Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 8 • Number 22 • 15th December 2008

Rainforest Conversion for Biofuels Production Bad for Environment: Report

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Clearing rainforests to plant crops for biofuels production would be worse for climate change and biodiversity than preserving the existing ecosystem, a new study says. The report, which appears in the academic journal Conservation Biology, says that it would be as long as 75 to 93 years before any benefits to the climate could be realised.

Biofuels have often been held up as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. But debate over the negative environmental aspects related to large scale production of crops such as palm, soy, and sugarcane for conversion to fuel has been growing in recent years (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 6 October 2006, http://ictsd.net/i/news/biores/9061/).

Released on the opening day of the UN Climate Change conference in Poznan, Poland, the study is meant to challenge some emissions-mitigating initiatives that are driving up Biofuels production in many tropical countries. The report’s authors assert that developed countries’ efforts to meet their obligations under the Kyoto Protocol are negatively impacting the environment in developing countries.

“Subsidies to purchase tropical biofuels are given by countries in Europe and North America supposedly to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from transport,” says lead author Finn Danielsen of Denmark’s Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology (NORDECO). ”They encourage [developing countries] to increase their emissions as well as breach their obligations under another agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity.”

The team of botanists, ecologists and engineers relied on published studies and undertook field research on oil palm and forest plots in Indonesia to reach their conclusions. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which was involved in the project, says the study is “the most comprehensive analysis of the impact of oil palm plantations in tropical forests on climate and biodiversity.”

The research team found that rainforest conversion causes a dramatic decline in plant and animal species. Botanist Hendrien Beukema of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands says that major plant groups that are abundant in rainforests are completely absent from plantations. “Forest plants need shady and undisturbed habitat to survive,” she says. For fauna, the study reveals that only one in six forest species are able to survive in a plantation ecosystem.

While the study was primarily conducted in Southeast Asia, where palm is the preferred crop for biofuels production, authors say that other regions are under threat as well. “In Latin America, forests are being cleared for soy production which is even less efficient at biofuel production compared to oil palm,” says co-author Faizal Parish of the Global Environment Centre, a Malaysia-based NGO.

The authors of the study say that reducing deforestation is a more effective means of combating climate change and can also help countries meet their obligations to protect biodiversity. They are calling for the development of common global standards for sustainable production of biofuels.

While the study panned initiatives aimed at rainforest conversion, it found that planting crops for biofuels in select grasslands areas could lead to a net removal of carbon in 10 years.

Additional Information

The study “Biofuel Plantations on Forested Lands: Double Jeopardy for Biodiversity and Climate,” can be found at http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2008/WWFBinaryitem10887.pdf.

“Biofuel Plantations on Tropical Forestlands Are Bad for the Climate and Biodiversity, Study Finds,” WWF PRESS PRELEASE, 1 December 2008; “Clearing Forests For Biofuel Hurts Climate - Study,” REUTERS, 2 December 2008.