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Fishing and Logging Policies

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Eden, speaks with characteristic passion, as he did when he introduced his debate on the rainforest last October. In that debate I drew attention to the effects of forced labour in Brazil, where agricultural workers are becoming the slaves of the loggers and ranchers and unwitting agents of the destruction of the rainforest. As the noble Baroness rightly said, it is the local people who are so often the last to benefit from the riches that have been taken away. Today I would like to return to Brazil. I thank the noble Baroness for allowing me to speak in the same context about the thriving sugar industry in the Amazon region. I will describe some of the human costs of Brazil’s otherwise acclaimed environmental and energy policies. I acknowledge the help of Anti-Slavery International and research carried out by the Churches in Brazil. By chance I was in sugar territory in Houston, Texas last month, staying in the rapidly expanding suburb of Sugar Land, where sugar refining has actually come to a halt. Vast sugar plantations are giving way to new apartment blocks, hotels and shopping malls. Producers in the US southern states face increasing competition from Latin America. By contrast, the sugar industry in Brazil is still booming on account of the demand for ethanol as a home-grown fuel and an alternative to petrol. Today, more than half the country’s total sugar harvest ends up in the nation’s 30,000 bioethanol petrol pumps. Four out of five new cars now sold in Brazil are equipped to use ethanol, which can cost one-third less than petrol per litre. Oil would have to fall back to $35 a barrel to compete with ethanol in Brazil. Thanks to advances in engine design, several manufacturers have adapted new cars to ““flex-fuel”” models, which can alternate between gasoline, pure ethanol or a mixture of both. These accounted for more than 75 per cent of all the new cars sold in one recent month. President Lula is said to be delighted with the energy revolution which is saving Brazil billions in imports of fossil fuel. European Union member states, committed to reducing their carbon emissions by 8 per cent by 2012, are extremely interested in Brazil’s experiment since ethanol is free of harmful pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and emits much less carbon dioxide than conventional fuels. Europe currently lacks the capacity to produce sugar-based ethanol in the quantities that makes biofuel affordable in Brazil and before long we could be major importers. President Bush is now trying to drop import tax on ethanol. Japan is considering a deal to import up to 6 billion litres. With the ever-rising demand for ethanol, the expansion of the industry, both in the scale of sugar plantations and in the rate of production, has become increasingly aggressive. As new plantations have grown, new distilleries and sugar plants have been installed and there has been a high demand for jobs for migrants. More than 70 new mills are due to open over the next six years. While this boom has raised employment levels, the Brazilian Churches’ research shows that such pressure on production has been harmful to the health of sugar cane workers. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, sugar cane production had already risen from 50 to 80 tonnes per hectare. In the 1960s, the average production per worker was three tonnes of sugar cane per day; today it has quadrupled to 12 tonnes. That descends on the worker. Even a worker who cuts six tonnes has to walk four kilometres during the day. Having cut the stems off at ground level, he then has to stack them in one long row of sugar cane. The workers are exposed to full tropical sun while wearing heavy clothes to protect themselves against cuts. They suffer from extreme dehydration that causes painful cramps and convulsions. The ILO estimates that there are some 200,000 migrants employed under forced labour conditions in Brazil. Labour contractors tour the poor suburbs offering work at high wages in remote regions. When the workers arrive at their destination, they are already in debt for transportation, housing and food, so that, even after four months’ harvesting, it becomes difficult for them to repay the debts before they return home—let alone support their own families. According to the Pastoral Land Commission in Brazil, sugar cane is often grown on cleared barren land with the help of huge amounts of fertiliser and is protected with insecticides. The chemicals are washed into the rivers and the ground water. As a result, the drinking water gets polluted, directly poisoning the poorer local population who still use wells and wash in the local rivers. Where sugar cane is planted up to the water’s edge, sometimes encroaching on small farms, the chemicals also affect fish and seafood populations in the local rivers and mangrove swamps. The sugar barons often hold political and feudal positions that require their workers to submit to almost any conditions of labour. Illegal migrants, or clandestinos, have the worst deal of all, having no papers or benefits—nor even the right to receive them. While our Department for International Development cannot directly influence the policy of sugar producers in Brazil, surely our embassy can bring such issues to the attention of their government, so that the Churches at least know that there is international support for the rights of those migrant workers—remembering that, as consumers, we are putting pressure on them every day. Anti-Slavery believes that it is of the utmost importance that restrictions on companies are enforced to safeguard the care of workers, local populations, small private properties and the surrounding environment. Non-governmental organisations are rightly demanding a fairer and more sustainable rate of sugar production that respects the needs of both the workers and the local population, and balances those with the provision of cheaper, environmentally friendly fuel.