On the Road to Copenhagen

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.  If we are to have a new global agreement in place by the end of 2012 we need to reach agreement by 2009 at the latest to allow time for ratification and implementation.  The next 2 years are therefore critical for global action on climate change.  The critical steps to 2009 are the annual UN conferences on climate change that take place in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007, Poznan, Poland in 2008 and Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009.

The first critical step was Bali and it is here that we saw an agreement from all countries to begin inclusive and binding negotiations on a post-2012 framework, with a view to completing those negotiations by 2009. At Bali a communiqué developed as a result of this initiative was handed directly to Yvo de Boer, Chair of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, by Elliot Morley, President of GLOBE International.

Business and civil society do not have a seat at the formal UN negotiations.  And yet climate change is an issue that affects us all and, if we are to be successful in combating climate change, we all have a role to play. The Road to Copenhagen initiative was created in response to the need for business and key stakeholders to participate in and influence the process leading up to the post 2012 agreement being adopted.

Road to Copenhagen Initiative
By invitation of EU Commission Vice President Margot Wallström, Club of Madrid, Globe Europe and Respect Table joined forces to create the Road to Copenhagen. The initiative builds upon the Global Leadership for Climate Action project launched in 2007 by the Club of Madrid and the United Nations Foundation and the ongoing work of GLOBE with legislators and Respect Table with the business community.

The aim of Road to Copenhagen is to ensure that business and other key stakeholders have a direct input into the post 2012 agreement process via inputs to the policy process at strategically important times.

From Road To Copenhagen 2009

return to top>>>

UNEP's Executive Director at B4E Summit

Singapore, 22 April 2008

We meet here in Singapore for the B4E after 12 months of quite extraordinary developments in terms of climate change and the global response.

In December last year, governments set aside- in quite dramatic ways- narrow national differences in agreeing the Bali Road Map. This is the two year negotiation to realize a deep and decisive climate regime by the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009.

There are many milestones on this route. The meeting in Singapore this week is one of them. It needs to make a contribution to both the greenhouse gas cutting agenda, but also the adaptation one too. For while a path has been laid out for emissions reductions, we know that even our best efforts will still lead to some measure of climate impacts which will fall hardest on the most vulnerable economies and communities.

The ultimate goal and prize is delivering Green Growth and Green Economies that fundamentally shift the way we all produce and consume the Earth's natural resources from a wasteful path to one that is sustainable.

The greening of growth that is now emerging is being propelled by the existing climate agreement and by the prospective of even tighter rules and regulations on carbon-based pollution. Driven too by the continuing evidence from scientists, not just on climate change but also on the wider range of sustainability challenges from ever diminishing fish stocks to loss of top soils and biodiversity.

Green Growth and Green Creativity are also emerging in the financial markets and via new and innovative market mechanisms. Indeed the mobilization of finance in order to meet the climate challenge is also a new and defining development of the past 12 months or so. The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol may deliver up to a $100 billion of investment into cleaner energy and forestry projects in developing countries.

Indeed, if we had a breakthrough in Bali then we also need a breakthrough in Bonn, Germany, next month at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting. For while we may be turning the corner on climate change the same cannot be said for biodiversity and the economically important ecosystems of which it is an integral part. Perhaps some of the emerging market mechanisms in relation to energy and climate could be applied to the world's nature-based assets.

We also have the emerging phenomenon of Green Jobs. UNEP is compiling research on this in collaboration with International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Congress of Trades Unions (ICTU). Currently there are now more people employed in the renewable energy industries than in the oil and gas industry - 2.3 million versus 2 million.

The UN itself is part of the transformation. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has not only made climate change among his priority issues, but has also initiated action on greening the institution. Last year, heads of UN agencies and programmes including UNEP adopted a decision to work towards climate neutrality. The UN spends about $15 billion a year, meaning that such a move can have important repercussions on the greening of national and regional economies.

We are also witnessing the mobilization of all sectors of society. Let me mention the Billion Tree Campaign, which has surpassed all our initial expectations with now over two billion trees planted. We have now set our sights even higher with the aim of planting over six billion trees, one for each person alive on the planet by the climate convention meeting in 2009.

