Word: jatropha
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plant that he knows is only grown to die. In Dec. 2005, Burma's economically inept junta - one of its leaders once decided to denominate the national currency by multiples of nine because he liked the number - decided that the country's future lay in a shrub called jatropha...
...natural-gas reserves, much of the country lacks electricity. That's because most of its potential fuel is exported to neighboring countries through lucrative contracts that benefit the ruling generals instead of being used at home. The Burmese regime's stated solution to the longrunning national blackout? Jatropha. Also known as "physic nut," the plant produces a green nut that is pressed and processed into a biofuel catching on in entrepreneurial green pockets of the world from Florida to Brazil to India, which has already earmarked 100 million acres for the plant and expects the oil to account...
...friend has enough money to pay for the mandatory seeds, many other Burmese aren't so lucky. Those who refuse to farm physic nut face possible jail time. By the end of 2008, the nation's top brass aimed to have 8 million acres (3.24 million ha) of jatropha scattered across Burma, some in vast plantations run by foreign companies, others wedged into home gardens or between shacks. (See pictures of Burma after Cyclone Nargis...
...Puzzlingly, however, the junta's planting directive has not been matched by adequate infrastructure to turn those acres into energy, like collection mechanisms, processing plants, distribution systems. My friend dutifully tends his jatropha trees and then watches the seeds fall on the ground and die. In his case, the spindly physic-nut shrubs in his garden are supplanting a fragrant frangipani tree or colorful hibiscus bush. But elsewhere in Burma - a nation where UNICEF estimates malnutrition afflicts one-third of children - farmers have had to put aside valuable crop land for a wasted plant...
...country where general information is so severely circumscribed, innuendoes, puns and astrological signs often play a big role in reading national trends like jatropha. Ever looking for a hidden meaning to the seemingly incomprehensible actions of their leaders, some speculate that the Burmese word for "jatropha" sounds like an inversion of the name of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy may be the junta's most potent opposition. By inverting Suu Kyi's name, perhaps the superstitious junta believes that the kyet-suu plant will cause her democracy movement to wither away. (Read...