Introduction
Undoubtedly, the potential of land as an indispensable global resource for agricultural production is becoming the central focus of intensified competition. The bio-economy, the nature of which is explained below, in conjunction with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, has recently gained widespread attention as the world attempts to find alternative solutions to fossil fuels in the form of renewable energy and food production. Thus, the bio-economy and the SDGs focus inter alia on food and non-food crops such as sugar cane, palm oil, jatropha and soybeans. This focus continues to stimulate, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the practice of land-grabbing by foreign governments, companies and multinational financial institutions. Generally, land-grabbing contracts are non-transparent and exclusionary and this has raised significant issues of governance and land rights (Ashukem 2016a, 2019c, 2019d; Cotula 2012). The Land Matrix (n.d.) public database on land deals has detailed statistics of the scale of land-grabbing.
The availability of arable agricultural land remains a necessary and indispensable prerequisite for the production of food and non-food crops. Globally, more than US$2 trillion-worth of agricultural, forestry, food and bioenergy-based products were exported from the south to the north in 2014, leading to an increase from 10 to 13% of world trade in 2007 (El-Chichakli and Von Braun 2016; FAO 2017). Irrespective of the increasing indications that the bio-economy and the SDGs could be relevant to addressing sustainability concerns (Dubois and San Juan 2016; Mills 2015), they also help to contribute to motivating the demand, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, for land where it is perceived to be abundant, underutilised, unoccupied and cheap (Borras and Franco 2012; Daniel 2011; Deininger 2011; Kachika 2010; Robertson and Andersen 2010). While a few studies have investigated the land requirements for the increased consumption of biofuels and the realisation of the SDG targets, none exist that focus on the increasingly contributory role of the bio-economy and the SDGs in the land-grabbing phenomenon. This article argues that the bio-economy and the SDGs motivate land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa. Various examples of the acquisition of, and investment in, land for the production of food crops and non-food crops in some sub-Saharan African countries will be used to substantiate this assertion. Thus, the article relates the land-grabbing agenda to the global desire for a green economy, which has arguably led to an unprecedented and continuous demand for arable land.
It is important to note that this is not an empirical study, instead its argument relies on relevant existing literature on land-grabbing, the SDG and the bio-economy. This article begins by giving a brief contextual background to the notion of the bio-economy. It then briefly discusses the SDGs. A link is then made between the bio-economy and the relevant SDGs while highlighting the important role of the bio-economy in achieving the SDG targets. There follows a discussion of the interplay between the bio-economy, the SDGs and land-grabbing in order to illustrate how the bio-economy and SDGs help to fuel land-grabbing activities in sub-Saharan Africa. The final section concludes.
The bio-economy: contextual background
There is no universally agreed definition of the bio-economy as this is surrounded by several conflicting conceptions (Bauer 2018; Bugge, Hansen, and Klitkou 2016; Carus 2017; Giampietro 2019; McCormick and Kautto 2013; Vivien et al. 2019). However, most existing policy strategies relating to the bio-economy provide a broad understanding of the term, which includes food and non-food crops and forestry products. For present purposes, the definition by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is considered sufficient:
Knowledge-based production and utilization of biological resources, biological processes and principles to sustainably provide goods and services across all economic sectors. (Dubois and San Juan 2016, 1)
In 2012, the European Commission adopted a policy which proposed a comprehensive agenda that is vital and relevant to address the environmental, energy and food supply challenges that Europe is facing (European Commission 2012; Patermann and Aguilar 2018). Such responsive measures include promoting the reduction of the dependence on the use of non-renewable natural resources, promoting the sustainable production of renewable resources from land-based and water-based resources, and promoting their conversion into food, feed, fibre, bio-based products and bio-energy. Relatedly, in 2015 the first Global Bio-economy Summit was held in Berlin, Germany, attesting to the acceleration of the global initiatives of the bio-economy agenda, as it paved the way for the advancing of the bio-economy, which is now actively pursued in over 50 countries worldwide (Von Braun et al. 2017).
It must be borne in mind that the bio-economy is closely linked to the concept of the ‘green economy’ and the Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE),1 a concern shared by the SDGs in terms of renewables and the global climate change regime2 (United Nations 2015). Presumably, the promotion of the green economy is what motivates foreign investors such as multinational corporations, states and hedge funds to invest in natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa in order to propagate their energy industries, while also driving the green economy debate further. The current exploitation and use of biological and other natural resources is far removed from a knowledge-based and sustainable bio-economy. The effects of current practices on water, soils and climate could seriously threaten the future of the earth systems and therefore of humankind. It must also be noted that the EU’s dependence on biomass imports has continued to grow such that the bio-economy agenda has expanded without a parallel decrease in the reliance on fossil fuels and the bio-based biofuel crops that are relevant for use in the bio-economy industry (Aguilar, Bochereau, and Matthiessen 2009).
The heavy dependence on the production of food and non-food crops concerns not only non-renewable raw materials but also biomass-based raw materials and products such as timber. Related to this are large amounts of embodied natural resources such as land and water, which are crucially vital to the production of these food and non-food crops.
The SDGs
Before the expiry of the term of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs 2000–2015), there was the need and urgent concern to establish yet another set of global aspirations to replace them. The SDGs are therefore built upon, and complement the defunct MDGs that failed to address endemic global challenges during their lifespan. Admittedly, if any (global) level of commitment is needed to achieve the SDGs and if the past experience with the MDGs is anything to go by, the SDGs could certainly achieve a degree of success with respect to their socioeconomic oriented goals and targets. This much is self-evident from the types of goals and targets the SDGs seek to achieve by 2030. The SDGs differ from the MDGs at least in the sense that while the MDGs galvanised efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest, the SDG seek to promote a panacea to global contemporary challenges and extend their reach to accommodate developed countries as well, unlike the MDGs which only applied to least developed countries (LDCs). Also, the MDGs only promoted environmental sustainability, while the SDGs propel further the overarching notion of sustainable development – as evident from their nomenclature and a central theme running through them. The Rio+20 summit of 2012 provided the appropriate platform for the preparatory work on the adoption of the SDGs, which are to be used by the international community as a set of global reference points to promote and ensure sustainable development for the next 15 years (Kotze 2018; Sachs 2012). The SDGs constitute an integral part of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 70/1 (United Nations 2015). This non-binding document was adopted by 193 member states of the UN and contains 17 broad but interdependent goals with a total of 169 separate targets and 304 indicators. These goals are for the 15 years up to 2030. It is beyond the scope of this article to enumerate all of these goals, targets and indicators. A careful reading of the SDGs reveals that the goals and targets relate to one another such that they constitute a network of useful relationships and interconnectivity (Le Blanc 2015; Long 2018; McIntyre 2018). They cover the three competing and overarching pillars of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental), and for this reason they could help to propel the global economy along a sustainable trajectory within the specified time frame (by 2030). For this reason, they could help to transform our world and could achieve more in terms of sustainability than their predecessors. This is possible because they appear to be more integrated than the MDGs and as such could help facilitate and foster policy integration across diverse sectors (Le Blanc 2015). The development of the new set of goals has been perceived to be an ambitious challenge insofar as they cover a much broader range of issues than the MDGs (Le Blanc 2015).
Nonetheless, it has been submitted that while a third of the 169 targets appear to be well defined and consistent with the latest scientific evidence, 54% are more specific, and 17% are weak (Adelman 2018). Perhaps it is because 17% of them are weak that the SDGs have been heavily criticised for promoting a weak, anthropocentric form of sustainable development that ignores ecological reality and continues to prioritise economic growth over social justice and environmental protection (Adelman 2018; Kotze 2018; Swain 2018). However, some of the goals and the targets of the SDGs provide a link with the bio-economy. This link is examined below.
The bio-economy and the SDGs
The bio-economy provides valuable pathways to achieve a number of the goals and targets of the SDGs. This is predicated on the assumption that the visions, aims and objectives of the bio-economy are primarily concerned with sustainability (Bugge, Hansen, and Klitkou 2016), which suggests a closer relationship between the bio-economy and the SDGs. Relatedly, the pursuit of the bio-economy has been considered to be central to the prospect of achieving the SDGs (Anand 2016; Heimann 2019), and this further demonstrates the link between them. The bio-economy plays a key role in the transition to a more circular, renewable and resource-efficient society by 2030. This means that a holistic and cross-sectoral approach to foster bio-based resources such as those epitomised by the bio-economy, is required in any attempt to achieve food security, combat climate change through meeting renewable energy targets and accelerate the SDGs’ progress. It has been submitted that the bio-economy is at the centre of all the global sustainable development strategies, as attempts to bring it into being will significantly contribute to the realisation of many of the SDGs (Anand 2016; Biobased Industries Consortium 2018). Obviously the strategy is to promote the use of renewable energy, and replace the use of fossil fuel by supplying a growing world population with renewable and clean energy – a goal the SDGs seek to achieve. However, the transformation from fossil fuel to a sustainable bio-economy in the form of renewable energy is characterised not only by economic, ecological and social opportunities but also by risks (El-Chichakli and Von Braun 2016; NEB-AGRO n.d.). The potentials and challenges of the sustainable bio-economy have been well demonstrated by the German Environment Agency (UBA) project, which tried to reconcile the bio-economy and the requirements of the SDGs. This project developed the necessary requirements for a sustainable, resource-efficient bio-economy in conjunction with recommendations that could prioritise policy measures for the bio-economy strategies when attempting to implement certain SDGs and targets. It has been reported that the project was premised on an investigation of the debates on bio-economy policy in order to improve a sustainable orientation of the implementation of the bio-economic policies. It has also been reported that more than 40 nations propose to boost their bio-economies, and have adopted the bio-economy strategies as part of their economic innovation agendas (El-Chichakli and Von Braun 2016; NEB-AGRO n.d.). In consideration of the fact that the agricultural, forestry and health sectors, among others, are central to half of the SDGs, they appear seemingly important and useful in the bio-economy industries to help curb, enhance and sustain food, energy and health concerns, at least for a considerable length of time. In doing so the attempt to transition to a bio-economy is contributing to the realisation of some of the SDGs.
In the light of the above, it is possible that the development of the bio-economy could make a significant contribution to addressing the global challenges currently confronting humanity (Heimann 2019), such as those relating to food and energy security and land tenure security. It might have a positive transformative impact with respect to the achievement of the SDGs by addressing the challenges related to the growing world population and the demands for higher living standards, which are leading to the increased demand for food, animal feed, fibres, housing materials, water, energy, and health services, among other things. Six of the SDGs are linked to the bio-economy and arguably require the bio-economy innovative strategies to be realistically achieved (Von Braun et al. 2017). For example, while SDG Goal 1 relates to the global commitment to end poverty in all its forms by 2030, SDG Goal 2 addresses the need to promote sustainable agriculture, which is vital to fight hunger, thereby achieving food security, and improving nutrition. Thus, in order to achieve Goals 1 and 2 of the SDGs it is necessary to understand not only rural poverty and how to alleviate it, but also the relationship between sustainable agriculture and the environmental crisis (Anand 2016). Coincidentally, innovations in the bio-economy that seek to promote sustainable agriculture could address this concern. It follows therefore that through the adoption of the technological and biological approaches the bio-economy might be able to address the issue of food security and thus realise Goals 1 and 2 of the SDGs. This is because the bio-economy seemingly provides the reliable food supply required to meet the food needs of the increasing world population (Anand 2016). Given that the world food system is unsustainable (NEB-AGRO, n.d.), this concern invariably requires the making of unprecedented efforts in order to produce commensurate and sufficient foodstuffs.
In terms of renewable energy, Goals 7, 12 and 13 further highlight the relation between the bio-economy and the SDGs. In terms of these goals, the various targets on renewables are clear:
By 2030, to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services
By 2030, to increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix
By 2030, to double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency
By 2030, to enhance international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced and cleaner fossil-fuel technology, and promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology
By 2030, to expand infrastructure and upgrade technology for the supply of modern and sustainable energy services for all in developing countries, in particular LDCs, small island developing states, and landlocked developing countries, in accordance with their respective programmes of support.
Possibly, sustainable bio-economy could approximate means to achieve sustainability, which is the goal of the SDGs, particularly as more than half of the 17 SDG targets are directly related to the bio-economy (Anand 2016). The bio-economy could contribute to the effective realisation of SDG 7 on access to renewable energy services, particularly as the increase in the production of biofuels anticipated by the SDGs, marks the beginning of converting the liquid fuel market into biomass for use in the bio-economy (Von Braun et al. 2017). Even the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (United Nations 2015) lent support to investment in sustainable development projects, such as those promoting a sustainable bio-economy, as a potentially viable approach to address the energy crisis.3 Having established the link between the bio-economy and the SDGs, it is important to understand how they contribute to facilitating land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa. The next section of this article examines this.
The interplay between the bio-economy, the SDGs and land-grabbing
Although the bio-economy and the SDGs could be relevant in addressing the world’s food and energy challenges, at the same time, they have the potential to contribute negatively to another problem of the 21st century, namely land-grabbing, which has been defined as:
The acquisition of vast portions of land, often through non-transparent and exclusionary land acquisition deals whether purchased or leased that negatively impact on the rights and interests of local communities and affected stakeholders. Such land deals are usually concluded between a foreign investor, which can either be a private company or a foreign government or a financial institution, and the government of a host country, and are often directed towards the eventual production of food crops and increasingly biofuels. This practice can lead to the usurpation of the rights of ownership and use of land of local communities and it can negatively impact on a whole range of social, economic and environmental and related rights and interests. It is this usurpation of rights (both of ownership and of use) that is termed land grabbing. (Ashukem 2016b, 37)
The above definition clearly highlights the interrelationship and connectivity between land-grabbing, the bio-economy and the SDGs. This relationship stems from the global desire to address the food and energy crises, which is one of the underlying objectives of both the bio-economy and the SDGs. Land plays and will forever play a central and indispensable role in this relationship, since it is vital for the production of these food and non-food crops. Thus the bio-economy, in conjunction with the unremitting desire to attain the objectives of the SDGs, further augments pressure on land use in sub-Saharan Africa. It has been reported that local communities there have been forced from their lands by national governments in favour of large-scale agricultural investment meant for the production of food crops and biofuels crops (Borras and Franco 2010; Daniel 2011; Daniel and Mittal 2009; NAPE 2012). Such investments have increasingly impacted on local communities’ right to land as well as their means of livelihood (De Schutter 2011). As mentioned above, the bio-economy focuses inter alia on increasing the productivity of bio-based primary sectors such as forestry and non-food crops through biotechnological processes. On the other hand, the SDGs equally rely on these primary materials to meet the increasing global demand for renewable energy. This means that without foreign investment in agricultural production (in the guise of land-grabbing), it might be practically impossible to meet the food and dietary requirements of the increasing world population to curb hunger and end poverty (SDG 1). It could also mean that less and less biofuel material could be produced, which could be a significant drawback to the transition to renewable energy envisaged in the SDGs.
Generally, natural resources such as bio-based resources and land form the basis for all human activities on earth. The fact that all raw materials are dependent on land suggests that their extraction further increases pressure on land use. The limited amount of bio-productive land existing in Europe increases pressure on land-use through land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa, to support the objectives of the bio-economy and the SDGs by more extraction of natural resources. For example, the bio-economy exerts pressure on land-use for the production of non-food crops and biomass products that are relevant for the bio-economy industry. Conversely, the SDGs increase pressure on land-use for the production of similar products as well as food crops in order to address the food and energy deficiencies by 2030. It has been reported that the need to reduce the global reliance on fossil fuels is motivating by far the most pressing demand for land in the EU: ‘in 2010, around 28.2 million hectares of agricultural land were appropriated around the world for the production of non-food products consumed across the EU' which accounts for over 18% of agricultural land (Friends of the Earth [FoE] Europe 2016, 6). It is within this context that this article analyses the contributory role of the bio-economy and the SDGs in fostering land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa. This analysis is performed from the perspective of the acquisition of vast portions of land in sub-Saharan African through foreign investment in agriculture for the production of food and non-food crops.
Food crops
Undeniably, most sub-Saharan African countries are agricultural-based economies. The fact that the bio-economy is concerned with investment in the production of primary raw materials (Komen 2016), means that the revitalisation of the agricultural sector through biotechnological approaches and processes appears to be yet another advantage that could help to provide and ensure sustainable food security. Incontrovertibly, this has a direct negative impact on land rights in sub-Saharan Africa, especially given the misconception that potential arable agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa is empty, unoccupied, marginal, unproductive and cheap (Borras and Franco 2012; Daniel 2011; Deininger 2011; Kachika 2010; Robertson and Andersen 2010), and thus readily available. This old colonial misconception is being revived to justify the global phenomenon of land-grabbing by transnational businesses or foreign governments, and forced expropriation by national governments from local communities and leased to these investors. Instead of advocating a halt to land-grabbing practices, the bio-economy and the SDGs are helping to fuel it through measures that prioritise the demand for land. By prioritising market demand for land and its resources over environmental health and social well-being, for example, the bio-economy and the SDGs appears to ignore completely the need to reduce high levels of consumption, which are instrumental in depleting natural resources, including land (Mills 2015).
The attempt to end extreme poverty by 2030 expressed in Goal 1 of the SDGs, in conjunction with the use of technological processes to improve the production of food, suggests that the bio-economy and the SDGs have the potential to deprive local communities in sub-Saharan Africa of their land through land grabbing in order to meet these goals. A UN report clearly indicated that approximately one in every nine persons in the world suffers from malnutrition. This means that in order to address the food security concerns of the projected world population, which is due to increase from 8.5 billion in 2030 to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2015), the bio-economy and the SDGs appear to be the platforms needed to address this concern. But vast portions of land would have to be acquired for this purpose.
This much could be evident from a report that indicates that an additional 120 million hectares of arable farmland would be needed to produce more food crops to feed the world growing population by 2030 (De Schutter 2011; FAO 2015). Coincidentally, Goal 2 of the SDGs suggests that any attempt to meet this target by 2030 would require the acquisition of potential arable land. A World Bank Report confirms this hypothesis and indicates unequivocally that two-thirds of the much-needed land would have to must come from Africa, because ‘the African Guinea Savannah is one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world’ (World Bank 2009, 2). Evidently sub-Saharan Africa would serve and continue to serve for an undetermined period as an appropriate area for the production of the much-needed food crops which, as earlier mentioned, are required to meet the fast-growing population, which is projected to increase to 9 billion by 2050 (Hall 2011; The World Bank 2009).
Although the attempt to attain one of the goals of the SDGs is commendable in itself, pursuing this objective also has negative impacts when it deprives people of their land rights through land-grabbing. This negative impact is currently being overlooked to the extent that the practice could mostly likely increase in the future until the projected target of Goal 2 of the SDGs is achieved. Currently, the statistics on the acquisition of arable agricultural land through land-grabbing for the production inter alia of food crops in most sub-Saharan African countries are alarming. These include: 67% of farmland in Liberia, 15% in Sierra Leone, 10% in Ethiopia, 6% in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 8% in Gabon, 11% in Guinea and 6% in Mozambique (Ashukem 2016a; Cotula 2013; Okure 2012). These figures substantiate the claim that attempts by both the bio-economy and the SDGs to address food security are playing an increasingly important role in motivating practices of land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa and that this tendency might continue into the future.
Non-food crops
Various examples of biofuel projects in sub-Saharan Africa attest to an expansion of the world’s biofuel crop production in this part of the continent (Von Braun et al. 2017). This expansion supports the hypothesis that practices of land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa are now happening under a different guise, yet the motives are analogous to those that were behind the land-grabbing during the 2007–2008 world crisis. The production of these non-food crops through land-grabbing is meant to sustain the bio-economy industry and help towards the achievement of the goals and targets of the SDGs. It is a given that sub-Saharan Africa is richly endowed in biomass resources and as a consequence risks the potential of experiencing the continuous problem of land-grabbing, as local communities’ land rights are poorly protected. Accordingly, the production of biofuel crops appears to have a greater negative impact on local communities’ land rights, access to natural resources and means of livelihood than the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace.