The question is will all this formal and voluntary activity persist and become embedded in the economic development paths of all countries over the coming few crucial years.

There is every chance that the transformations underway are possible in the short, medium to long-term but this is not guaranteed. There are still many hills to climb and hurdles to leap-frog.

In February, UNEP hosted its annual gathering of environment ministers at our Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum in the Principality of Monaco with the Green Economy and the challenges to fully realizing it central to the debates. Several key papers outlined some of the current institutional barriers but also some of the benefits that may arise by breaking those down. Let me cite a few.

Subsidies
Currently, fossil fuel subsidies amount up to $200 billion a year versus support for low-carbon technologies of an estimated $33 billion annually. Removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce C02 emissions by five to six per cent annually.

R+D
Currently the pace of investment in research and development is insufficient. The International Energy Agency estimates that R+D for low emission innovations such as renewables and energy savings declined by 50 per cent between 1980 and 2004. In order to achieve a C02 stabilization target of 550 parts per million, support for innovation needs to rise from just over $30 billion to $90 billion by 2015 and to $160 billion by 2025 according to some experts.

Energy Savings
Over recent years, advances and investments in energy savings in transport and power generation, industry and households, have been reducing the intensity of energy used by 1 to 1.5 per cent a year. Experts say, if the annual rate of improvement in energy efficiency could be doubled to 2.5 per cent worldwide, it might be possible to keep carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere below 550 parts per million (ppm) through the end of the century. These should be supported by policies including stronger energy savings building codes for new and existing structures; penalties or disincentives for builders to choose the cheapest, least energy efficient designs, materials and gadgets.

Other actions could include policies that promote mass transit especially rail and international minimum performance standards for industrial and household appliances. Other measures include the promotion of utility pricing that favours energy efficiency; promotes combined heat and power and improves energy savings in existing power plants and electricity transmission infrastructure.

Renewables
Policies that increase the uptake of renewables may include 'feed-in laws' that guarantee a fixed price for each unit of renewable electricity generated alongside regulations that boost access to the Grid. Government agencies and donors need to develop and deploy new forms of 'end-user' credit schemes to assist consumers to purchase climate mitigation technologies and systems.

The private sector is moving down the Bali Road Map. It is time to accelerate that mobilization. Here in Singapore is a good time. Your contribution to building a global atmosphere of confidence in the art of the possible will play a central role in empowering political leaders to meet the deadline of 2009 and assist in putting in place a new regime, operational post-2012.

The alternative is unconscionable and made clear from the latest assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation. From the melting away of the Himalayan glaciers to the loss of up to a third of the infrastructure of the African coastline, the prospects for business; for communities and for the poor and the vulnerable are indeed bleak.

Indeed, the boom and bust cycles of the past will to my mind be as nothing to those of the near future in a climate constrained world. These will be some of the heavy costs of inaction. But what of the costs of action? The IPCC estimates these at perhaps 0.1 or 0.2 of one per cent of global GDP a year for 30 years.

This is an average: Different economies will benefit or bear the burden in differing ways. This is among the challenges that could lead to detours and dead ends during the path along the Road Map. One of the central achievements of Bali was that both developed and developing countries acknowledged that climate change is everyone's challenges and everyone's opportunity.

return to top>>

Champions of the Earth 2008 Call for Urgent Action on Climate Change

Catalysts for the Global Green Economy Honored at Gala Evening in Singapore

Seven leading lights in the battle against global warming who are also catalyzing the transition to a greener and leaner global economy were acknowledged as the 2008 Champions of the Earth.

The winners, ranging from His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco and the Prime Minister of New Zealand to a Sudanese climate researcher who has been successfully piloting climate-proofing strategies in some of the most stressed communities on Earth, received their trophies at a gala event in Singapore.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) who presented the awards which are hosted in conjunction with the annual Business for the Environment Summit (B4E) said: “The golden thread that links each one of tonight’s winners is climate change, the challenge for this generation and the disaster for the next unless it is urgently addressed”.

