"Fueling human rights violations: Consequences of EU and Belgian biofuel policies in northern Peru", 23 September 2021

....This report has explored a case study that shows some of the environmental and social costs associated with the expansion of sugarcane-based ethanol investments in the Global South as a result of the EU’s policies on first-generation biofuels...

...[T]he reality has fallen short of expectations, and Peru’s biofuel revolution, particularly ethanol production in northern Coastal Peru, has been only moderately successful to date. Despite this, ethanol investments in the Chira Valley have been unfortunately successful in at least one thing: they have radically transformed local conditions concerning access to scarce resources such as land and water, which fits into larger international trends of dispossession and displacement.

...Ethanol production policies did not include sufficient consideration of the long-term social and environmental sustainability and safeguards of the operations they promoted. This was particularly visible, for instance, in the process by which Maple Ethanol was granted water rights in the Chira Valley; despite abundant evidence to the contrary, national authorities secured water supply for private companies to the detriment of local users and producers. Similarly, state ethanol promotion neglected existing rights on the ground, as well as social institutions of collective ownership that had traditionally mediated access to resources in the dry forests of the Chira Valley...

The expansion of biofuel investments was originally imagined in Peru as a way to modernize agriculture and expand the agricultural frontier. However, some commentators have questioned its economic efficiency by focusing on its profit distribution structure and employment-generation capacity...

In this context, EU and Belgian policies need to be modified to be sensitive to the larger implications of food-based first-generation biofuels. Their role in fostering a market expansion for energy sources with serious environmental and social costs should not be overlooked...