agrofuels

A critical discussion on the sustainability of agrofuels, and on current attempts by the EU and EU member states to develop criteria to guarantee that sustainability.
Click to download the report "Paving the way for agrofuels

The report concludes that current initiatives are bound to fail, and merely serve to legitimise the 10% agrofuel target that is being proposed. The EU itself only talks about criteria on two issues. The discussion in member states like the UK and the Netherlands is very focused on existing voluntary certification initiatives such as the Forest Stewardship Council, the Round Table on Sustainable Palmoil and the Round Table on Responsible Soy, but ignores the criticism on these schemes regarding effectiveness and whose interests are being represented.

A group of U.S. NGOs is calling on other organisations worldwide to sign a “Call for an immediate moratorium on U.S. incentives for agrofuels, U.S. agroenergy monocultures and global trade in agrofuels”. The call was launched in December by Rainforest Action Network, Global Justice Ecology Project, Food First, Grassroots International, Family Farm Defenders and the Student Trade Justice Campaign. It coincides with the U.S.government approving the Renewable Fuel Standard – a target for a massive 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, which will result in rainforest destruction,accelerated global warming, biodiversity losses, more soil erosion and more water pollution, as well as in the eviction of large numbers of small farmers,pastoralists and forest communities.

Published in the Guardian, November 6th, 2007 by George Monbiot, www.monbiot.com
It doesn’t get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava.1 The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the county of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought.2 It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

1. 1. IRIN Africa, 25th October 2007. Swaziland: Food or biofuel seems to be the question. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74987
2. 2. Energy Current, 29th October 2007. Swaziland joins biofuel drive despite mounting food crisis. http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=3&storyid=6359

Repsol is nominated for the 2007 EU worst lobby awards for distorting the EU’s research agenda on agrofuels; ensuring that outcomes fit narrow commercial interests, at the expense of genuine measures to combat climate change.

Repsol is a leading oil corporation. Repsol’s Luis Cabra, Director of Technology, chairs the European Biofuels Technology Platform (EBFTP), an industry-dominated advisory group promoted by DG Research and partly funded by the Commission. The Commission has entrusted the group to elaborate the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) on agrofuels which will identify key research areas (and allocating funds) for the next 20 years. In September 2007 a draft SRA, completed by Repsol and other EBFTP members was made public. This draft proposed an astonishing and ambitious target for 25% of road transport fuel to be agrofuels by 2030.

deutsche Version siehe unten

Why the production of agrofuels offers no solution to global climate problems, but rather creates and intensifies already existing social and ecological problems.

september 2007 - Reto Sonderegger, Asunción, Paraguay
Translation : Anton Pieper, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Presently the Amazonian rain forest is burning in 70.000 different places. The planet's green lung is getting more permeable while steadily drying out. The evapotranspiration capacities are being drastically decreased by the loss of biomass, the deforestation and slashing and burning to expand the cultivable land for soy and sugarcane, or the creation of new feedlots for the extensive cattle rearing. The blushing holds off and therefore consequentially also the rain. This results in an agricultural loss of production and some even fear an infernal conflagration that wipes out the rest of the dried out Amazonia.

June 2007 A number of international bodies, academic institutions and well-known civil society organisation are currently debating and ‘consulting’ on the sustainable production of energy commodities. Discussions on the establishment of standards, sustainability criteria and certification will give the production of raw materials for biofuels an air of acceptability. But the discussions have ignored all the existing evidence compiled to date regarding the devastating impacts that the intensive production of agricultural commodities (such as soya) has had in Argentina. The 16 million hectares planted with

Stella Semino, Grupo de Reflexion Rural:
Al Gore, the North American ex-Vice President, participated in the closing of the First Inter-American Biofuels Congress, which took place in Buenos Aires on the 11th of May.
The congress was attended by politicians and corporate representatives paying who paid $500 per person to be there. According to El Clarin, the Argentine newspaper reported to be the lobbying tool for the agrofuels industry, El Clarín, "It is widely known that the ex-president charges $170,000 for conferences appearances."