Fuelling famine

But the renewable transport fuels obligation is, at best, an irrelevance and, at worst, a serious threat to poor people in the developing world.

Transnational corporations are putting pressure on farmers to switch from staple crops to biofuels such as maize and sugar cane.

The result has been shortages of key staples such as rice and maize flour, which provides basics such as tortillas in Latin America.

It has also meant an increased drive to cut down virgin forest in the Amazon Basin to capitalise on this latest international cash crop.

For international speculators, switching from one crop to another, either as a conscious choice by global agribusiness or by market incentives offered to small producers, is simply a matter of the bottom line.

Ethanol pays better than rice, millet or soya beans, so it's full steam ahead for maize and sugar cane, but this takes no account of the effect on the world's poor.

As the acreage given over to rice and other grains decreases, the price of these crops rises sharply, with the price of wheat, for example, trebling over the past year and rice doubling in three years.

Higher food costs and inadequate supplies have brought about riots in the past year in Mexico, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Yemen, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan, and even European states such as Austria and Hungary.

Traditional rice-exporting countries such as India and Vietnam have introduced curbs on overseas sales.

The world has always produced enough food to feed the entire global population, with starvation caused by failure to distribute it equitably, but the situation looks likely to worsen.

The European Union has already laid down plans for the 2.5 per cent renewable transport fuels obligation to double for member states by 2010, which will accelerate the likelihood of famine in vulnerable regions.

Governments, especially in the industrialised world, ought to be doing more to reduce the use of hydrocarbons rather than plumping for the maximum exploitation of an equally wasteful, harmful and non-sustainable.

Call to action

THE horror stories recounted so flatly by NHS paramedics about the violence that they face on a daily basis must be a call to action if we are serious about wanting to keep our health service.

At a time when new Labour is gnawing away at the roots of the NHS, reintroducing marketisation and privatising everything from GP care to elective treatment, the labour movement must take a firm stand.

Ambulance crews are having to choose between their priority of saving lives and gambling with their own by entering violent situations without police support.

No-one wants to see a situation where ambulance crews have to bring their own protection squads with them to enable them to do their work.

This means that there must be much greater co-operation with the police to ensure that they coordinate their arrival at potential flash points more carefully to protect this band of dedicated professionals.