Table of Contents Spring 2008, Volume 4 Cultivating a Sustainable Future: Sugarcane-Derived Power in Brazil 3 By Daniel Brasil Becker The Berlin Connection: Locating German-Iranian Relations Within Current Understandings of Post- Uni!cation German Foreign Policy 12 By Benjamin Power First Nations’ Claims to Self- Determination: Claims to Self- Determination Localizing International Discourse 16 By Carmine Grimaldi Nationalist Men and the Nation’s Women: The Role of Gendered Structural Violence in South Africa by Elizabeth Aronson 26 China’s Evolution in Peacekeeping By Jackson Woods 30 Photo by Anna Rose Tomaro 1 | JUIS U n d e r g r Dear Reader, f a d o u l a a t n e r u I n First of all, this issue would not have been possible without o your submissions. We received a large number of well-written, J t e thought-provoking essays and our !nal decision was very r n di"cult to make. 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Cultivating a Sustainable Future: Sugarcane-Derived Power in Brazil By Daniel Brasil Becker Few nations have done as much to lead the stands at 6%.1 Moreover, Brazil’s adoption of brought about by combusting petrol seem to transition away from fossil fuels as Brazil. alternative fuels is a fairly recent phenomenon. be exacerbated by increased consumption, it According to the Brazilian Ministry of Mines In less than four decades, the country has would be wise to search for alternatives where and Energy, as of 2005, Brazil derived 43.9% transformed itself from a nation that imported available. It is also quite signi#cant that this of its domestic energy from renewable sources. approximately 80% of its petroleum from transition has occurred in Brazil, as it highlights !e world as a whole, however, supplied 13.6% foreign sources in 19732 into one that could the role of the Global South in creatively of its energy production from renewables. declare its own independence from fossil solving its own problems and in pioneering a In other developing countries, that #gure fuels by 2006.3 Despite signi#cant increases trail towards energy independence and greener in total energy and petroleum fuels. consumption, this move away from Daniel Brasil Becker is currently a senior at imported hydrocarbons was made !e expansion of biofuels in Brazil also Tufts University. He majors in International possible by the rapid expansion of o'ers very interesting insights on sustainable Relations and Peace & Justice Studies while domestically produced renewable development. For the sake of this report, I will fuels, particularly through sugarcane- focus on what the ethanol program means for holding a minor in Latino Studies. Daniel’s the larger sustainability debate. academic interests fall at the intersection derived ethanol. As of 2004, Brazil’s of international development, migration sugarcane harvest produced more I argue that Brazil’s successes in biofuels than 14 billion liters of ethanol, studies, and social movements. He has within the market economy have resulted from which supplied approximately 45% of written extensively on the sustainability of prioritizing an economically viable alternative the energy demand coming from the to fossil fuels over the secondary environmental sugarcane as a source of biofuel in Brazil, the 4 country’s $eet of light vehicles. concern and the distantly tertiary interest in migratory experiences of the Portuguese social impact. However, if we are to cultivate in Gloucester, MA circa 1910-20, the !is shi% away from fossil fuels carries with it a number of important a sustainable future, planners must a&rm the organizational strategies of undocumented equal importance of social, environmental and immigrant youth activists mobilizing for implications. One of the most central impacts of Brazil’s transition economic interests. Due to the way in which access to higher education, as well as a towards renewable energy sources is ethanol production has evolved in Brazilian comparative study of internal migrants and its associated hope for phasing out sugarcane #elds, sustainable development Japanese immigrants to São Paulo State, massive oil consumption. Although requires that planners elevate the causes of Brazil. Daniel has also just completed a beyond the scope of this report, it green and red activists and reconcile di'erences thesis, entitled Developing Brazucas: Boston’s should su&ce to say that the use of between the two. Doing so would form a Brazilians and the Cultural Negotiations of the fossil fuels is responsible for a great comprehensive and uni#ed Brown Agenda that can bargain with capital’s interests. Labor Market, about identity development deal of geo-political strife and global among Brazilian immigrants in the Greater environmental insecurities. At the Before addressing the evolution of Brazil’s Boston Area. very least, because the problems biofuel production, I will de#ne sustainability Spring 2008 | 3 Photo by Daniel Brasil Becker so as to create the analytical framework in of future generations to meet their own needs.”5 of sustainability emerged, a fairly vague which to discuss the development of sugarcane. Since then, a number of academics have understanding of sustainable development A%er analyzing the economic, environmental criticized this de#nition, o'ering their own began to form around the principles of and social impact of sugarcane production for adaptations instead. William Rees, for instance, distributing social and economic bene#ts fuel, the report will focus on the con$icts that lamented the Commission’s assumption “that more equally within environmental constraints arise from camps advocating for these three any limits on the environment’s ability to meet for sustained improvements through the interests. I will conclude by reassessing the human needs were imposed not so much by generations. Despite the abstractness that such role that planners must play in developing a nature as ‘by the state of technology and social a variety of de#nitions may imply, many experts sustainable fuel supply from sugarcane. organization’ (p 43),” and argued that this remained undeterred as to the usefulness “expansionist perspective” could no longer be of the term. Hemple argues, “!e emerging supported by the #nite resources available.6 sustainability ethic may be more interesting What is Sustainable Others have sought to highlight the role that for what it implies about politics than for sustainable development must play in creating what it promises about ecology.”8 In their Development? intragenerational and intergenerational equity. introduction to Just Sustainabilities, Agyeman, According to Tim O’Riordan, “sustainable Bullard and Evans compared sustainability In 1987 the UN released the World development ought to mean the creation of “with other over-arching societal values such Commission on Environment and a society and an economy that can come to as democracy and freedom, [where] there are Development, one of the earliest reports to terms with the life support limits of the planet many interpretations of what sustainability de#ne issues of sustainability.