“Our winners for 2008 light an alternative path for humanity by taking responsibility, demonstrating leadership and realizing change across a wide range of sustainability issues. These include more intelligent and creative management of natural and nature-based resources from waste and water to biodiversity and agriculture,” he added. “Thus each one is living proof that the greening of the global economy is underway and that a transition to a more resource efficient society not only makes environmental sense but social and economic sense too. I am sure their leadership and their achievements will inspire many others to act as it inspired us at UNEP to name them the 2008 Champions of the Earth,” said Mr Steiner.

The gala event was hosted by UNEP; the Singapore Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and the Singapore Tourism Board with the support of various sponsors and partners including strategic partner Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL); corporate partners The Dow Chemical Company and OSRAM; The event’s international public relations partner is Edelman, and its global media partners are CNN and TIME.

His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco, the European winner, has become an international advocate for greater action on climate change and natural resource management. In 2005 and 2006 he followed in the footsteps of his great, great grandfather Prince Albert I, by going to the Arctic witness at first hand the impacts. This inspired him to establish a foundation in his own name that currently supports close to 60 projects globally.

In thanking UNEP for awarding the prize, the His Serene Highness pledged to “carry out missions to raise the alarm and heighten awareness in the field. The world is facing an unprecedented threat. We must assume our responsibilities without delay and rise to the challenge that history has placed upon our path”.

Abdul-Qader Ba-Jammal, the former Prime Minister of Yemen who was awarded the prize for West Asia, said it was vital to make the connection between improved management of nature and natural resources and the “upgrading of peoples quality of life”. A staunch advocate of more intelligent management of water resources and the need to address sustainable agriculture in dry-lands, he said the awarding of the UNEP prize was not only a personal delight but a “high responsibility”.

Timothy E. Wirth of the United States, whose professional and public life has been shaped by climate change and fostering support in his home country for greater action to cut emissions, said: “With each passing month, each passing year we learn more about the urgency of the task”.

The winner for North America added:” We still have some ways to go, but we still have time to act before chaos and catastrophe hit the globe”. Liz Thompson, the winner for Latin America and the Caribbean whose many achievements include inspiring and pioneering a response to a major challenge for small island developing states--improved solid waste management—said: ”You go to work every day and do something you are passionate about. But do not think anyone is taking notice at this level”.

The former Minister of the Environment and Energy of Barbados said she was “gratified, overwhelmed and shaken” by being named a Champion of the Earth which will spur her on to get the world to take climate change issues more seriously.

Dr Atiq Rahman, the Champion for Asia and the Pacific, said the award would spur him on to ever greater “zeal and to work even faster and stronger” to tackle the issues facing his native Bangladesh and the world as a whole. “I am impatient. Climate change as a man-made disaster is coming at a rapid rate. A one metre sea-level rise would lead to a fifth of my country under water. If we can’t feed the people, there will be chaos,” he said.

Dr Rahman, Executive Director of a leading South Asia sustainability think-tank, said everyone in the world would, in the final analysis “rise together and deliver a better future for this planet or we will all sink together. By integrating environment and development, we are trying to show that North and South and rich and poor do not have two different fates”.

Dr Balgis Osman-Elasha, the winner for Africa, said: “I am trying to convey the message of climate change, to simplify the message, to make it reach the people who are going to be impacted”. The Sudanese researcher has worked on a range of research projects in her native Sudan, including Darfur demonstrating to vulnerable communities the feasibility of adapting to climate change and extreme weather events. Also a leading author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year co-won the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr Osman-Elasha added: “To be awarded the Champions of Earth is an honor. It gives you the feeling and the power to do more and I think the proudest moment is yet to come. We have no other planet—there is only one Earth: this is the message!”

The UNEP Special Prize for Champions of the Earth 2008 was awarded to Helen Clark, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, whose country has set the trail-blazing target of being climate neutral. “We have launched the world’s first, 100 per cent coverage and all sectors Emissions Trading scheme and we will meet the goal of 90 per cent renewable energy by 2025,” she said.

Ms Clark said her vision was “sustain the biodiversity, the cultural diversity and environmental integrity that we have had in our world and which is very, very much under threat”. She described being awarded the Special Champions of the Earth prize from UNEP as “just an incredible boost” and a boost for her country’s reputation: “You do get your critics. But we are making a difference and we will keep making a difference”.

return to top>>>

Tough road lies ahead for global climate deal

There have been numerous disagreements during a week of intense climate change talks in Bangkok but there is one point all sides agree on -- a long, tough road lies ahead.

The five-day negotiations stretched past midnight before reaching a deal aimed solely at setting up more talks, the eventual goal to draft by the end of next year the most far-reaching treaty yet to battle global warming. Rich and poor nations were at loggerheads, with developing countries especially suspicious of a Japanese-led proposal on industry standards and demanding greater aid to help them cope with the ravages of climate change.

The talks set up seven more sessions -- three this year and four next -- amid growing global concern that rising temperatures could put millions of people at risk by century's end through drought, floods and other extreme weather. The next session meets in June in Bonn, Germany.

"We have 18 months to agree on a deal and it is probably one of the most important deals that mankind has negotiated," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace Brazil. "This is showing that we still lack political will and that is something we're very concerned about," he said.

The treaty due next year is meant to decide on an action plan after the Kyoto Protocol's obligations to slash greenhouse gas emissions expire at the end of 2012. The United States, which snubbed Kyoto, and developing nations, which have no obligations under it, agreed at a conference in December in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate to craft the next treaty.

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN body on climate change, acknowledged there were issues that each side was "very attached to" and said the Bangkok agreement created "bite-sized chunks" to allow smoother negotiations. "It takes time to find a way out and they did," he said of the Bangkok negotiations.

De Boer said the Bangkok talks made genuine headway by approving a statement that lauds the burgeoning market in carbon emissions trading. Under Kyoto, countries and companies can buy and sell credits to emit greenhouse gases so as to meet their own requirements. De Boer said the statement sent a strong signal that the market would continue even after Kyoto's obligations run out.

"Businesses have been asking for clarity on this issue and now they have it, making it possible for them to plan their investments accordingly," de Boer told an early morning press conference.

The Bangkok talks, attended by more than 160 countries, also called for studies into how to slash emissions by airplanes and ships. International transport accounts for a growing amount of emissions but was exempted under Kyoto obligations, in part because the sector is inherently difficult to classify under individual countries.

Talks stalled late in the conference as Japan pushed for an early discussion of a "sectoral" approach, in which each industry is given standards for energy-efficiency.  Japan's chief delegate, Kyoji Komachi, said he believed more countries came to understand Tokyo's position but that more work was needed.

Developing countries and environmentalists charged that Japan, whose emissions are rising amid an economic recovery, was trying to pass on the burden of emissions cuts to nations with less energy-efficient infrastructure.  "They didn't get the respect for their proposal that they wanted and instead half the rest of the world is now very suspicious as to what Japan's real agenda is," said Daniel Mittler, a climate expert at Greenpeace International.

Byron Blake, an envoy from Antigua and Barbuda which leads the bloc of developing nations, said the Japanese sectoral approach "would move away from the spirit of the convention and the protocol. The real negotiations are going to take place over the next two years."

Greenpeace Brazil's Furtado said the at-times painstakingly slow negotiations in Bangkok to agree future meetings, or a 'workplan,' did not bode well for the future. "If we took all these hours to agree on a workplan, one can only imagine what will happen when the real negotiations take place," he said. "It is a worrisome indication of how these negotiations will develop."

From Yahoo News

return to top>>>

A look back at the
Bali road map

“What use is a road map without a destination?” wondered Stavros Dimas, the European Union Commissioner for Environment, at a press conference during the annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, Indonesia, held from December 3 to 14, 2007.

The cause of his bewilderment could, perhaps, be explained by the fact that 10 days of hectic parleys on the future of the international community’s response to climate change were yet to yield any concrete results.

In a dramatic finale, the United States stood down on a proposal put forward by India, and supported by G-77/China, to include nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country- parties in the context of sustainable development, technology financing and capacity building in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner. The Indian proposal came as a final attempt to address a long-standing U.S. concern that all signatories to the Convention on Climate Change be held accountable for mitigation measures.

Scheduled at a time when the Synthesis Report 2007 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) bold assertion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures”, the UNFCCC was expected to deliver the much-anticipated “Bali road map” to chart out a course to check rising temperatures and restore the global climate system to a degree of stability. As has become evident, the root cause of global warming lies in the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG), particularly carbon dioxide, in the earth’s atmosphere in the period following the Industrial Revolution. The conference, like the 13 others that preceded it, was tasked with the aim of reducing anthropogenic GHG emissions in a bid to tackle rising global temperatures.

“Science has spoken,” intoned Yvo de Boer at the opening session of the Conference on December 3, 2007. “It is for politicians and policymakers to respond to its conclusions.” But, as events at the conference suggested, science itself is never truly free of politics.

In December 1997, delegates convened at Kyoto, Japan, to launch a Protocol that would, for the first time, commit developed countries to mandatory and legally binding cuts in their carbon emissions. Based on the system of common but differentiated responsibility, the Protocol required 36 developed countries and economies in transition (termed Annex 1) to an average reduction of GHG emissions to 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels with differing specific reductions.

The first commitment period was to come into force between 2008 and 2012, when countries were expected to meet their targets. Delegates at Bali 07 had convened to arrive at a post-Kyoto road map at a time when the IPCC report suggested that subsequent commitment periods would require far more drastic cuts. According to the report, “Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in 2005 exceed by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years.” Increases in GHG emissions in the atmosphere are largely because of fossil fuel use, with the energy, transport and industrial sectors accounting for nearly 60 per cent of GHG emissions in 2004.

The centrality of these three sectors in any economy and the vast disparity in fossil fuel and energy consumption across nations have meant that emission reductions have been politically difficult for many economies to accept: particularly the United States, the world’s largest emitter of GHGs. Thus, despite signing the framework, the U.S. has not taken on binding emission targets and, as has been evident from its actions at Bali, has systematically stymied negotiations at every level.

As outlined by the UNFCCC, the Bali outcomes were expected to deliver along two major axes: “Negotiation Tracks” and “Building Blocks”; not, as the Executive Secretary was at pains to point out, specific targets for emission reductions.

“It is difficult to explain progress at Bali to our constituencies back home,” explained a delegate, “as voters often don’t understand why agreeing to negotiate can be so problematic.” However, as the delegate explained, a summit like Bali serves to separate the “negotiable from the non-negotiable”, thereby setting the parameters for compromise, concession and, hopefully, agreement.

While the ramifications of the decisions and developments at Bali 2007 can, and should, be debated at length, the one thing that is certain is the centrality of the climate change issue in global development politics.

The degree of public pressure, particularly on developed country delegations, suggests the beginning of a deeper engagement with the challenges posed by climate change. “Saving the poor” seems to have lost some of its lustre at global conferences, but “saving the planet” has clearly struck a chord with governments across the world.

From Frontline

return to top>>

Does Kyoto Work?

Scientists have wrongly assumed that carbon emissions will drop in newly industrialized countries

A gale is lashing orthodox climate policy. An article was published in the journal Nature that could shake the certainty of anyone who assumes the Kyoto-protocol approach is the only way to go.

Three climate experts offer some inconvenient truths. Roger Pielke, Tom Wigley and Christopher Green show it is even more ugent than we thought to abandon the failed Kyoto strategy and move quickly to policies that might actually reduce carbon emissions.

Any workable strategy has to include India and China: Kyoto did not. As they rapidly industrialise and reduce poverty, their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will rise steeply – by as much as 13% a year for the period from 2000 to 2010 in the case of China.

The Nature piece is titled “Dangerous assumptions”. Most dangerous of all is the assumption built into all the scenarios that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published, which means that the technological challenge is at least twice as big as people believe.

