oct/nov2007 red pepper

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there is a lot wrong with this proposal. For one thing, the EU simply doesn’t have the domestic capacity to meet its agrofuel target. Even the existing EU target of 5.75 per cent agrofuel use by 2010 would require that an estimated 20 per cent of arable land be turned over to fuel production. With consumption still on the increase, it remains unclear as to how much more land would be required to account for 10 per cent of transport fuel use in 2020. One immediate by-product is the scrapping of set-aside lands from 2008 – a plan that could decimate bird-life and insect populations. The EU’s own calculations also bank upon untried ‘second generation’ agrofuels to make crop yields more efficient. Many of these technologies would prove highly controversial, since they include techniques to genetically modify trees, endangering the precautionary principle as a basis for such research. Even this would not come close to meeting the new target, however, meaning that a large share of agrofuels would have to be imported from the global South. Palm oil grown in south east Asia is one of the most likely sources, but the environmental impacts would be profound. The conservation group Wetlands International estimated that the import to Europe of south east Asian palm oil originating from drained peatlands would generate up to 10 times more carbon dioxide than the equivalent emissions from burning fossil diesel.

Deforestation diesel Direct emissions from transport fuel are only part of the picture, moreover. A recent study in the journal Sciencefound that existing forests could absorb nine times more CO2 than the production of agrofuels could achieve on the same area of land. According to Renton Righelato, co-author of the report, the ‘mistaken policy’ of targets and incentives is fuelling deforestation. Soybean farming in Latin America and the

growth of palm oil plantations in south east Asia are among the major culprits, with the demand for these crops now accelerated by their cultivation for fuel use. ‘It is like kicking your head to get rid of a headache,’ as Birute Galdikas, a conservationist renowned for her work in Indonesia, recently told the Independent. ‘The palm oil prices are going through the roof because of their use as biofuel and this, one of the poorest countries in the world, is cutting down its trees to supply the market.’ This has both economic and environmental impacts. Monoculture plantations not only threaten what remains of global forest cover, reducing biodiversity, but they also subject local populations to a new wave of plantations. In the words of a recent report by GRAIN, an international NGO working on agricultural sustainability, this process ‘amounts to nothing less than the colonial plantation economy, re-designed to function under the rules of the modern neoliberal, globalised world.’

The sustainability myth In the face of these criticisms, the EU is now pushing for ‘sustainability’ criteria for agrofuel production. In July, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson warned that ‘Europeans won’t pay a premium for biofuels if the ethanol in their car is

produced unsustainably by systematically burning fields after harvests. Or if it comes at the expense of rainforests.’ Behind the rhetoric, though, there is little in the EU’s approach to address these concerns. Even tough sustainability criteria would leave unaddressed the major problems of the rush to agrofuels, since they would most likely displace other forms of agriculture from cleared land. The net deforestation would be the same, a ‘secondary impact’ on land use that no sustainability criteria can adequately account for. In fact, no criteria or certification schemes can deal with the broader structural effects that agrofuels are having on agricultural intensification and food prices. The definition of ‘sustainability’ does not extend to issues of social justice – and as long as money is to be made, the push for agrofuels looks set to continue unabated. This is not simply the law of the market but is also an effect of subsidies. The US now ploughs up to $7.3 billion per year into agrofuel subsidies, while both EU and US targets are spurring on the market for agrofuel production. As long as these incentives remain in place, the price of bread looks set to rise – which, in global terms, is a symptom of the disaster facing those who already live below the breadline.

Formoreinformation see www.tni.org/agrofuels

In April, Fidel Castro warned againstthe‘sinister idea ofconverting food into fuel’, prompting the Economist to run a leaderarticlewith theunlikely headline‘Castro was right’