Photo from www.grr.org.ar - Eviction of villagers for soya expansion in Paraguay.

Replacing even a fraction of fossil fuels with biofuels requires vast areas of land - with governments planning to convert tens of millions of hectares to agrofuel monocultures. Land conversion on this scale requires taking over land on which communities depend for growing food and/or for grazing - often classed as 'wasteland' - or the destruction of important ecosystems, including rainforests (which are also home to hundreds of millions of people). Land grabs for agrofuels are happening across Asia, Latin America and Africa, and often involve violence. Some 150,000 families in Argentina and 90,000 families in Paraguay have already been displaced by soya. The accelerating rate of soya expansion due to the agrofuel boom is associated with increasing frequency of evictions.

In Tanzania, a government agency has handed over 9,000 hectares of land on which over 11,000 people depend for their livelihoods to the UK firm Sun Biofuels plc, for a jatropha plantation. A recent Oxfam report (see page 22, Box 4) based on Oxfam's own research, including interviews and field visits, details the concerns of the local farmers. These include concerns over probable loss of waterhole that is essential in dry weather, the details of the land that has been conceded, and whether compensation payments will be adequate to allow families to access other land and go to all the families affected.

In Indonesia, the Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has warned that millions of indigenous peoples will soon become biofuel refugees.