Weak EU Standards for Agrofuels

Hello again

Those of you who know me know that I'm a member of a lobby group that aims to disseminate objective information about Colombia. One of the big issues affecting the disenfranchised populations (most of them indigenous, Afrocolombians, poor people of mixed ethnic backgrounds) is the Colombian government's plan to use vast tracts of land to grow African oil palms to produce agrofuel. It's a good plan, perhaps, if fallow land is made to work. It's not such a good plan if entire villages are destroyed and thousands of people driven off their land by paramilitaries to appropriate the territory for national and multinational companies producing palm oil under inhuman working conditions. This is happening now! The EU must not ever import agrofuels from such sources.

Friends of the Earth Europe has exposed the following, which I'm copying here because it pertains to Colombia (and many other regions where big business is destroying small farmers).

Let's do everything we can to halt the conversion of food into fuel.

More info (in German) on the issue can also be found at http://www.askonline.ch and http://www.agrotreibstoffe.ch

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NEW DRAFT LAW EXPOSES WEAK EU STANDARDS FOR AGROFUELS
Safeguards fail to protect the poor or environment

Brussels, 7 December 2007 - A leaked copy of a new draft law to regulate the use of agrofuels (biofuels) in Europe reveals that the EU will fail to protect the environment and the world's poor, warned Friends of the Earth Europe today.

Adrian Bebb, Agrofuels Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe said: "Europe's plan for how to produce agrofuels does nothing to protect the world's poor
and pays only scant attention to protecting the environment. This proposal shows that the EU will not be able to guarantee the sustainable production of fuels from crops. Now is the time to abandon this folly and introduce real solutions to the climate crisis."

Friends of the Earth Europe has obtained a leaked copy of the proposed Renewables Directive[1], due to be launched early in 2008. The Directive will introduce into EU law a mandatory target that all fuels for transport contain at least 10 percent agrofuels by 2020, and sets out a plan on how to achieve this "sustainably".

Friends of the Earth Europe criticises the draft Directive as it:

- Fails to acknowledge the growing international concerns about the impact of agrofuels on the environment and food security and presses on with a mandatory target.[2]

- Does not sufficiently address the knock-on effect of rising food prices.

- Will not prevent agrofuel production from pushing other farming activities (e.g. cattle ranching or other crops) into rainforests or other important eco-systems. The Commission proposes to just monitor the situation.

- Provides no criteria to protect people in developing countries from the negative impacts of agrofuel production. Land disputes, forced evictions, human rights abuses and poor working conditions occur frequently in many countries producing crops for Europe. The United Nations warned earlier this year that agrofuels could be "especially harmful to farmers who do not own their own land, and to the rural and urban poor who are net buyers of food."[3]

- Introduces only limited "sustainability criteria" aimed at preventing deforestation and damage to wetlands but ignores other important ecosytems such as threatened biodiversity-rich savannahs (for example, the Brazilian Cerrado). The criteria are only applicable to crops used as fuels in transport but not for the same fuels used to produce electricity.[4]

- Prevents EU member states from introducing stronger criteria at a national level.

The European Commission is expected to define the greenhouse gas savings that an agrofuel would have to meet - compared to fossil-based fuels - in order to be supported by the EU. However the leaked draft is still missing this figure, indicating continued internal disagreement within the Commission.

"Using crops to produce fuel is a false solution to climate change – the real solutions lie in forcing car companies to produce cleaner cars, improving public transport and making our towns and cities more energy efficient," Mr Bebb added.


Notes:
[1] www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/documents/Draft_RE_Directive.pdf
[2] A paper this week by the International Food Policy Research Institute concludes that
agrofuel production "currently adversely affects the poor through price-level and price-volatility effects" and that if countries implemented their agrofuel targets then there will be a resulting decrease in food-calorie consumption across all world regions. (http://www.ifpri.org/media/20071204agm.asp)
For more warnings see: www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/warnings.html
[3] http://esa.un.org/un-energy/pdf/susdev.Biofuels.FAO.pdf
[4] For example, more palm oil is used in electricity production in Europe than in cars.


