Food vs. Energy: Resource Allocation for Basic Needs in Asia

環境情報学部兼政策・メディア研究科教授　ティースマイヤ・リン　　23年度

I. 本研究の内容と成果

Globally, major sources of the supply of both food and fuel energy are in the developing countries. To ensure food security, Japan and other developed countries have, since 2006, even purchased tracts of cultivable land in developing countries. Yet at the same time, energy supply, including minerals and fossils fuels, are also heavily concentrated in developing countries, including in East and Southeast Asia. These regions provide both conventional and alternative energies that are consumed by Japan, China, and Europe. The result is a little-known, but fierce, competition between energy-producing areas of land and food-producing land in Asia.

Two recent developments have reduced the amount of food-producing land. One is the global emphasis on developing land-based (on-shore) shale extraction of oil and gas. The second is the boom in bio-fuel crops. Both of these use, or disrupt, land use patterns on a large scale. Since the nuclear accident of March 2011, concerns about nuclear energy have led to the closing or reduction of nuclear plants. Instead, global attention is focusing on 3 other land-based extraction technologies. These are hydrofracturing (for shale oil and shale gas); rare earth mineral extraction; and hydropower from large-scale dams. All of these activities use up food-producing lands and the watersheds that are needed for croplands.

We have already seen early-warning signals resulting from the overly rapid and expansive transfer of land and water for energy use. These signs include the massive drought throughout southern China and the delta regions of Myanmar, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 2010; and the massive, deadly flooding in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam in 2011. These phenomena are forms of climate change, but their causes are man-made. In addition to the damage to persons and living areas, these extreme events also further damaged the area’s food-producing regions and led to greater food insecurity. Further, this vulnerability to climate disasters and thus to food and water shortages can worsen rapidly due to inadequate protection of farm and forest lands.

The area’s already hazardous level of vulnerability to cycles of drought, flooding, and water shortages continues to threaten both food and energy security in 2012. It was probably no coincidence that the area most damaged by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011 in Japan was an area that not only provided thousands of megawatts of energy for Tokyo, but also provided much of its livestock and grain food supply. Large-scale industrial and urban demands for energy can usually be met only through large-scale land use, including both above-ground and underground extraction and resource refining. Large areas of open land have been, until recently, food-producing areas. Simple cost-benefit analyses have focused on the relative economic merits of buying food cheaply, though perhaps hazardously, from overseas producers in order to use the land for industrial and urban energy provision. The surveys undertaken with the present funding made it clear that developing, and still mainly agricultural, nations of the Mekong region are also rapidly shifting land uses away from food production to energy and industry, and projecting their capability to import food from neighbors. Even the least-developed countries (CLM, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar) of the Mekong region now seek to import cheap, processed food from China and in some cases from each other. Some of their formerly food-producing agricultural regions have now been converted to industrial estates and export processing zones which demand high energy generation capacity. To satisfy this demand, land is converted not only to the industrial and trade estates but also to exploration and extraction of minerals and shale fuels as well as above-ground production of plant-based biofuels.

One of the predictable results was increasing food insecurity. Whereas until 2005, food insecurity in more developed countries of East and Southeast Asia (Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore) was a matter of food safety, since 2006 it has also been a matter of food availability. In tandem with the shrinking capacity to supply food, the world, and particularly the Asia-Pacific region, has experience a shrinking supply of water. Though this seems counter-intuitive, given the late 2011 floods, it has had visible results. Flooding, as outlined in climate change literature, does indeed degrade the soil, making it less able to retain water and thus leading to its opposite, drought. The surveys undertaken with this fund also showed evidence of the damaging and drying effect of floods in food-producing areas of Thailand and Myanmar. The delta region of Myanmar was, in 2008, the area of greatest damage from Cyclone Nargis, and during the rainy season still experiences extreme rainfall. A rapid appraisal of one district showed its imbalance between severe dryness in the dry season (November to May) and severe flooding or submergence during the rainy season (June to November).

A further finding was that even where traditional, non-industrial forms of energy are in use, their provision and consumption threaten both the agricultural environment as well as human health. The chief example is coal for cooking and heating. The various kinds of environmental and health damage from airborne particulate matter originating from (soft and hard mineral) coal are well known, but no detailed survey of the wood charcoal used for household and restaurant cooking in Southeast Asia has yet been undertaken. This survey looked at wood coal production, distribution, and use in the city of Yangon, with a preliminary examination of air quality samples. Wood charcoal is universally used in Myanmar due to its policy of exporting nearly all its natural gas. It therefore causes 2 serious problems:

1. The air quality of cities, where cooking uses are concentrated, is poor, and is especially so indoors.

2. The rapid deforestation necessitated by the huge demand for wood charcoal has itself caused 2 further problems:

�@ The greater desertification of the already barren Dry Zone in the central area of the country; and

�A The consequent loss or acute reduction in rainwater and river water, making agriculture nearly impossible in formerly agricultural areas and thus reducing domestic food production and supply.

A third finding was that hydropower in Southeast Asia, which is mainly co-financed by ASEAN partner countries, has indeed negatively impacted food production through its diversion and disruption of water volume and flow. The photograph above shows one of the downstream consequences of the construction of one of Southeast Asia’s largest hydropower dams, the Myitkina Dam, on the border of Myanmar and China. The submergence of croplands as well as, ironically, the energy transmission tower itself has meant that the intended result of economic advancement has not occurred. In fact the dam construction was halted in September 2011.

