Biofuel CO2 emissions can go up as well as down

Current European biofuel policy is likely to cause more harm than good because it fails to account for the environmental impact of indirect land use change (ILUC) when calculating the greenhouse gas benefits of biofuels, according to the report, ‘Biofuels : Handle With Care’

When farm land is converted for biofuel production, it is highly likely that areas elsewhere will be converted for agriculture – a process known as ‘indirect’ land use change.

The report also warns that current EU legislation fails to address the risks to biodiversity and to vulnerable communities in some of the poorest regions of the world.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “Biofuels may reduce carbon emissions in transport, but it is critically important that they do not increase them elsewhere.”

ETA comment: Biofuels and African lands

Most people here in Britain are used to the idea of the ownership of land, but there are vast areas of the world where there is no security of land ownership. People might have been farming in a location for generations, but without title deeds and a land registry they may not raise capital to invest in their farm nor may they protect their rights of ownership in law. If this makes life difficult for settled farmers, just imagine what it means for pastoralists and hunter gatherers.

With the European government target requiring ten per cent of road transport fuel to be supplied by bio-fuel, there has been a scramble for new supplies of bio fuel and because we do not want to make farmers produce bio-fuel crops instead of food crops we say that bio-fuels must come from wilderness, degraded or marginal land. However, some of this land might, if converted to producing bio-fuel crops produce more CO₂ than it saves. For example, if the land was previously rainforest or a rich peatland. So this has meant that bio-fuel projects are looking to uncultivated land which is not rainforest or peatland.

Africa is full of such land, where ownership is purely traditional and no-one has title deeds. African governments are offering up to forty per cent of their country for big bio-fuel projects. And because the pastoralists and subsistence cultivators cannot prove they own the land they are being swept away in their thousands already.

Unless we ensure that our bio-fuel supplies are socially and environmentally sustainable, we may be pushing the world’s poorest people off their meagre lands.