The IPCC has assumed that about three-quarters of the emissions reduction required to stabilize CO2 levels will occur “spontaneously”. It is well documented that after an initial upswing, the “energy intensity” of industrial societies – the amount of energy they use to make money – tends to decline impressively and continuously. When this happens, lower CO2 emissions come along as a free rider.

“Dangerous assumptions” shows that, globally, this is no longer the case. Principally because of the rapid industrialisation of India and China, reduction in energy intensity has levelled out or reversed in recent years. The global economy is not decarbonising – it is recarbonising.

If the free rider of carbonization is not available, the challenge to move quickly to a radically different type of climate policy is all the greater.

What would a materially effective policy do? It would break the link between poverty reduction and carbon emission, recognising that the developing world needs to consume – and will consume – more energy, not less. It would recognise that attempting to control human-created carbon emissions by setting binding output targets and relying on artificial carbon markets and dodgy offsets, as Kyoto does, has not and will not work.

Such a policy would shift to input and concentrate on radical improvements in the production and use of energy. The shape of the future agenda might reside in Japan. Supported by other Pacific powers, it is leading a profound shift to an emphasis on radical reductions in energy intensity. This concentrates initially on the most energy-intensive sectors, with ambitious plans for technology to help China and India reduce the effect of their coal burning, which will be an inescapable feature of the next 30 years. CO2 targets, which evidence shows do not work as mandatory drivers of policy, can still be helpful guides.

This strategy will be a centerpiece of July’s meeting of the G8 near Hokkaido in Japan. The vital importance of the tree-shaking analysis in Nature is that it gives reasons for anybody who takes climate policy seriously – and not just as a surrogate for playing other sorts of political games – to welcome and follow these Japanese guides, travelling the hard but necessary road from Kyoto to Hokkaido.

Sourced from Mail & Guardian

return to top>>>

The Clean Energy Dilemma

The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation.

This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.

Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

Backed by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it's subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It's the remorseless economics of commodities markets. "The price of soybeans goes up," laments Sandro Menezes, a biologist with Conservation International in Brazil, "and the forest comes down."

Backed by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it's subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It's the remorseless economics of commodities markets. "The price of soybeans goes up," laments Sandro Menezes, a biologist with Conservation International in Brazil, "and the forest comes down."

Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources - cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows - it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world's population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations - and it's only getting started.

This destructive biofuel dynamic is on vivid display in Brazil, where a Rhode Island-size chunk of the Amazon was deforested in the second half of 2007 and even more was degraded by fire. Some scientists believe fires are now altering the local microclimate and could eventually reduce the Amazon to a savanna or even a desert. "It's approaching a tipping point," says ecologist Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center.

That the destruction is taking place in Brazil is sadly ironic, given that the nation is also an exemplar of the allure of biofuels. Sugar growers here have a greener story to tell than do any other biofuel producers. They provide 45% of Brazil's fuel (all cars in the country are able to run on ethanol) on only 1% of its arable land. They've reduced fertilizer use while increasing yields, and they convert leftover biomass into electricity.

The environmental cost of this cropland creep is now becoming apparent. One groundbreaking new study in Science concluded that when this deforestation effect is taken into account, corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce about twice the emissions of gasoline. Sugarcane ethanol is much cleaner, and biofuels created from waste products that don't gobble up land have real potential, but even cellulosic ethanol increases overall emissions when its plant source is grown on good cropland. "People don't want to believe renewable fuels could be bad," says the lead author, Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and former Environmental Defense attorney. "But when you realize we're tearing down rain forests that store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less carbon, it becomes obvious."

The growing backlash against biofuels is a product of the law of unintended consequences. It may seem obvious now that when biofuels increase demand for crops, prices will rise and farms will expand into nature. But biofuel technology began on a small scale, and grain surpluses were common. Any ripples were inconsequential. When the scale becomes global, the outcome is entirely different, which is causing cheerleaders for biofuels to recalibrate. "We're all looking at the numbers in an entirely new way," says the Natural Resources Defense Council's Nathanael Greene, whose optimistic "Growing Energy" report in 2004 helped galvanize support for biofuels among green groups.

