Food Energy Nexus

Adivasi Struggle

A short and entertaining video depicting the adivasi struggle in India is well worth a view. The short music video focuses on land, resources and importantly adivasi way of life and being undermined by a range of developments. Although there is no footage of biofuels the broader concerns of displacement is captured well in this playful video.

The short video is based on a song entitled: We Will Not Leave Our Village

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M5aeMpzOLU

July 31, 2009 at 7:43 am 1 comment

Towards Food Sovereignty

An excellent publication has been published by IIED:

Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems.

This new chapter focuses on the need to transform agricultural research and is released this week to coincide with the CSD discussions on agriculture held in New York. It combines text, video clips, photos, audio recordings and animations in an online publication.

The publication builds and expands on themes addressed in the IAASTD report and more – situating arguments and discussions within the food sovereignty paradigm. It also addresses the politics of knowledge in the governance of food systems as well as notions of cognitive justice and equivalency between indigenous knowledge systems and western science.

You can download the chapter from the IIED website.

http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=G02493

May 16, 2009 at 7:40 am Leave a comment

Haramata and Biofuels

The Haramata (54) publication on drylands in Africa has a special focus on biofuels. Biofuels are investigated in some parts of Africa and a view point from India is also included in the journal.

The Haramata (54) can be downloaded from IIED’s website:

http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=12556IIED

April 27, 2009 at 7:38 am Leave a comment

Sir Bob Geldolf, Biofuels and Africa: false optimism in the social and economic impacts of biofuels?

Sir Bob Geldof believes biofuels will have a ‘positive impact on poverty-stricken communities’ in Africa. He will air his perspective at the World Biofuels Market, March 16th-18th (http://www.worldbiofuelsmarkets.com/). Recent research conducted through the food-energy nexus project, however, has highlighted that there are many actors in the complicated markets of biofuels that do not favor the poor.

The food and energy nexus research project in the Nalgonda District, Andhra Pradesh, India has indicated that the biofuels market deepens financial insecurity, threatens food security, and displaces poor people from their livelihoods and lands. Further still, biofuels plantations and their yields does not match with promise made by science or other advocates of agrofuels.

Sir Bob Geldolf at the Biofuels Market conference will be provided with a space to air his perspectives and that of business. But when will poverty-stricken communities get their opportunities to voice their perspectives on biofuels? Where are the documented deliberative and democratic process on the complex issues that surround biofuels, poverty and ethnicity?

It is imperative that the Biofuels Market conference and Sir Bob Geldolf explains a few things for example: How will biofuels improve the lives of the poor? What impact will biofuels have on the environment and the ways of life for marginalized communities? How will biofuels impact differentially on the bases of social-political-geographical contexts (gender, environments, class, race/caste etc)? How and who makes the decisions? And importantly, how will biofuels lead to long-term food and energy security?

A report and anthra (http://www.anthra.org/) video documenting the food and energy research project in Nalgonda will be available soon.

See this link for comments made by Sir Bob Geldolf on Biofuels: http://bioenergy.checkbiotech.org/news/bob_geldof_believes_biofuels_can_eradicate_poverty_africa

jasbersingh@gmail.com

February 26, 2009 at 12:40 pm Leave a comment