Biocombustibles as strategy of development: A course towards sustainability or to a new periphery?

Abstract

The authors investigate the real contribution of biocombustibles to the solution of the environmental problems.  After analyzing the current forms of production in Brazil, they maintain that the expansion of these will pressure indirectly towards deforestation, contributing thus still more to global warming-up. They indicate how deceptive is the speech that justifies the expansion of biocombustibles because of its contribution to the generation of employment.  They maintain that it is fundamental to incorporate the requirements of sustainability in the production line in order to guarantee competitiveness for the potentially exporting countries, but that even then, that solution has a limit since all the alternative and renewable energies together would not supply the projected pattern of world consumption.