“The Dark Side of Biofuel”

By: Liz Umlas | Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Here is a scary example of an ostensibly green initiative - the growing of palm oil for biofuel in Colombia - having very perverse human rights effects.

Indeed, as one observer quoted in the article says, it is “the dark side of biofuel”.

Massacres and paramilitary land seizures behind the biofuel revolution
· Colombian farmers driven out as armed groups profit
· Lucrative ‘green’ crop less risky to grow than coca

Tuesday June 5, 2007
The Guardian

Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.

Surging demand for “green” fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia’s population of 3 million displaced people and adding to one of the world’s worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo…

Full article

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment