Mali's fuelwood dependence proving difficult to break

Soumaila T. Diarra in AlertNet: Mali’s citizens almost universally prefer firewood and charcoal over gas as a fuel. As a result of their dependence, the west African country is losing large swathes of its forests, putting at risk efforts to adapt to climate change.

“A bag of charcoal costs only about 3,500 West African CFA francs ($7) and it is sufficient for my energy needs for a month,” said Saran Doumbia, a 30-year-old housewife from Bamako, the capital. In her neighbourhood of Lafiabougou, fuel wood and charcoal are the main sources of energy, and substantially cheaper than natural gas.

About 13 million hectares of Mali’s land area were forested in 2005, but the country is losing 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of forest every year, mainly due to cutting for fuel wood, according to a 2010 environment ministry report. For at least the last decade, deforestation has been a principal source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, accounting for 35 percent of total emissions.

To deal with the problem, the government in 2011 launched a five-year programme to reduce dependence on fuel wood, in an attempt to protect the country against ongoing climate change. But the fragile political situation, as separatist rebels in northern Mali wage war an armed struggle against the government, has led international donors to suspend aid for such projects....

GM corn being developed for fuel instead of food

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): US farmers are growing the first corn plants genetically modified for the specific purpose of putting more ethanol in gas tanks rather than producing more food. Aid organisations warn the new GM corn could worsen a global food crisis exposed by the famine in Somalia by diverting more corn into energy production.

The food industry also opposes the new GM product because, although not inedible, it is unsuitable for use in the manufacture of food products that commonly use corn. Farmers growing corn for human consumption are also concerned about cross-contamination. The corn, developed by a branch of the Swiss pesticide firm Syngenta, contains an added gene for an enzyme (amylase) that speeds the breakdown of starches into ethanol. Ethanol plants normally have to add the enzyme to corn when making ethanol.

The Enogen-branded corn is being grown for the first time commercially on about 5,000 acres on the edge of America's corn belt in Kansas, following its approval by the US Department of Agriculture last February. In its promotional material Syngenta says it will allow farmers to produce more ethanol from the corn while using less energy and water.

Meanwhile, campaigners say the corn will heap pressure on global food supplies and contribute to environmental degradation. They argue Enogen will lead to an increase in the amount of food crops going to fuel, leaving less for human consumption and leading to food price rises. That will lead to food price rises on the global market. "The temptation to look at food as another form of fuel to use for the energy crisis will exacerbate the food crisis," said Todd Post of Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger organisation....

From the pre-GMO era, over time, selective breeding modifies teosinte's few fruitcases (left) into modern corn's rows of exposed kernels (right). Shot by John Doebley, from a PLoS One Journal, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license