BRAZIL: Amazon Fruit Gatherers Face Biofuel Dilemma

The babacu, an abundant native palm tree in the eastern Amazon and in the north and northeast of Brazil, has great potential for the production of “biodiesel” and biomass fuel, but the women who make their living from gathering its fruit fear the loss of their traditional source of income.

“Experience leads us to predict new difficulties in access to the babacu (Orbignya phalerata martins),” Eunice da Conceicao Costa told Tierramerica. She is one of the coordinators of the Interstate Movement of Babacu Coconut Breaker, in Imperatriz, a municipality in the southwest of Maranhao state.
These difficulties have their roots in the agrarian process that Maranhao has undergone since 1969, when the Land Act was passed that drove the formalisation of property ownership and the private appropriation of extensive areas of public lands. Fences multiplied, cutting off sustainable fruit gathering activities, and the forests were replaced by pastures and fields.

The Movement is fighting for a national law — local laws already exist in some municipalities — that ensures free access for the babacu gatherers and halts destruction of this natural resource that is indispensable for the local economy.

An estimated 400,000 people, nearly all women, make their living from the oil produced by the babacu coconut, and other products from the babacu used as food, in construction and in making artisanal crafts.

The fever has arrived here for agricultural-based fuels, which are less polluting than petroleum-based fuels. “Biodiesel” demands industrial scale and mechanised production, and could quash the traditional local practices.

“It is a threat for us; they want to take the babacu away from us,” says Maria Adelina Chagas, general coordinator of the Movement, which is organised in the states of Maranhao, Para, Piaui and Tocantins.

IPS