Speech by the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the International Conference on Biofuels — Brussels, 5 July 2007.

It gives me great pleasure to participate in the International Conference on Biofuels at the invitation of my friend Durão Barroso. This is the opportunity to discuss responses to the twofold challenge that the world faces today. How can we guarantee energy security without causing environmental imbalances? How can we reduce unsustainable patterns of consumption and, at the same time, meet aspirations in terms of economic well-being and development? I’m convinced that biofuels give us a historic opportunity to confront these dilemmas, allowing us to build the world of prosperity, solidarity and fairness that we all wish for.

There are lessons to be learned from the Brazilian experience – tested and approved over a period of 30 years – of researching, producing and consuming ethanol and biodiesel. We have managed to reduce our consumption of, and dependence on, imported fossil fuels by 40%. It is important to remember that Brazil is self-sufficient in oil. We have created more than 6 million direct and indirect jobs, including jobs for small farmers in economically depressed areas. There has been significant generation of income, avoiding an exodus from rural areas and reducing the anarchic growth of our cities.

All petrol in Brazil today contains 25% ethanol. More than 85% of the cars currently being manufactured in Brazil are flex-fuel, meaning they can run on petrol, ethanol, or any mix of the two. Our biofuels programmes have been accompanied by government actions in defence of biodiversity: combating deforestation and the illegal appropriation of land, as well as the creation of more than 20 million hectares of conservation units. Along with the use of land for sustainable timber harvesting, these measures have allowed the rate of deforestation – and, therefore, emissions of greenhouse gases – to fall by more than 50% in the last three years.

I am sure we can repeat these results in many poor and developing countries – above all in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean – and thereby make a great contribution to poverty reduction and environmental protection. At all the international events in which I participate, I hear that climate change has to be combated and that all of us must play our part in solving the problem. Since the start of the programme in Brazil, the use of carburant alcohol has cut carbon emissions into the atmosphere by 640 million tonnes.

Biofuels are a low-cost option of proven efficiency in the transition to an economy based on low carbon emissions. In reducing these emissions, biofuels remove the grave dilemma of choosing between the adoption of high-cost technologies on the one hand and a reduction in the rhythm of world growth on the other. This choice is especially dramatic for poor countries, which don’t have the resources to adopt expensive technology but, at the same time, have an urgent need to create jobs, wealth and income. By creating conditions for sustainable economic growth, biofuels contribute directly to the fight against hunger and extreme poverty.

Brazil’s experience shows it is incorrect to suppose there is an opposition between one kind of agriculture directed towards food production and another directed towards the production of energy. Hunger in my country has been reduced in the same period in which the use of biofuels has increased. In reality, sugarcane occupies less than 10% of Brazil’s cultivated land, which is to say less than 0.4% of our national territory. This area – and it’s important to say this – is very distant from Amazônia, a region not appropriate for the cultivation of sugarcane.
At this point I’d like to request the understanding of the interpreter in order to say something. If Amazônia were important for sugarcane cultivation, the Portuguese – who introduced the crop to Brazil so many centuries ago – would have started growing it there. Therefore, I would like once again to thank my two Portuguese colleagues here on this table, and their ancestors, for not having used Amazônia to produce either alcohol or sugar.

An interesting statistic is that in the state of São Paulo – which is the most important state in Brazil, the biggest producer of sugarcane in Brazil – the increase in sugarcane production has been accompanied by an increase in the production of crops and livestock in general. We all know there is such thing as food scarcity in the world: instead the poorest people lack of the income they need to guarantee access to food. The lack of income is directly linked to the hefty agricultural subsidies in the rich countries. We’re dealing with a distortion of international trade that threatens food production as well as the export of food surpluses, by poor countries.

Subsistence agriculture is abandoned, and what develops in its place is dependence on aid, or the consumption of subsidised products from more developed countries. It is these and other distortions, such as the difficulty of gaining access to rich countries’ agricultural markets, that we are determined to eliminate in the Doha Round negotiations.

The inclusion of biofuels among the energy sources used around the world will also help to eliminate another worrying imbalance: the fact that 20 countries produce energy for around 200 countries. With the adoption of biofuels, more than 100 countries will be able to produce energy, therefore making access to energy more democratic. We will be reducing the asymmetries and inequalities between consumer and producer countries, and preventing potential conflicts deriving from competition for finite energy resources.

Ladies and gentleman,

For all these reasons the solution lies in providing incentives for the establishment of an international market for ethanol and biodiesel. Governments therefore need to indicate clearly to the private sector that they have decided to make biofuels a key component of their energy and environmental agendas. We must not send out contradictory signals. The same governments that reiterate their commitment to sustainable development and to reducing the greenhouse effect must not create obstacles to prevent biofuels from becoming international commodities. They must not impose heavy taxes on imports, which they don’t apply to oil.

