Sustainable development for whom and how? Exploring the gaps between popular discourses and ground reality using the Mexican jatropha biodiesel case

The research examines jatropha-based bioenergy projects in Yucatan, Mexico, finding that the popular discourse promoting the crop as a tool for rural development and sustainability is flawed. Based on 70 interviews, the study concludes that these projects failed to provide significant social sustainability benefits and argues that bioenergy projects alone cannot achieve social sustainability without a comprehensive understanding of local socioeconomic problems.

• Popular discourses positioned jatropha as a means to protect sustainability by lowering greenhouse gas emissions relative to fossil fuels and fostering rural development through job creation, leading several countries to create national policies incentivizing the crop as a bioenergy feedstock.
• Analysis of 70 semistructured interviews with community members in a region with plantation-scale jatropha projects in Yucatan, Mexico, reveals that these projects did not deliver significant social sustainability benefits.
• The study concludes that bioenergy projects cannot achieve social sustainability in rural areas in isolation; future policies must integrate a comprehensive understanding of local socioeconomic issues and treat bioenergy as one of multiple solutions rather than relying on popular discourses.

APA

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (2025). Sustainable development for whom and how? Exploring the gaps between popular discourses and ground reality using the Mexican jatropha biodiesel case. https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/sustainable-development-for-whom-and-how-exploring-the-gaps-between-popular-discourses-and-ground-reality-using-the-mexican-jatropha-biodiesel-case/

Chicago

Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Sustainable development for whom and how? Exploring the gaps between popular discourses and ground reality using the Mexican jatropha biodiesel case. 2025. https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/sustainable-development-for-whom-and-how-exploring-the-gaps-between-popular-discourses-and-ground-reality-using-the-mexican-jatropha-biodiesel-case/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research |title=Sustainable development for whom and how? Exploring the gaps between popular discourses and ground reality using the Mexican jatropha biodiesel case |date=13 January 2025 |url=https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/sustainable-development-for-whom-and-how-exploring-the-gaps-between-popular-discourses-and-ground-reality-using-the-mexican-jatropha-biodiesel-case/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{interamericaninstituteforglobalchangeresearch2025sustainable, author = {{Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}}, title = {{Sustainable development for whom and how? Exploring the gaps between popular discourses and ground reality using the Mexican jatropha biodiesel case}}, institution = {Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}, year = {2025}, month = jan, url = {https://iai.int/es/pub_acad/sustainable-development-for-whom-and-how-exploring-the-gaps-between-popular-discourses-and-ground-reality-using-the-mexican-jatropha-biodiesel-case/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }