8.2 Linking Bioeconomy Policy Strategies to Social Impacts
185
uses, and to a single buyer that could respond negatively to such market volatility
and either become bankrupt or move away. In other words, by design such contractfarming strategies undermined smallholders’ resilience instead of strengthening it. As
some have argued, such patterns are often promoted under the guise of “development” but, when failing to adequately pursue inclusiveness, may rather characterize
instances of maldevelopment (see Russo Lopes et al. 2021)
Table 8.2 compares biofuel strategies’ social outcomes in the three countries,
showing their differences and similarities.
8.2.3 Inferences: Bioeconomy Promotion as Botanical
Colonization for Attaining Control over Natural
Resources?
This analysis clarifies that the distributive outcomes and social impacts of bioeconomy projects depend on the specific strategies and policy frameworks adopted. In
Brazil, India, and Indonesia, despite the rural development rhetoric, biofuel policies
have, in reality, focused on quickly building domestic (renewable) energy supplies.
In the Brazilian and Indonesian cases, those policies have also aimed at creating
additional markets for their large vegetable oil production (soy and palm, respectively), thus helping raise their prices and profitability. As these supplies flow into
existing energy distribution and consumption structures, those biofuel policies have
left the inequality of access to energy in those countries mostly untouched. India
and Indonesia have pursued such bioenergy production with particular haste. Not
only did these countries adopt unrealistic targets, but they also promoted strategies
based on hype (jatropha’s “wonder crop” myth), without carefully devising production chains or sufficiently experimenting with it beforehand. Upon failure of these
non-edible feedstock crop experiments in all three countries, Brazil and Indonesia
have been able to fall back on their abundant supplies of edible oil. In contrast,
India, constrained in this regard, has remained without its much-wanted biodiesel
production.
These outcomes represent not only social sustainability issues—they are also
relevant to understanding the politics of biofuels and bioeconomy development. By
impacting actors unequally, outcomes have affected both their material capabilities
and their capacity to influence policy. In this sense, private agroindustries have been
the main winners in all three cases, together with the state. In India and Indonesia, as
shown by their missed targets, the state had hoped to gain much more in terms of fossil
fuel replacement and thus a more favorable energy situation. Still, it has gained further
de facto control over land resources from local communities—through what Scott
(2009, p. 10) refers to as the “botanical colonization” of landscapes, transforming
peripheral areas into “fully governed, fiscally fertile zone[s].” In Brazil, where there
are hardly any public agricultural lands, the state’s gains have been primarily in
the form of (limited) taxation on a booming agribusiness sector and geopolitical
185
uses, and to a single buyer that could respond negatively to such market volatility
and either become bankrupt or move away. In other words, by design such contractfarming strategies undermined smallholders’ resilience instead of strengthening it. As
some have argued, such patterns are often promoted under the guise of “development” but, when failing to adequately pursue inclusiveness, may rather characterize
instances of maldevelopment (see Russo Lopes et al. 2021)
Table 8.2 compares biofuel strategies’ social outcomes in the three countries,
showing their differences and similarities.
8.2.3 Inferences: Bioeconomy Promotion as Botanical
Colonization for Attaining Control over Natural
Resources?
This analysis clarifies that the distributive outcomes and social impacts of bioeconomy projects depend on the specific strategies and policy frameworks adopted. In
Brazil, India, and Indonesia, despite the rural development rhetoric, biofuel policies
have, in reality, focused on quickly building domestic (renewable) energy supplies.
In the Brazilian and Indonesian cases, those policies have also aimed at creating
additional markets for their large vegetable oil production (soy and palm, respectively), thus helping raise their prices and profitability. As these supplies flow into
existing energy distribution and consumption structures, those biofuel policies have
left the inequality of access to energy in those countries mostly untouched. India
and Indonesia have pursued such bioenergy production with particular haste. Not
only did these countries adopt unrealistic targets, but they also promoted strategies
based on hype (jatropha’s “wonder crop” myth), without carefully devising production chains or sufficiently experimenting with it beforehand. Upon failure of these
non-edible feedstock crop experiments in all three countries, Brazil and Indonesia
have been able to fall back on their abundant supplies of edible oil. In contrast,
India, constrained in this regard, has remained without its much-wanted biodiesel
production.
These outcomes represent not only social sustainability issues—they are also
relevant to understanding the politics of biofuels and bioeconomy development. By
impacting actors unequally, outcomes have affected both their material capabilities
and their capacity to influence policy. In this sense, private agroindustries have been
the main winners in all three cases, together with the state. In India and Indonesia, as
shown by their missed targets, the state had hoped to gain much more in terms of fossil
fuel replacement and thus a more favorable energy situation. Still, it has gained further
de facto control over land resources from local communities—through what Scott
(2009, p. 10) refers to as the “botanical colonization” of landscapes, transforming
peripheral areas into “fully governed, fiscally fertile zone[s].” In Brazil, where there
are hardly any public agricultural lands, the state’s gains have been primarily in
the form of (limited) taxation on a booming agribusiness sector and geopolitical