The bio-economy policy documents have emphasised the need to increase demand for bio-products and biomass, rather than suggesting alternatives that could decrease their demand (Mills 2015). The foregoing suggests the potential for more and more land to be converted for the production of multiple-use ‘flexi-crops’ like soya beans, sugar cane and jatropha, often at the expense of food crops (Mills 2015). This trend of creating new, biologically enhanced products and the new ways of controlling natural resource production have led to the commodification of land and its resources in the form of land-grabbing. This is therefore considered as an appropriate medium through which development agencies could renew their activism and legitimacy within the food and energy debate (through attempting to construct and reconstruct acceptable codes of conduct), and through which finance capital could restore profits even as global capitalism enters a profound crisis of political legitimacy, energy and environmental limits. The reason is that foreign capital plays a crucially important role in the land-grabbing agenda and has been perceived as a means of making more profit by hedge funds and corporate bodies. Thus, profits restoration arguably depends hugely on the accumulation of land to sustain the bio-economy whose novel incarnation is arguably and clearly expressed as a neoliberal form of green capitalism.
Owing to the expansion of the global market for bio-products, agribusinesses such as those involved in the bio-economy need to expand their reach as well. Regrettably, such expansion takes the form of land-grabbing. In this regard, small-scale producers are placed in such a precarious position that they are either compelled to succumb to land-grabs, or sell their land to agribusinesses as they do not have the potential to be competitive in the market. As the gap between access to land and the control over natural resources widens, the production chains and approaches in biotechnologies inevitably become highly concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations that seek to establish a monopoly in the bio-economy through measures that perpetrate land-grabs.
It is important to bear in mind that the bio-economy takes place in various and cross-cutting sectors including agriculture and forestry. With regard to agriculture, the bio-economy occurs against the background of the need to invest in biofuel crops such as sugar cane, jatropha, palm oil and soybeans which will later be converted into renewable energy in order to achieve the primary goals of the bio-economy industry and some of the linked goals of the SDGs that are linked to renewable energy, as mentioned above. The intensified use of biomass-based resources is driven primarily by the need to reduce fossil fuel use, and to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In 2012 the EU created a specific bio-economic strategy which demonstrated the strategic importance of the bio-economy to the EU, with biofuel targets set to be achieved by 2020 (FoE Europe 2016). Possibly, the move away from fossil fuels could lead to an increase in the demand for alternative feedstocks that could help expand the demand for agricultural land, to the extent that potential arable farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is susceptible to land-grabbing. Given that jatropha, cotton and rubber are some of the main non-food crops that contribute to the EU non-food bio-economy land footprint, the acquisition of land for the production of these crops is crucially important to sustaining the bio-economy industry. In Cameroon, for example, investment in biofuel crops including palm oil is increasingly expanding in plantations for the supply of biodiesel, and this has significantly contributed to the EU bio-economy land footprint (Achobang, Nguiffo, and Schwartz 2013; Freudenthal, Lomax, and Venant 2013; Hoyle and Levang 2012; Oakland Institute 2012). This is also true for Sierra Leone (FIAN n.d.; Koroma 2015; Oakland Institute 2011), where vast portions of land have been acquired for the production of palm oil, with devastating impacts on local communities’ land rights. As a consequence, Cameroon, like other sub-Saharan African countries, has arguably become a major target for large-scale land acquisitions by European nations and other foreign investors for the production of biofuel crops that will be converted into biodiesel. Such land-grabs do not promote the well-being of the local communities, but instead alienate them from their traditionally owned and occupied land and means of livelihood. Over 5% of Africa’s agricultural area was acquired for non-food purposes and particularly biofuel crops between 2000 and 2010 (Cotula 2013). Foreign land investments mostly involve medium- to high-quality cropland in a limited number of countries that are poorly integrated into the world economy and have a high incidence of weak land institutions, which easily facilitates and permits land-grabbing.
