Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 8 • Number 16 • 19th September 2008

European Parliament Seeks to Limit use of First-Generation Biofuels

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The use of biofuels to achieve climate change goals is stirring controversy once again.

The EU is set to adopt a legislative package on energy and climate change, which contains a target for biofuels use (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 25 January 2008, http://ictsd.net/i/news/biores/9354/), by the end of the year. While the European Commission has stood steadfastly behind the target, a recent vote within the European Parliament suggests that the tide may be changing in Europe.

Meanwhile, two new reports highlight human rights challenges posed by biofuels production as well as specific problems associated with export-oriented biofuels production in Latin America.

“The current path in the development of agrofuels for transport is not sustainable…if such development goes unchecked, further violations of the right to food will result,” UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, said in his new report.

Industry Committee supports high-tech biofuels

The European Parliament Industry Committee is reviewing the energy and climate legislation, which the French EU Presidency is hoping to pass in time for the next Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poznan, Poland in December this year.

On 11 September, the Committee voted to amend the current draft, which stipulates that 10 percent of all liquid fuel used in vehicles should be derived from renewables – i.e., biofuels – by 2020. The new draft retains the 10 percent target, but specifies that 40 percent of that target should be fulfilled through options other than biofuels produced from food crops. These could include second generation biofuels derived from waste or algae, or other sources such as hydrogen or renewable electricity.

The Committee also proposed a review of the target in 2014, and an interim target for the use of renewable fuels to satisfy five percent of the need for liquid fuels by 2015, of which one fifth would have to be derived from non-food crops.

The Committee further proposed strengthening some of the sustainability criteria for biofuels that a separate working group has been hashing out (see Bridges BioRes, 25 July 2008, http://ictsd.net/i/environment/14329/), requiring that the biofuels used represent a 45 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions as compared to conventional fuels, rising to 60 percent by 2015. The Committee, however, took a more lax approach to indirect land-use change affects of biofuels production as compared to earlier discussions.

Luxembourg Green Member of European Parliament Claude Turmes, who was in charge of the negotiations, said the Industry Committee had “strengthened the safeguards against the damaging impact of agri-fuels in this directive.” Green campaigners also welcomed the move.

However, the European Bioethanol Fuel Association warned that “the parliament puts at risk over €5 billion invested in EU biofuel production capacity and all the employment linked to it.” According to the association, the strict targets for carbon efficiency would favour imports, such as Brazilian ethanol, over home-grown biofuels.

The entire European Parliament will vote on the energy and climate legislation in October, after European members states still have to approve the legislation.

Human rights abuses linked to biofuels

On 10 September, Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, presented a report to the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva, which discussed biofuel-related problems. The report, commissioned at the UN Special Session on the Global Food Crisis in May (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 13 June 2008, http://ictsd.net/i/environment/12236/), concluded that the world’s poor are not going hungry because there is not enough food to go around; rather, they are left empty-handed because the food that is available is too expensive for them to buy.

Several factors, such as population growth, speculation in commodities markets and changing dietary habits worldwide, have contributed to the recent rise in prices, De Schutter said. But he also noted that increased production of plant-derived transport fuels has helped make food more expensive by causing a significant amount of arable land to be shifted from food production to the production of bioethanol and biodiesel.

Focussing on the issue of biofuels, De Schutter said that increased production could have serious human rights implications beyond the negative impact on access to food. The shift in production away from food crops has also driven up the price of farmland, in some cases so much so as to make it unaffordable for small-scale producers. In extreme cases, De Schutter said, the push to create new mega-plantations could drive indigenous people off their land and erode agricultural working conditions in the developing world.

Moreover, biofuels production could widen the gap between rich and poor, De Schutter found. “When produced in developing countries in order to satisfy the growth of demand in industrialised countries, agrofuels may lead to distorted development, benefiting only a minority, and worsening the lot of many others,” he said in the report.

Sustainability standards for biofuels?

De Schutter recommended that the Human Rights Council begin looking at the food crisis – and biofuels production – from a human rights perspective, a framework which he said would allow a consideration of the trade-offs between the consumer costs and producer gains associated with high food prices.

He cited a “need to strengthen the protection of the human rights of the most vulnerable groups including land-users whose land tenure is insecure, landless labourers, women, the displaced, indigenous people, minorities, the disabled and the rural and urban poor.”

De Schutter also said that the Council should work to build an international consensus on agrofuels, so as to avoid “the negative impact of its development on the international price of staple food commodities.” He stressed the importance of ensuring “that the production of agrofuels respects the full range of human rights and does not result in distorted development in producer countries.”

To that end, he said that countries should be allowed to refuse imports of agrofuels from states that fail to meet sustainability and human rights standards, which could include labour conditions. He said that a waiver from the WTO could allow states to discriminate in such a way - a practise that would normally be illegal under world trade rules.

However, a Brazilian representative who attended the presentation responded by emphasising that biofuels were “not the villain” in the global food crisis, and that increased biofuels production could in fact make an important contribution to economic and social development.

NGO report takes aim at Latin biofuels

In related news, a recent report by Friends of the Earth International slammed biofuels production in Latin America, concluding that rapid development of plant-derived fuels is threatening biodiversity, accelerating deforestation and spreading poor labour conditions in the region.

“More agrofuels means that agribusiness companies, financial speculators, and big landowners will make vast profits at the expense of people and the environment,” Paul de Clerck, Corporate Campaigner for Friends of the Earth International, said.

While the report, titled “Fuelling destruction in Latin America,” targeted several Latin American countries, it singled out Brazil, the region’s biggest ethanol producer, for especially harsh labour conditions for its sugarcane cutters, as well as its extensive use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers in agrofuels production.

The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (ÚNICA) issued a statement rebutting the NGO report, claiming that the information it provided was “out of context, inaccurate and generally outdated.”

ÚNICA President Marcos Jank said that Brazil had made significant strides towards increasing the sustainability of its agrofuels production by reducing associated carbon dioxide emissions, creating jobs and developing new technologies. “The Brazilian experience is the longest and most successful effort at large-scale, sustainable production and use of a biofuels in the world to date,” Jank said in the statement.

Additional resources

To access the report “Fuelling Destruction in Latin America: The Real Price of Agrofuels” visit http://www.foei.org/en/publications/pdfs/biofuels-fuelling-destruction-latinamerica

ICTSD reporting; “Unchecked biofuels could lead to food shortages: UN expert,” AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 9 September 2008; “UN report: biofuels adding to food crisis,” VOICE OF AMERICA NEWS, 10 September 2008; “Skyrocketing prices continue to threaten the right to food, UN expert says,” UN NEWS SERVICE, 10 September 2008; “EU Panel Votes to Cut Goal for Biofuels From Crops,” REUTERS, 12 September 2008; “MEPs’ biofuel vote could bring production to ’standstill’,” EUROBSERVER, 12 September 2008.