Mario Garnero, Chairman of Brasilinvest, Brazil's pioneer merchant bank, stated this week at a multilateral conference in Rome that Brazil's leading role in alternative energies places Brazil as a stalwart for contemporary development models. "Bioenergy expertise, shown by Brazil in its automotive industry, is a central element to technological innovation, sustainable agriculture and cleaner urban environments," he stated.

Garnero's remarks were delivered at the conference "Sustainable bioenergy: sowing the seeds of sustainable development", held in Rome by the Global Bioenergy Partnership, a G-20 support group that adopts a holistic approach to assessing intersection aspects of bioenergy and sustainability. Its scope includes greenhouse gas emissions, biological diversity, the price and supply of food baskets in different countries, access to energy, economic development, and energy security.

Other speakers at the Conference, supported by FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, included Corrado Clini, the newly-appointed environment Minister of the Mario Monti government in Italy, and Jose Goldemberg, former Minister for the Environment and Rector of the University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil's leading research and higher-learning institution.

At the Conference, Garnero continued his global advocacy of broader use of bioenergy and particularly biofuels. Recent speaking engagements included Harvard's Sustainability Science Program, which helps devise best practices for large countries like China, Brazil, and India; the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, and his role as an Adviser to the President of Haiti in Sustainable Development matters.

According to William Clark, Chair of the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard University and one of the world's leading academics in the field of Sustainable Development, "Garnero is a pioneer of biofuels. His role in producing ethanol fuel-based vehicles when Brazil was experiencing a severe petroleum crisis in the 1970s and 80s is seminal."

To the Rome audience of representatives of 120 countries, Garnero showed that nearly 80% of Brazil's cars run on flex-fuel engines. "Biodiesel and aviation applications are also leading the way to the future," Garnero indicated. "It is such a tough challenge that the R and D involved will produce major positive effects to Brazil's technological capacities."

Garnero suggested an expanded South-South cooperation based on biofuels. "New and clean energies are a great platform to enhance developing countries' cooperation in high-value added areas," he concluded.