A market for biofuels must be created in a responsible and sustainable way. We are therefore developing the Brazilian Programme for the Certification of Biofuels, which will make it possible to show that the entire production chain for Brazilian biofuels respects environmental, social, and labour-related criteria – a requirement established in international norms and in Brazil’s legislation, and also demanded by society.

This is where the great strength of the Brazilian biofuels programmes lies – in the fact that they are part of an integrated strategy centred on the sustainable development of the country in economic, social and environmental terms. I hope I can count on the support of the international community in order to extend this initiative to the other producer countries.

As another part of our efforts to establish biofuels as one of the principal energy sources used around the world, we are working with our colleagues in the International Biofuels Forum – South Africa, China, the United States, India and the European Union – to create technical standards and norms with regard to ethanol and biodiesel.

At the same time, Brazil is sharing its experience with countries and regions interested in joining the biomass revolution. We have been placing special emphasis on cooperation with poor countries in Africa and Latin America.

To this end Brazil will stage an International Conference on Biofuels in July 2008. We will bring together the largest possible number of countries to debate every aspect of this issue. It isn’t by chance that we’ve chosen Rio de Janeiro as the host city. We are following up the work carried out at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, when the international community endorsed the principle of sustainable development a paradigm change in the treatment of environmental issues. I want next year’s conference to be a historical demonstration of our commitment to putting biofuels at the centre of our collective response to these great challenges of the twenty-first century.

This is the message I bring today. We have within our reach technical solutions for the issues of energy security, climate change and the elimination of poverty. What we don’t have is time to lose, faced as we are with a threat that grows bigger with every passing day.

I invite everyone to form a partnership based on solidarity in order to guarantee that humanity can prosper as united whole, without leaving anyone behind or mortgaging the future of the generations to come.

My friends,

I would like to finish by saying to all of you that we’re not choosing between food and energy – indeed the principal energy source we need is food, without which we can’t produce any other kind of energy. Second, it is important to look at biofuels not so much through the eyes of a European citizen but through the eyes of a citizen of the world. It’s necessary to look at the world map not only with the logic of the developed countries – where the conquests have already been made, where the economic issue has been resolved, and therefore, where importing oil at 60 or 70 dollars [a barrel] isn’t a problem. Look at biofuels with an eye on the map of Africa, of South America, and Latin America. Look at the Asian countries that, in first place, have land and sun, but aren’t able to plant [biofuels] because they don’t have financial resources and don’t have access to the necessary technology. Today there are more than 1 billion deprived human beings who aren’t able to consume the calories and the proteins necessary for their survival.

At the same time, look at the world of fossil fuel, imagining how many countries have oil, how many countries have the technology to drill for it at a depth of three of four thousand metres, or to build oil platforms that cost a billion dollars each. The majority certainly don’t.

Now, look at the world and see that everyone – from the poorest country on Earth, from the poorest living person on this planet – has the technology to dig a small hole, 30 centimetres deep, and plant an oil-producing plant that could provide the energy they couldn’t produce in the twentieth century.

We mustn’t look at the world with greed in our eyes: we must look with solidarity, with a desire to give a chance to those who didn’t have a chance in the twentieth century and can’t afford further losses in the twenty-first. It’s not compatible with our Christian soul, still less with our soul of solidarity, for the rich to become ever richer and the poor to carry on getting poorer.

Brazil wants to pursue this discussion in the most diplomatic, instructive and competent way possible. I want to thank Durão Barroso for this opportunity. Our entrepreneurs are here, our research institutes are here, our specialists will be available to travel to any part of the world to debate these issues on technical, scientific or economic grounds.

It is less likely that a policy devised through planning – through study, with agricultural zoning, deciding which areas should be occupied by which kind of agriculture, by which kind of oil-producing plant – will entail losses for the world. The only 'bad' thing that could happen is that African countries will be able achieve their independence and autonomy, when the richer countries have to buy biodiesel from them in order to de-pollute the planet. And we should always remind ourselves that the poor countries are not responsible for this pollution but are actually its victims.

I want to say to you that we Brazilians – the Brazilian government and society – will be willing to pursue the debates with the NGOs, we will be willing to pursue the debate with specialists from all around the world, we will be willing to pursue the debate with the governments, we will be willing to pursue the debate in the UN. We want to convince, and we want to be convinced.

What we cannot do is – in an irresponsible way, through a lack of creativity and a lack of daring – continue polluting the planet, jeopardising the future of the next generations.

Thank you very much.