Biofuels – A new threat to climate and climate justice
December 2007
Fires to clear land for Palm Oil
Photo: Nordin, Save Our Borneo
“We have very serious concerns over nuclear energy, genetically modified trees, carbon capture and storage and biofuels for environmental and safety reasons. We consider that these are not ways out to combat global warming, but endangering environment and poor populations.”, Indonesian NGO Forum “The Earth will not give us the extra biomass needed to keep on existing as we do. For a while we might continue to rob this biomass from the poor tropics, but the results are already disastrous for all humanity.” Professor Tad Patzek, University of California Berkley Today, biofuels provide about 1% of global transport fuel. Already, they are causing serious harm to the climate, to communities, food sovereignty and food security and to biodiversity. Most biofuels are agrofuels – made from crops and trees grown specifically for that purpose, such as sugar cane, palm oil, soya, jatropha or maize. Agrofuel expansion means more intensive agriculture and thus more agro-chemicals (including synthetic fertilisers). It also means more destruction of natural ecosystems which play a vital role in regulating the climate, and the displacement of millions of small farmers, pastoralists and indigenous peoples. Figures for ‘life-cycle greenhouse gas reductions’ from biofuels tend to be based on non-systemic micro-studies, which look at individual fields or plantations but do not consider the wider impacts. On a small scale, locally produced and used, biofuels can play a role in meeting the needs of low-energy communities – using, for example, intercropping, or biogas from manure or sewage. If we try to replace a significant proportion of our fossil fuel use with agrofuels the impacts which are already severe, will become irreversible. Read the whole leaflet here (PDF, 3,91MB)
