Oxfam, Greenpeace reports critical of biofuels expansion
Thu 15 November 2007
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A report from Oxfam says that the EC's 10% biofuels target is creating a scramble to supply fuel in developing countries, posing a serious threat to vulnerable people at risk from land-grabbing, exploitation and deteriorating food security. A separate report by Greenpeace, meanwhile, points to an increased rate of forest clearance in Indonesia to increase biofuels supply.
The Oxfam report (see link) concludes that biofuels need not spell disaster for poor people in the South. Indeed, they should instead offer new market and livelihood opportunities but the agro-industrial model that is emerging poses little in the way of opportunities and much in the way of threats. The report says: "Without the right policies in place among companies, producer governments, and importing governments, the kinds of negative social impacts outlined above will only get worse as the scramble to supply intensifies".
Greenpeace's report - 'How the Palm Oil Industry is Cooking the Climate' (see link) - says that more than 1.4m hectares of virgin forest in Riau, Indonesia, has already been converted to plantations to provide cooking oil, but a further 3m hectares is planned to be turned to biofuels.
Greenpeace says that Unilever, Cargill, Nestlé, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, as well as all leading UK supermarkets, are large users of Indonesian palm oil, much of which comes from the province of Riau in Sumatra, where an estimated 14.6bn tonnes of carbon - equivalent to nearly a year's entire global carbon emissions - is locked up in the world's deepest peat beds.
The report says that forest ecosystems currently store about one and a half times as much carbon as is present in the atmosphere and that without drastic cuts in GHG emissions, climate change – which is in part driven by forest destruction – may soon tip these carbon stores into sources of emissions. Resulting temperature increase could disrupt ecosystems in ways that provoke yet more greenhouse emissions, potentially leading to further acceleration of climate change.
Greenpeace has backed up its report with direct action. The Greenpeace flagship, 'Rainbow Warrior', recently blocked a tanker loaded with over 30,000 tonnes of palm oil from leaving the port of Dumai in Riau Province, Sumatra.
"We are taking action to expose the disastrous effects the palm oil industry is having on Indonesia's peatlands, forests and the global climate" said a Greenpeace spokesperson.
Further criticism of the projected growth in biofuels came from an independent UN expert on the right to food. Jean Ziegler called the growing practice of turning crops into biofuel "a crime against humanity" because, she says, it has created food shortages and caused food prices to rise. Ziegler called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production to stop the implications on food supplies for poor people.
A letter to The Times by academics from four countries responded to Ms Ziegler's comments, describing them as "both stupidly alarmist and not in accordance with the facts concerning world agriculture". The letter said that the current area of land used by biofuels is just over a half of one per cent of the total cropping area and a miniscule fraction of the total area cultivated for food. "To say that such a tiny proportion of the global cropping area has been responsible for small rises in the cost of food is not credible" they wrote.
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