Church in the World

Bishops advise caution over ethanol deal

Brazil

A scheme by Presidents George Bush and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to expand Brazil's already booming ethanol industry should be treated with caution, the country's bishops have warned, saying that it could create a "new rural exodus" and "misery" for labourers.

A memorandum of understanding signed by both presidents during President Bush's tour of Latin America earlier this month aims to promote the use of ethanol to decrease the US's dependence on oil, create a global market for biofuels and create jobs in Brazil. Brazil is the world's foremost exporter of ethanol, made from sugar cane, and its large-scale landowners are profiting from growing interest and investments in ethanol, which powers eight in every 10 new Brazilian cars. President Lula has described Brazil's wealthy ethanol producers as "national and world heroes".

But Brazil's bishops said at a press conference last Thursday that the  Government must  study the social and environmental effects of increasing production. "Wherever cane goes, sugar plantations appear ... and where there are plantations there is rural exodus," said Archbishop Odilo Pedro Scherer, Archbishop of São Paulo. "[Then] new ghost towns will arise."

The vice-president of the bishops' conference, Bishop Antonio Celso de Queirós, said that the benefits of ethanol production were not felt by the farm labourers: "Where it begins, with cane-cutting, there is tremendous misery." Labourers work for landowners or sugar companies in harsh conditions. According to João Martinez da Cruz of the Christian charity Tearfund, "People who cut cane often work 10 or 12 hours a day in the scorching heat, even children, earning less than a dollar a day. No sanitation is provided, no medical care and no special clothing, though the leaves are very sharp. [Sugar cane production] generates jobs but there are all these negative implications, especially for children."