Agrifuel – Clipping

Original here, Portuguese translation here. Although not related directly to the past few posts I have made (agriculture and biofuels in Brazil), it has a clore relation to my object of studies (agriculture in Brazil). Therefore, I am blogging.

Just for the title, “It is necessary to put a price on biodiversity”, it was already worth reading the article.

From that one little quote mr. Pavan Sukhdev already told us why the Kyoto Protocol works: because of the money generated from the carbon credit market. This is the key: a market was created and it is worth money to protect nature. Although I do agree that it is a lovely concept to protect nature and biodiversity, I also strongly believe that people need benefits to do certain things.

So, why don’t make the biodiversity valuable? For instance, if research can be developed from plants that we don’t even know they exist, then this should be worth something. If it is worth something, then it should be protected and taken care of. As simple as that.

This quote will stay in Portuguese. I tried to translate it but I am afraid that an English version from the Portuguese translation made from French will be too far from the original quote:

Não se trata de frear o desenvolvimento a que diversos países aspiram, mas devemos ter consciência das conseqüências de certas opções. O custo do desmatamento não se limita às perdas de receitas da exploração florestal. Acrescentando o desaparecimento dos recursos genéticos explorados pela medicina e o papel crucial que a floresta tem na regulação do clima, na distribuição de água, na prevenção das inundações e da erosão… o custo chega a centenas de bilhões de dólares. É preciso dar um preço à natureza para poder protegê-la.

The author, Steven Koonin, points out several important issues for developing the biofuels and making them a globally viable solution to the energy issue. (As he well observes at the footnote, “Brazil is a singular counterexample, where favorable agricultural conditions and a flexible processing infrastructure allow the majority of the country’s road transport to be powered economically with cane-derived ethanol.”)

This is an important remark.

Since the 1970’s Brazil already estimated that only 2% of its soil would be necessary to grow enough ethanol for its entire car fleet. Nowadays, 45% of the cars in Brazil are running on ethanol and only 1% of the Brazilian lands have sugarcane fields.

Mr. Koonin’s one-page editorial is a fast, elegant way of showing today’s challenges for the biofuel industry. Since it can be accessed from any computer, I am also pasting it after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »