Action Aid, Debating Biofuels

Action Aid are organizing a debate on Biofuels on February 16th, London.

See their website for further details:

http://www.actionaid.org.uk/102260/join_the_big_biofuel_debate.html

Debating biofuels influence on food security is vital as one billion people in our world go hungry. In parts of India, women’s knowledge and traditional farming practice, and with it, their position in the village as well as traditional nutritious foods at the household level are all undermined by biofuels. These experiences of cultivating biofuels are indicating gradual erosion of gender (and as a consequent) children rights and the violation of the Right to Foods.

Many of the women who were cultivating biofuels asserted that ‘we want to grow food’, and growing food served as a channel to express a way out of the biofuels impasse and regain power at the grass roots. The simple yet penetrating adage of ‘We want to grow food’ presents an inconvenient question: how does biofuels fit with women’s desires to grow food? And how are biofuels policies morally constructed and judged in the knowing that biofuels, in many cases, undermines universal human rights and environmental sustainability? Martin Luther King once said ‘an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’. Perhaps this will help us find meaning and steer our understanding in how we view biofuels?

It is a pity that adivasi women perspectives will not be at the debate, as it is the suffering of women and children in the developing world that matters most. The women farmers’ experience is grounded in the reality of cultivating biofuels and I hope such experiences shape the direction of the debate in London. I look forward to the debate.

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