Sustainability Issue #4 August 2010

At the time of writing, I am at Schiphol Airport on my way home from a scientific workshop about the UN convention on biodiversity. During five days in Nairobi, we had discussions and arguments about biofuels and their relation to biodiversity and sustainable development.

Biofuels arrived as a new and increasingly important issue in the work on the convention as recently as 2006. A polarised debate already took place, with Brazil which after the US is the second largest producer of biofuel (ethanol) in the world, defending the great advantages of biofuel without any reservations. It was presented as a means of counteracting climate change, without harmful effects on biodiversity or human living habitats.

Indirect effects

At the same time, detailed documentation is available which shows that biofuel production creates revolutionary changes in ecosystems. The reason is that very large areas of land are used at the expense of food production. In addition, new areas are continually taken into use through conversion of natural grasslands, such as the very species-rich cerradon in Latin America, into large fields of sugar cane or soya for biofuel.

These changes in land use also give rise indirectly to further changes, since replacement land for local food production, both fields and pastures, must be made available through felling rain forests or ploughing up the cerradon.

Cropping tests in Tanzania. The sugar cane plantation at Bagamoyo was not successful, since it is an arid region and requires huge changes in rivers and groundwater for large scale irrigation. The installation has been sold after bankruptcy. Photographer: David Dahmén.

Increased poverty

During the four years since then, a lot has happened. Brazil and the US are still among the globally largest producers of biofuel, while Africa has become a battleground for land investments. The interest comes from European investors, but to an increasing extent also from Asia, mainly China. In this context, land use is a key issue. In many countries there are no regulations regarding the purchase of land on a large scale, and irrespective of formal property rights there exists a traditional right to make use of resources on uncultivated land. Grazing rights for domestic animals, and the collection of fuel and medicinal plants, are some examples of this.

When biofuel plantations are established on such land, people are therefore evicted and lose the access to resources that are essential for their lifestyle. They have to become workers on the plantation in a market economy, or move to the slums of nearby towns. Biofuel production that is carried on in this way can therefore become a driver for urbanisation and increased poverty.

“Land security”

At our recently concluded SBSTTA meeting the biofuel issue was debated hard and long. Over five days, the 167 attending countries could not agree on the formulation of recommendations to the meeting for political negotiations on biodiversity, COP 10, in October 2010. A document full of parentheses for further negotiations was instead produced.

Land use and the power over land are such highly charged concepts that they were not even allowed to figure in the document. The nearest we came to a consensus was that a new concept, “land security”, was introduced by some African countries and was accepted through being equated with “food security”. Several EU countries wanted to introduce the concept “degraded land” as land suitable for biofuel production. But since in developing countries this is often equated with “marginal”,  “idle” or “waste land”, i.e. unutilised and unpopulated land, although it is precisely the opposite, several African countries fought against this classification.

Urbanisation. People are forced to move to the towns when they can no longer grow crops. In Nairobi, Kenya, families try to create income in other ways. Photographer: David Dahmèn

Biofuel takes over. Oil palm plantation outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The oil is used as biofuel and in industry and households. Traces of villages, fields and pasture land can be seen underneath the rows of palms. Photographer: Gunilla A. Olsson

The users of biofuel. The EU has introduced a law that by 2020 vehicle fuel must have a ten per cent admixture of biofuel – ethanol and biodiesel. But where is the biofuel to be produced? Photographer: Mikael Röhr

40 per cent of arable land

The production of biofuels or “agrofuels” has very quickly arrived on the international agenda as a means of reducing climate effects through lower emission of greenhouse gases compared with fossil fuels, and because of the realisation that oil supplies are running out and this energy source must be replaced.

The EU has introduced a law on the admixture of 10 per cent of biofuel – ethanol and biodiesel – in vehicle fuel by 2020. Several other countries including the US have similar targets. On the basis of the energy use today, this would mean that 40 per cent of the present total arable land area in the world would be used for the production  of agrofuels.  Food for people will then have to be grown somewhere else.

Further challenges are that the yield of crops is expected to decrease as a result of climate changes and higher oil prices which makes agrochemical input such as synthetic fertilisers more expensive, which will in turn reduce yields further. The fact that population is growing, and that more and more people are eating meat in Asia also, especially in China, also increases the demand for more land for food production.

The lower climatic effect of biofuels is based on a number of assumptions, for example that the type of  cultivation method will be different and that crops for biofuel production will not grown be on forest land or land covered by vegetation. If this happens, this may give rise to carbon dioxide emissions in excess of that from the burning of oil products. Other aspects of the land use of biofuel production such as its impact on water supplies, nutrient balance, biodiversity directly or indirectly, effects on ecosystems through the use of alien or genetically modified species, are not dealt with in this article but are included in the SBSTTA document.

Global solidarity

Is not biofuel production different from other plantation production? No, not in principle, but since biofuels have such strong coupling to the issue of climate there is an element of global solidarity in the argumentation for biofuels. It is a matter of producing something as a global good. Liquid biofuels are today produced mainly in tropical regions, for productivity reasons which can be generalised as follows:

Production occurs in the global south for consumption in the global north, and at the same time it is a cause - in some regions such as East Africa – of competition for land for local food production or for biofuels for export. Land security is therefore essential for food security and is a charged concept in areas where the international biofuel industry is present and involved in political interests.

Land as a resource at the centre of political conflicts has particularly figured in resource-rich regions with oil or mineral deposits. This is undergoing a change now – not least in view of global climate change – it is the access to land and water for growing food and energy that is the key cause of conflicts.  This will become increasingly evident in the near future.

• Tell a friend
• Like
• Push Delicious Digg

Back issues

Conferences