Action at World Biofuels Market, Brussels (& video)

14.3.08
Thurs­day morn­ing, 08.00. Activists make an attempt to block all 7 sets of entrance doors and 2 gates to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket held in Brus­sels this week. All but one set of doors suc­ceed­ed. The action end­ed after 3 hrs with three peo­ple arrest­ed, who were released after a few hours.

Action at World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket end­ed by police — 3 arrests

This morn­ing, activist group ‘Agro­fools’ closed down the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket by lock­ing closed with pad­locks and chains four sets of dou­ble doors and sand­wich­ing them­selves in between just before the offi­cial open­ing soon after 08:00. A bat­tle ensued between pro­test­ers and secu­ri­ty to lock the fifth set of doors.

Out­side the con­fer­ence cen­tre the gates were also locked by a chain and blocked by activist group of Rhythms of Resis­tance who then made their pres­ence felt with upbeat Sam­ba for near­ly two hours before being giv­en an ulti­ma­tum by police. The Sam­ba was played to a back­drop of three ban­ners with slo­gans like ‘Agro­fu­els are a Scam’ and ‘No Solu­tion to Oil Addic­tion’.

Mean­while secu­ri­ty forces inside the con­fer­ence cen­tre man­aged to re-open one door as guards and staff over­whelmed pro­test­ers in a com­ic ‘tug-o-war’. Del­e­gates were then allowed to enter while the oth­er doors remained blocked for a fur­ther hour. Between each set of dou­ble doors, a cou­ple of activists, dressed up as con­fer­ence del­e­gates, had locked them­selves in.

When the entrance was not effec­tive­ly blocked any­more, both groups were still in direct sight of par­tic­i­pants, out­side at the entrance or through the glass of the locked doors.

Activists tar­get­ed the World Bio­fu­el Mar­ket as a “bla­tent attempt to green­wash the oil indus­try”. The long list of cor­po­rate del­e­gates, and the texts issued by the World Bio­fu­el Mar­ket itself, clear­ly show that they enter the emerg­ing mar­ket of agro­fu­els not because they’ re wor­ried about cli­mate change or envi­ron­men­tal dam­age: agro­fu­els are just anoth­er cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to squeeze the last bits of mon­ey out of our oil depen­dan­cy and to win con­trol. The run for agro­fu­els is already caus­ing severe social and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age, espe­cial­ly in the South. The so-called 2d gen­er­a­tion agro­fu­els are often put for­ward as an alter­na­tive, a claims that lacks seri­ous sci­en­tif­ic back­ground.

The activists were soon either arrest­ed or sent away by Police after a thor­ough ID check. The 3 arrest­ed peo­ple were released at 12am.