The desire to expand the biofuel frontier in the global South only seems to be intensifying as the ‘new bio-economy’ agenda expands (McMichael 2011). This practice has deprived local communities of their land. In other words, the appropriation of potential arable land in sub-Saharan Africa through land-grabs seems to result in the large-scale removal of peasant populations from their ancestral land in favour of the production of the non-food crops used for biofuel production. The need to produce biomass, which seemingly drives land-grabbing, seems to follow the logic of profitability for capital accumulation at the expense of the human and natural ecology, while simultaneously presaging a biomass regime that is predominantly based on the offshoring of agricultural-based products (McMichael 2011). Since
[t]he new bio-economy as currently envisioned by foresters, agribusiness, biotech, energy and chemical firms furthers the ongoing enclosure and degradation of the natural world by appropriating plant matter for transformation into industrial commodities, engineering cells so that they perform as industrial factories, and redefining and refitting ecosystems to provide industrial support services. (McMichael 2011, 4)
In response therefore to the increasing EU and global demand for biofuels, there seems to be an expectation that there will be an exponential increase in the production of biofuel in the coming years. This is particularly so, since the global production of biodiesel/biofuels is reported to have increase by 27% between 2014 and 2024, reaching almost 40 billion litres, and bioethanol production could significantly increase by 15% to almost 135 billion litres in 2024 (FAO 2017; FoE Europe 2016; IEA 2019). Relatedly, biofuel use is expected to increase worldwide (FAO 2017; FoE Europe 2016; Senelwa et al. 2012). An increase in the production of biodiesel implicitly indicates a simultaneous increase in the use of and the pressure on land and its resources for the production of non-food crops that would later be converted into biofuel and biodiesel. Implementation of biofuel policies could have significant positive impacts on the consumption levels of biodiesel in the EU, leading to an increase in EU biodiesel consumption of more than 550%, and in bioethanol consumption of over 210% by 2020 (FoE Europe 2016; Senelwa et al. 2012). Such consumption could be significant in achieving the SDG goals and targets of the SDGs, since non-food crops such as palm oil, jatropha and sugar cane would play an increasingly important role. This means further land-grabbing through massive investment in agriculture for the production of these biofuel crops would significantly contribute to further corrosion of local communities’ land rights. This is so, irrespective of the existence of some marginal positive effects of such investment, such as the fact that a growing biofuel feed stock is vital to increasing the income of rural people; that a biofuel economy may provide an adequate solution to tension over land rights; that compensation may be provided to local communities for the loss of their land; and that biofuel would not compete with the production of food crops (Kachika 2010).
These arguments do not seem to fit with the practical realities on the ground, when local communities’ land rights are at stake, because land remains a significant factor in this process and local communities in sub-Saharan Africa risk being deprived of their customary land rights for the attainment of these objectives, as happened during the 2007–2008 crises. The estimate of the land required for this purpose by 2020 is shockingly high, ranging between 120 and 180 million hectares (FoE Europe 2016). According to the International Energy Agency, over 100 million hectares of land will be required in 2050 for the production of biofuel (GreenFacts 2017; IEA 2019). This number is likely to double or triple in future, possibly prior to reaching the expected deadline of 2030, since in terms of the SDGs the global rate of consumption of renewable energy is expected to increase before 2030. It follows that the continuous higher demand for the production of biofuel for use as renewable energy would be supplemented by a commensurate increase in forced land acquisitions.
Conclusion
This article has demonstrated the dark side of the bio-economy and the SDGs, and their role in facilitating land-grabbing. This was shown by various examples of land-grabbing for the production of food and non-food crops. While it was acknowledged that the bio-economy and the SDGs are goal-directed and development-focused, motivated as they are by the commitment to address the prevailing food and energy concerns, the implementation of these development agendas are taking place without due appreciation of their profoundly deleterious social effects on the local communities’ rights to land in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, it would be incongruous to ignore the consequential harm that ensues from the performance of the bio-economy and the desire to attain the SDG goals and targets on food and energy, and as such care must be taken to address it. Consequently, an approach that would coherently cut across the various sectors used in achieving, for example, the underlying goals and targets of the SDGs is urgently needed within the land-grabbing phenomenon.
As is evident from the above analysis, the world is now experiencing a new approach to land-grabbing that is induced by the transition to the bio-economy and the desire to respond to some of the SDGs such as those epitomised by food security and attaining renewable energy security. However, this article does not claim to have exhaustively investigated the contributory role of the bio-economy and the SDGs in this regard. Future empirical research is needed and could comprehensively clarify how this plays out practically. Instead, it was argued that the fact that global food security and the bio-economy agenda largely depend on access to land for food, fuels and general biomass production suggests that land is the central and indispensable requisite in the programme of action, and therefore that the practice of land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa will certainly not diminish in the future. Instead, it is likely to increase, particularly given the time frame (2030) for the SDGs to be achieved. The plain truth is that the transition to the bio-economy and the desire to achieve some of the SDG goals and targets by 2030 are facilitating land-grabbing in sub-Saharan Africa.