Submerged farmland and electric supply along Ayerwaddy River caused by large-scale

hydropower dam construction upstream, Myanmar (ティースマイヤ撮影)

Since late 2010, newly democratizing Myanmar has experienced an inflow of interest from ASEAN countries wishing to contribute foreign direct investment for trade and resource extraction in Myanmar. The chief resources sought are energy-producing resources. These include underground or surface minerals such as rare earth minerals and hydrocarbons. They also include exploration for shale gas and oil. According to the most recent maps of gas and oil deposits in Myanmar, produced with the assistance of the Petroleum Industry of the People’s Republic of China, the high-yielding underground gas and oil fields are located underneath 2 of Myanmar’s 3 most important rivers for crop irrigation, the Chindwin and the Ayerwaddy, and a 3^rd field is located under the cradle of Southeast Asian rice production, the Delta area.

Oil and gas basins in Myanmar territory (出典：Li Guoyu 2011)

Although it is usually projected that mineral-based energy resource extraction from underground will impact only slightly on aboveground areas, this has seldom been the result. Underground exploration itself requires, before locating the closest extractable supplies, a large area of land to be stripped and excavated. Once location and identification have been completed, the extraction facilities themselves as well as the security precautions they necessitate also occupy vast areas of land, and occupy them permanently. Finally, underground exploration can easily affect aquifers, as with the extraction technology of hydrofracturing. Any leakage of explosive-use chemicals, or of oil and gas themselves, into aquifers will negatively impact irrigation and therefore food.

II. 23年度共同研究活動

The research output for this grant consisted of 2 types of activities:

1. Organizing, moderating, or presenting academic papers at international conferences and producing articles for academic journals.

Under this category, this funding provided the opportunity to give 1 invited paper at a conference on environmental policy at the National Cheng Kung University of Taiwan in June 2011. The network and research findings of this conference led to a 2^nd conference at the same venue in October 2011 where this research was presented as a conference paper and subsequently submitted to The Journal of Asian Public Policy. In 2012 this research and that of co-researchers will become the basis for a Special Issue of The Journal of Science, Technology and Society.

2. Undertaking study tours and field surveys on environmental and livelihood impacts of resource exploration and extraction with co-researchers in Myanmar and in Thailand, with 2 comparative trips in Japan.

In April 2011, one month after the earthquake and tsunami, a farm located 100 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Plant in Tochigi Prefecture was visited to form a baseline of food-producing residents’ concerns in the situation of extreme damage from energy producing facilities, within the context of a highly modernized energy producing and consuming nation. The concern of the local farmers was how to balance between the needs for both energy and the jobs that energy production provides, and the safety of their food-producing lands. As the visit was during the time of spring crop planting the urgent issues were not only local consumption, but the impact on the sale of planted crops to urban areas, which provides the major part of the residents’ income.

In July 2011, this fund allowed 2 co-researchers, 1 from Japan and 1 from Mongolia, to travel to Kyushu to attend a presentation and discussion at the office of the Mayor of Minamata City. The purpose of this study tour was to understand the means, both technological and governmental, by which environmental damage within an agricultural area could be mitigated in the context of the developed country of Japan.

Subsequently, 2 co-researchers, Professor Hikaru Kobayashi of Keio University and Professor Yoshika Sekine of Tokai University used this fund to travel to Myanmar in August 2011 with the chief researcher (Thiesmeyer) in order to launch the first Environmental Economic Research Institute to be founded in Myanmar. Finally, this fund is used for a follow-up research and network meeting trip to Myanmar in March 2012, where 2 areas of both energy and food production will be surveyed: the Delta area and the Dry Zone.

III. 今後の方向性

For the academic year 2012-2013, this research has provided the basis for collaborative research that is larger in scope.

In the ASEAN region, the environment that is capable of providing both food and energy resources stretches beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. Environmental issues and resource use issues that arise within one nation also extend to the land, water, and air of the neighboring countries as well. ASEAN’s enormous population in itself makes large-scale resource-seeking a necessity. This requires not only more food and water, but also requires more technological capital – and therefore requires more energy. The sought-after resources, their extraction and processing, as well as their waste products, are transnational. The food that would otherwise be produced on the new energy-resource lands is also produced and consumed for transboundary markets. If these two needs, food and energy, are placed in direct competition with each other the outcome cannot be optimum. Indeed, disaster itself in the form of industrial and environmental degradation leading to further food shortages, as well as sharply increased and geographically expanded disaster risks, are the potential outcomes.

The next collaborative research project will focus on the issues above.

Collaborating partners and institutions are listed below.

1. 塾内

l EIプログラム

l GESLプログラム

2. 国内

l IGES

3. 国外

l ミャンマー：EERI

l 中国：　Integrated Risk Governance Project（北京拠点）

l 台湾：国立成功大学政治経済研究科　環境政策会

l インドネシア：国立ガジャマダ大学、土地計画研究科

l タイ：タイ環境インスティチュート（バンコク）

参考文献

佐藤仁　『「持たざる国」のし資源論』東京大学出版会2011年

高橋裕　『河川工学』　東京大学出版会　2008年

小宮山宏、武内和彦、住明正、花木哲弘、三村信男　編　『サステーナビリティ学』東京大学出版会2010

Faure, Michael, and Song Ying, eds. China and international environmental liability. Edward Elgar 2008.

International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)-China National Committee Secretariat (2011) “Selected international agreements and conventions related to climate and environment”. Beijing: Chinese Committee on ICIMOD, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment.

URL: http://www.icimod.org/?q=1146

Li Guoyu. World Atlas of Oil and Gas Basins. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

Magallanos, Catherine J. Iorns and Malcolm Hollick, eds. (1998) Land Conflicts in Southeast Asia: Indigenous Peoples, Environment, and International Law. Bangkok: White Lotus Press.

Thomas, Caroline, and Darryl Howlett. Resource Politics: Freshwater and Regional Relations. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1993.

Wittayapak, Chusak and Peter Vandergeest, eds. (2010) The Politics of Decentralization: Natural Resource Management in Asia. Bangkok: Mekong Press.