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A Friends of the Earth Europe position paper on agrofuels can be downloaded at:
http://www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels

For more information, please contact:
Adrian Bebb, Agrofuels Campaign Co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth Europe:
Tel: +49 802 599 1951, Mobile : +49 1609 4901163, Email: adrian.bebb@foeeurope.org

Rosemary Hall, Communications Officer at Friends of the Earth Europe:
Tel: +32 25 42 6105, Mobile: +32 485 930515, Email:
rosemary.hall[at]foeeurope.org

For the people, for the planet, for the future
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Rapeseed biofuel "produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol"

Hello again
It's been a while, I know. Magnificently busy, if you'll allow the phrase, recently. All kinds of paid and NGO work plus a superb poetry workshop that has inspired me tremendously. More on that, hopefully, a little later.

For now, I want to share with you just one voice that will (I hope) dampen enthusiasts who thought we might resolve our energy and environmental problems by using food plants to produce ethanol or oil-based fuels for our cars. Not so. The way things look, we may end up jumping out of the frying pan into the fire, almost literally so.

Here in Switzerland, we're trying to get people to stop using the term "biofuel" as it evokes the wrong kind of connotations. "organofuel" or "agrifuel" would probably be better because of the way these crops are produced: large-scale industries producing crops in monoculture fashion. They have very little in common with sustainable agriculture and seem to me to be just another way of making money big time. What they have already produced is a lot less food sovereignty in threshold countries like Mexico. Possibly, even food security is at stake.

Let's not let them get away with it. What we need is a serious push for way more economic transport -- the technology is available and so are the products. Listen up, politicians, and push for those changes!

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2507851.ece

From The Times -- September 22, 2007

Rapeseed biofuel "produces more greenhouse gas than oil or petrol"

Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

A renewable energy source designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is contributing more to global warming than fossil fuels, a study suggests.

Measurements of emissions from the burning of biofuels derived from rapeseed and maize have been found to produce more greenhouse gas emissions than they save.

Other biofuels, especially those likely to see greater use over the next decade, performed better than fossil fuels but the study raises serious questions about some of the most commonly produced varieties.

Rapeseed and maize biodiesels were calculated to produce up to 70 per cent and 50 per cent more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil fuels. The concerns were raised over the levels of emissions of nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Scientists
found that the use of biofuels released twice as much as nitrous oxide as previously realised. The research team found that 3 to 5 per cent of the nitrogen in fertiliser was converted and emitted. In contrast, the figure
used by the International Panel on Climate Change, which assesses the extent and impact of man-made global warming, was 2 per cent. The findings illustrated the importance, the researchers said, of ensuring that measures designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are assessed thoroughly before being hailed as a solution.

[...]

"One wants rational decisions rather than simply jumping on the bandwagon because superficially something appears to reduce emissions," said Keith Smith, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and one of the researchers.

Maize for ethanol is the prime crop for biofuel in the US where production for the industry has recently overtaken the use of the plant as a food. In Europe the main crop is rapeseed, which accounts for 80 per cent of biofuel production.

Professor Smith told Chemistry World: "The significance of it is that the supposed benefits of biofuels are even more disputable than had been thought hitherto."

It was accepted by the scientists that other factors, such as the use of fossil fuels to produce fertiliser, have yet to be fully analysed for their impact on overall figures. But they concluded that the biofuels "can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil-fuel savings".

The research is published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, where it has been placed for open review. The research team was formed of scientists from Britain, the US and Germany, and included Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on ozone.

Dr Franz Conen, of the University of Basel in Switzerland, described the study as an "astounding insight".

"It is to be hoped that those taking decisions on subsidies and regulations will in future take N2O emissions into account and promote some forms of 'biofuel' production while quickly abandoning others," he told the journal's discussion board.

Dr Dave Reay, of the University of Edinburgh, used the findings to calculate that with the US Senate aiming to increase maize ethanol production sevenfold by 2022, greenhouse gas emissions from transport will rise by 6 per cent.
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Human rights violations to push agrofuels

Hi there

Allow me to step onto the soap box and share this with you:

Human rights violations are widespread in connection with oil palm expansion in Colombia, where the Permanent People's Tribunal has just delivered its decision. It condemns various palm oil companies responsible for the illegal occupation of community lands to establish oil palm monocultures.In the process, more than 113 crimes against humanity have been committed, all of which have gone unpunished.

Similarly, in Indonesia, there have already been 350 conflicts over land rights linked to oil palm plantations. The massive biodiesel expansion programme can only add to social conflicts and human rights violations.

For more info go to http://www.wrm.org.uy/GFC (Global Forest Coalition of the World Rainforest Movement)