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15 November, 2008
Representatives of up to 40 countries will attend the encounter, that will last a week in Sao Paulo, and is foreseen to have ministerial level. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will inaugurate it on Monday. Brazil is the biggest world exporter of ethanol and the second producer, behind United States. When the prices of the petroleum were skyhigh, some months ago, the country awaited a boom of its ethanol exports. Some of the markets that it has as ambition are that of the European Union, with big commitments of enlarging the biofuels matrix, and Japan that has to define the adoption of the mixture of ethanol to the gasoline. But with the crisis, those exports face an arduous competitor: the petroleum reached prices below the sixty dollars and the political impulse to adopt clean energy seems to fall. The debate on the impact that the biofuels production can have in that of the food or in the advance of the amazon deforestation also seemed to lose force . Brazil has denied such an influence assuring that the production of the sugarcane ethanol is not compatible in the AmazonÃa and that neither did it have an impact on the production of food that also increased significantly in the last years. “The ethanol was even accused of being responsible for problems as the hunger in the world and the climatic change”, but the conference will show that “the biofuels is the cleanest alternative energy source of the world”, affirmed André Amado, boss of the department of Energy of the Chancellery. A group of social, environmental and small producers organizations will organize a parallel encounter on biofuels to rebut the Brazilian government’s arguments. These will highlight the hard working conditions in the cane fields, where most accusations of slave working took place in the last years, besides environmental damages of the great industry of the ethanol.   Source: AFP Deje un comentario |
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