The DGIS-WUR* funded Competing Claims, Competing Models programme specifically focuses on the impact of the expansion of bio-fuel production systems on rural livelihoods and resource competition in southern Africa. Research is concentrated in Mozambique, where bio-fuel production initiatives are being developed in various agro-ecological zones of the country. Based on different bio-energy crops, land uses, labour organization, processing and marketing arrangements, these bio-fuel initiatives are not merely distinct production models; they simultaneously represent different ‘models’ for rural development. Although biofuel production is promising, and strongly promoted at various policy levels (national, regional and globally), little is known about these production models’ developmental and environmental impacts, and especially, their consequences for poor people’s livelihoods.

Bio-fuels: development through new resource uses?

Competing Claims, Competing Models seeks to address these questions relating to the global expansion of biofuel production.

The programme is sub-divided into a number of research themes.

VIDEO: Prof. Ken Giller questions common assumptions regarding bio-fuel production by African smallholder farmers.

 (© Ken Giller)  

The programme’s central research question is:

Which local, national, regional and international bio-fuel production initiatives favour the inclusion of local stakeholders in the development process, and under which conditions are they most likely to benefit the livelihoods of the local rural population?

Initially, the focus will be on the following bio-fuel production/ development models:

1. 1.The plantation-model of bio-ethanol production in which newly established bio-fuel processing factories in rural areas  are supplied by large plantations growing irrigated sugarcane as bio-energy crop;
   

2. 2.The smallholder bio-ethanol production model that is based on highly localized bio-fuel production by smallholder farmers growing cassava in low rainfall areas;
   

3. 3.The marginal lands model of bio-fuel production which seeks to produce bio-diesel in marginal areas using Jatropha trees as bio-energy crop;
   

4. 4.The food-versus-fuel model of bio-fuel production that seeks to expand bio-fuel production using food crops such as maize and sweet sorghum.
   

1. ★Competing Claims, Competing Models is funded by the DGIS-WUR partnership programme, a collaboration between the Directorate for International Development Cooperation (DGIS) of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR).