By Wezi Tjaronda
WINDHOEK
Potential investors in the bio-energy industry have their hopes pinned on the long-awaited Environment Management Bill to have regulations that govern the industry.
With no legislation governing the industry and also no coherent policy to make the industry attractive to investors, there are fears that no investments will flow in.
Already, some projects such as Kavango Bio-Energy, a UK company trading as Prime Investment (Pty) Ltd, which should have planted a nursery in August 2006, has not done so yet because of, among others, a lack of legislation and land rights among the small-scale farmers who will participate in the project, as well as a lack of a coordinating body with all information on the industry. Prime Investment plans to put between 70 000 and 130 00 hectares of land under jatropha production.
Of the other bio-energy crops, such as sunflower, canola and soya, consultants who prepared the roadmap found jatropha, a nut-bearing tree already being planted as hedge in the Caprivi and Kavango regions, to be the most viable.
Namibia’s bio-energy roadmap says that putting some of the land under jatropha cultivation would enable small-scale farmers and commercial farmers to diversify their production. Assuming that the targeted area of 63 000 hectares is grown by 2013, this would translate into an industry that contributes 0.5 percent of GDP.
But, according to the Kyoto Protocol, a participating country has to establish a Designated Authority (DNA), an institution that uses a set of sustainable development criteria and indicators to assess whether a proposed Clean Development Machanism (CDM) project will contribute to the sustainable development of the host country. CDM, proposed under article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol, is a potential instrument to promote foreign investment in green house gas emission reduction options while simultaneously addressing the issue of sustainable development.
Regulations to the DNA, which were finalised recently, can only be gazetted once the bill is promulgated.
The bill, which has not been tabled for the past eight years, makes provision for the regulations. Namibia has for more than a year been working to establish the Designated National Authority, a licensing authority for projects of such a nature.
“We hope it will be tabled during the current sitting of Parliament,” said Marina Coetzee, Chief Agricultural Researcher of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry during a meeting on bio-energy recently.
“No law on bio-fuels and anybody who wants to invest cannot do so,” said Diedrerik Jankowiz, of Stern Links Financial Services, a company that is involved in a project that will grow cash crops including jatropha in the Caprivi.
Although there has been lots of interest in the industry, not much has happened. “Someone must do something. The Cabinet must make decisions in the absence of the law,” he added.
Johan Breytenbach of Prime Investment said recently his company has been waiting for the past five months especially to have land rights certificates allocated to the small-scale farmers. To benefit from the carbon credit market, a market resulting from the buying and selling of emission allowances and reduction credits to enable countries and companies to meet their green house gas emission targets, projects have to use land that was cleared before 1990.
Although this land is plentiful especialy in the Kavango, people there have no title deeds.
Breytenbach said the small-scale farmers need millions of dollars to have their land mapped. In addition to this, land boards which registered land only sits a number of times in a given year. But owing to the vast amount of land required for the jatropha plantation, the land board has to sit more times, for which the funds are limited.
The company offered to pay for the board to sit regularly, but could not because it is against the law. The law stipulates that the board can only use money that is allocated to it by parliament.
“We are stuck. We have been waiting for five months,” he said.
A Public Information Document of Prime Investment (Pty) Ltd says after six years of planting jatropha on 70 000 hectares of land, it may yield N$250 million in seedcake, N$435 million in bio-diesel and N$624 million in carbon credit trading.
There are indications however that the European Union may provide funding for one year for the Bio-Energy Committee to employ a coordinating person for the industry.
Chris Brock, Chief Executive officer of the Namibia Agronomic Board and Chairperson of the Bio-Energy Committee, said it was important to have a person with a holistic view of what different stakeholders are doing because the industry encompasses many government ministries.