Burma: Junta’s horribly misguided energy experiment

Biofuels have long been hailed as a solution in the fight against global warming and increasing scarcity of petroleum. But recently it is becoming increasingly clear that unless sufficient precautions are taken, biofuels can snatch food from the mouths of the poor and can be a human rights disaster.

Nowhere is this truer now than in Burma. In its typical brutal, heavy-handed fashion, the Burmese junta has combined forced labour, ham-fisted implementation and superstition in a disastrously misguided nationwide biofuel project that is creating yet more suffering for this desperate country.
There were unprecedented demonstrations in August and September 2007 from gasoline and diesel price hikes. Biodiesel made from oil squeezed from the jatropha seeds, the generals hoped, would replace Burma’s 40,000 barrels per day of petroleum imports and help the junta retain social stability in an economy on the verge of collapse.

The junta also has plans to export biodiesel, and the Burmese jatropha project has attracted unscrupulous investments from Thailand, Singapore and Britain.

Jatropha also reportedly has superstitious significance: jatropha’s name in Burmese, jet suu, is believed to help the regime annul the powers of jailed democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Burma’s military ruler, Senior General Than Shwe, has commanded that eight million acres _ an area the size of Belgium _ be planted with Jatropha Curcas trees within three years. Each state and division of Burma must grow 500,000 acres. In Karenni State, to meet this quota, every man, woman and child will need to plant 2,400 seedlings.

Biofuel by Decree, a report released today by seven community development organisations working in Burma, details the suffering caused by this programme.

Bangkok Post