trying to incorporate those lands and the rural poor thereon into an integrated
formal economy. For that, governments have used regulatory and economic instruments to assign a protagonist role to the private sector. Conventional regulatory
instruments have included: (i) technical standardization and licensing to commercialize biofuels in the country (frequently with standards that match those in the US
or the EU, to allow for exports); (ii) blending mandates, obliging consumption and
creating a captive market that shields producers from the competition with (often
subsidized) oil products; and (iii) in the cases of India and Indonesia, where land
is more often leased than purchased, facilitated conditions for private land investments and feedstock plantations. These instruments have been complemented by
economic incentives such as tax cuts and offers of subsidized credit. In tandem,
economic burdens have been systematically allocated to state actors, particularly to
public banks and state-controlled oil companies.
Policies in all three countries have increased private agroindustries’ access to
land and water for feedstock cultivation while usually reducing that of customary
land users, indigenous peoples, and local rural communities. This access reduction
is either due to a clear transfer of control or to collateral impacts from agroindustrial
activity in the area, such as soil and water pollution from chemical inputs or wastes
(e.g., sugarcane wastewater, palm oil mill effluents). Meanwhile, despite contexts
of energy poverty and its occasional use as an argument to help legitimize biofuel
policies, these policies have been aimed primarily at urban consumers who already
had access to fuel. Thus, rural development has mostly meant job and income creation
as a co-benefit of increasing domestic (renewable) energy supplies. In this process,
traditional food sources may disappear, but such incomes would improve access to
food. The issues with this strategy, however, are many.
An apparent problem is trying to promote rural development by simply expanding
corporate-controlled industrial plantations and the jobs they create. While employment is essential, one must look at: (i) the quality and in particular the work conditions in those jobs; (ii) the livelihoods, self-employment, and traditional forms of
subsistence that plantation expansion may eliminate; and (iii) the inherent limitations of this dominant approach when it comes to creating structural change and
reducing inequality. Labor conditions for the rural poor in sugarcane plantations
are harsh (when not outright exploitative) in all three countries. The main difference is that in Brazil they tend to be wage laborers, while in India they are mostly
smallholders or workers employed on an informal contractual basis. If Asian smallholders have retained some autonomy and benefit from government-set minimum
prices, in Brazil migrant workers are squeezed through the agroindustry’s efficiency
optimization policies, which have made them work three times harder (in terms of
sugarcane tons harvested per individual) than plantation slaves did in the past (Novaes
2007). In all three countries, feedstock plantations have also expanded over mixed
farming and other rural livelihoods, even though these generally employ a much
larger number of people per area (see IAASTD 2009; HLPE 2013). The promotion
of feedstock cultivation has exploited a situation of poverty where there are hardly
any alternatives for local economic development or support to improve traditional
livelihoods’ economic viability. Rural dwellers have most often found themselves
183
lands, trying to incorporate those lands and the rural poor thereon into an integrated
formal economy. For that, governments have used regulatory and economic instruments to assign a protagonist role to the private sector. Conventional regulatory
instruments have included: (i) technical standardization and licensing to commercialize biofuels in the country (frequently with standards that match those in the US
or the EU, to allow for exports); (ii) blending mandates, obliging consumption and
creating a captive market that shields producers from the competition with (often
subsidized) oil products; and (iii) in the cases of India and Indonesia, where land
is more often leased than purchased, facilitated conditions for private land investments and feedstock plantations. These instruments have been complemented by
economic incentives such as tax cuts and offers of subsidized credit. In tandem,
economic burdens have been systematically allocated to state actors, particularly to
public banks and state-controlled oil companies.
Policies in all three countries have increased private agroindustries’ access to
land and water for feedstock cultivation while usually reducing that of customary
land users, indigenous peoples, and local rural communities. This access reduction
is either due to a clear transfer of control or to collateral impacts from agroindustrial
activity in the area, such as soil and water pollution from chemical inputs or wastes
(e.g., sugarcane wastewater, palm oil mill effluents). Meanwhile, despite contexts
of energy poverty and its occasional use as an argument to help legitimize biofuel
policies, these policies have been aimed primarily at urban consumers who already
had access to fuel. Thus, rural development has mostly meant job and income creation
as a co-benefit of increasing domestic (renewable) energy supplies. In this process,
traditional food sources may disappear, but such incomes would improve access to
food. The issues with this strategy, however, are many.
An apparent problem is trying to promote rural development by simply expanding
corporate-controlled industrial plantations and the jobs they create. While employment is essential, one must look at: (i) the quality and in particular the work conditions in those jobs; (ii) the livelihoods, self-employment, and traditional forms of
subsistence that plantation expansion may eliminate; and (iii) the inherent limitations of this dominant approach when it comes to creating structural change and
reducing inequality. Labor conditions for the rural poor in sugarcane plantations
are harsh (when not outright exploitative) in all three countries. The main difference is that in Brazil they tend to be wage laborers, while in India they are mostly
smallholders or workers employed on an informal contractual basis. If Asian smallholders have retained some autonomy and benefit from government-set minimum
prices, in Brazil migrant workers are squeezed through the agroindustry’s efficiency
optimization policies, which have made them work three times harder (in terms of
sugarcane tons harvested per individual) than plantation slaves did in the past (Novaes
2007). In all three countries, feedstock plantations have also expanded over mixed
farming and other rural livelihoods, even though these generally employ a much
larger number of people per area (see IAASTD 2009; HLPE 2013). The promotion
of feedstock cultivation has exploited a situation of poverty where there are hardly
any alternatives for local economic development or support to improve traditional
livelihoods’ economic viability. Rural dwellers have most often found themselves