"Oxfam: Belgian biofuel policy violates human rights in Peru", 28 September 2021

The report, titled “Fueling human rights violations: Consequences of EU and Belgium’s biofuel policies in northern Peru,” focuses on Belgium’s investment in a sugarcane plantation in the north of Peru, from which it purchases biofuels.

According to Oxfam, the people living in the Chira River valley where the plantation is located are being deprived of their land, cut off from their water and saddled with air pollution as a result of the plantation’s activities.

“An area the size of Brussels is being burned to fuel European cars,” Oxfam reported...

In 2010, Belgium invested around €6.5 million in a sugarcane plantation in Peru that produces sugarcane ethanol, an alternative to fossil fuels...

“We cannot continue to disrupt ecosystems on the other side of the world to make Europe the first ‘green’ continent. Agrofuels can be harmful to the climate. Indeed, the production of a single liter of biofuel requires 2,500 liters of water, an ecological disaster. And it makes no sense to raze forests to produce fuel, because it will only cause more CO2 emissions than fossil fuels”...

According to the report, an American multinational company became involved in the region, as well, purchasing the land on which the Belgian-backed sugarcane factory is located, and on which many Peruvian people lived and worked as small-scale farmers...

“As a consequence, thousands of inhabitants of the region are asked to come to terms with a water shortage during the driest months of the year, just so that the sugar cane fields are not lacking in water”...

Oxfam says many residents told them they’ve suffered from lung diseases since the arrival of the sugarcane plantation.

The nonprofit also noted that promised employment opportunities for the local workforce haven’t materialised: only 0.3 percent of the local workforce works on the sugarcane plantations, and that the salaries and working conditions are poor...