PRESS RELEASE

ACTIVISTS PROTEST AT WORLD BIOFUELS MARKET
Brus­sels, 13 March 2008
EMBARGOED UNTIL March 13, 8:30
Today at 08.30 am, the action group ‘Agro­fools’ staged a protest the entrance to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket. Vis­i­tors to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket were met by activists, a group of inter­na­tion­al drum­mers, ban­ners, and fly­ers enti­tled “Agro­fu­els ? No Solu­tion for Oil Addic­tion”.
The human block­ade is a protest against the bla­tant pro­mo­tion of agro­fu­els by the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket and the cor­po­ra­tions tak­ing part in it. “Mas­sive expan­sion, reach­ing into many mil­lions of hectares, of mono­cul­ture plan­ta­tions will cause fur­ther dam­age to bio­di­ver­si­ty, human rights and liveli­hoods”, says activist Remy de Boer. “Agro­fu­els will exac­er­bate cli­mate change and will cer­tain­ly not help to com­bat it. It is immoral to keep pro­mot­ing the use of
agro­fu­els like the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket does”, he added.
The World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket describes itself on its web­site as a great place for busi­ness to ‘net­work’ with deci­sion mak­ers and “struc­tured to max­imise busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties”. Mean­while, agro­fu­els are being legit­imised by claims of envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits. That, how­ev­er, is a pure green­wash exer­cise. “The cor­po­ra­tions push for agro­fu­el pro­duc­tion, pre­tend­ing they care about the cli­mate. While in real­i­ty agro­fu­els will help them to ensure that our oil addic­tion con­tin­ues, that the car indus­try can keep sell­ing more and heav­ier cars, and that the unequal access to resources in the world remains unchanged”, says De Boer.
There have already been many dec­la­ra­tions and mora­to­ri­um calls from move­ments and organ­i­sa­tions from North and South denounc­ing new tar­gets for agro­fu­el use, such as the 10% tar­get by 2020 pro­posed by the EU. One such call by African organ­i­sa­tions states that “.. the real­i­ty is that the gold rush is firm­ly con­trolled by giant transna­tion­al com­pa­nies which are tak­ing over Africa’s land at an incred­i­ble pace, and are bring­ing about dis­as­trous socio-eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal impacts on our com­mu­ni­ties, food secu­ri­ty, forests and water resources”.
‘Sec­ond gen­er­a­tion’ agro­fu­els, like cel­lu­lose ethanol, are often said to deal with prob­lems such as com­pe­ti­tion for land for food pro­duc­tion and tar­gets are set, based on expec­ta­tions that these will become avail­able soon. But the large amounts of cel­lu­lose need­ed to pro­duce them can lead to the expan­sion of large scale mono­cul­ture (GM) tree plan­ta­tions, with all prob­lems involved. These plan­ta­tions have already invoked strong resis­tance from local com­mu­ni­ties. On March 4th this year, near­ly 900 women of La Via Campesina occu­pied Sto­ra Enso’s Taru­ma estate in Rosario do Sul munic­i­pal­i­ty, near the bor­der with Uruguay. They entered the land ‑of near­ly 2,100 hectares- and cut
euca­lyp­tus trees and plant­ed native trees instead. This action was respond­ed to by police forces with repres­sion and vio­lence. Over­all, the North must stop export­ing its over-con­sump­tion prob­lems to the South and begin to solve its own prob­lems. We need a strong reduc­tion of con­sump­tion of ener­gy use espe­cial­ly in indus­tri­alised coun­tries. We say no more roads, no more pro­mo­tion of indi­vid­ual motorised trans­port; but a cheap, sus­tain­able col­lec­tive trans­port sys­tem. The pro­duc­tion and use of food, feed and ener­gy should take place as local­ly or region­al­ly as pos­si­ble. Indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture
must be replaced by more small scale, diverse com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed agri­cul­ture.

For more infor­ma­tion:
Press con­tact: 0471/ 37.35.01 and 0495/ 31.76.46 [eng­lish and dutch] High res­o­lu­tion pic­tures can be sent to you on request. Send an email to
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RELEASE———————————————————————
Facts for the edi­tor:
* Defor­esta­tion and oth­er types of land use change is esti­mat­ed by the Stern Review (2006) to be respon­si­ble for 18% of all green­house gas emis­sions glob­al­ly. Peat drainage accounts for even more car­bon emis­sions than defor­esta­tion world­wide. Mono­cul­ture expan­sion is a lead­ing cause for both land use change and peat destruc­tion world­wide. Large amounts of fos­sil fuels are need­ed to pro­duce the fer­til­iz­ers, run­ning agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery, trans­port­ing feed­stocks and fuels, and refin­ing agro­fu­els. NOx emis­sions from fer­til­iz­er use are also a major green­house gas.
* The Euro­pean Union is already the largest importer of palm oil prod­ucts in the world and the Nether­lands is the main importer with­in the EU. Crude Palm Oil imports grew from 1.7 mil­lion tons (Mt) in 1995 to 5 Mt in 2007. The EU imports of soy meal from Argenti­na and Brazil com­bined added up to 24 Mt in 2007, in addi­tion to 14 Mt of soy from which oil is pro­duced in the EU. Use of soy oil as agro­fu­el will be anoth­er added val­ue to the prod­uct, which is like­ly to increase its pro­duc­tion.
* A col­lec­tion of calls for a mora­to­ri­um on tar­gets and incen­tives for agro­fu­el use and trade can be found on www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

Axion video of the suc­ces­ful block­ade of the world bio­fu­els mar­ket