Several of the most widely cited experts on the environmental benefits of biofuels are warning about the environmental costs now that they've recognized the deforestation effect. "The situation is a lot more challenging than a lot of us thought," says University of California, Berkeley, professor Alexander Farrell, whose 2006 Science article calculating the emissions reductions of various ethanols used to be considered the definitive analysis. The experts haven't given up on biofuels; they're calling for better biofuels that won't trigger massive carbon releases by displacing wildland. Robert Watson, the top scientist at the U.K.'s Department for the Environment, recently warned that mandating more biofuel usage--as the European Union is proposing--would be "insane" if it increases greenhouse gases. But the forces that biofuels have unleashed--political, economic, social--may now be too powerful to constrain.

Industry advocates say that as farms increase crop yields, as has happened throughout history, they won't need as much land. They'll use less energy, and they'll use farm waste to generate electricity. To which Searchinger says: Wonderful! But growing fuel is still an inefficient use of good cropland. Strange as it sounds, we're better off growing food and drilling for oil. Sure, we should conserve fuel and buy efficient cars, but we should keep filling them with gas if the alternatives are dirtier.

The lesson behind the math is that on a warming planet, land is an incredibly precious commodity, and every acre used to generate fuel is an acre that can't be used to generate the food needed to feed us or the carbon storage needed to save us. Biofuels can be a godsend if they don't use arable land. Possible feedstocks include municipal trash, agricultural waste, algae and even carbon dioxide, although none of the technologies are yet economical on a large scale.

The trouble is that even if there were enough financial incentives to keep the Amazon intact, high commodity prices would encourage deforestation elsewhere. And government mandates to increase biofuel production are going to boost commodity prices, which will only attract more investment. Until someone invents that protein chip, it's going to mean the worst of everything: higher food prices, more deforestation and more emissions.

Advocates are always careful to point out that biofuels are only part of the solution to global warming, that the world also needs more energy-efficient lightbulbs and homes and factories and lifestyles. And the world does need all those things. But the world is still going to be fighting an uphill battle until it realizes that right now, biofuels aren't part of the solution at all. They're part of the problem.

From Time Magazine

return to top>>>

Brazil president defends biofuels

“Biofuels aren't the villain that threatens food security”
- Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has rejected allegations that biofuels are responsible for the recent rise in global food prices. He said food had become more expensive because people in developing countries were gaining greater access to it. Mr Lula was speaking at a conference of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Brasilia.

A chorus of opposition to bio-fuels has been growing in different parts of the world in recent months. Environmental groups, government ministers and even world leaders like President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela have all voiced their concerns that the use of crops like sugar-cane and corn to make fuel for cars could lead to a serious food crisis.

Crime against humanity
Critics claim biofuels are also partly responsible for the recent rise in global food prices.
And Jean Ziegler, the UN's Special Rapporteur for Food Rights and a Swiss national, has described biofuel production as a crime against humanity.

President Lula, whose country is the world's largest exporter of biofuels such as ethanol, said it was easy for someone sitting in Switzerland to preach to Brazil. He said allegations that global food prices were rising because of biofuels were baseless. "Biofuels aren't the villain that threatens food security," said President Lula. "On the contrary... they can pull countries out of energy dependency without affecting foods."

Food prices were going up, he said, because people in developing countries like China, India and Brazil itself were simply eating more as their economic conditions improved. The president has signed several important cooperation deals with the US, another leading biofuels producer, as well as with several African countries, to work together to improve production.

The battle against biofuels has united a dichotomous group ranging from environmental activists to the leaders of some of the world's largest oil producing countries.

Sourced from BBC News

return to top>>>

Bad policy, not biofuel, drives food prices - Merkel

BERLIN (Reuters) - Bad agricultural policies and changing eating habits in developing nations are primarily to blame for rising food prices, not biofuel production as some critics claim, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Environmentalists and humanitarian groups have stepped up campaigning against biofuels, arguing they divert production away from food and animal feed while contributing to sharp rises in the price of cereals and milk products.

But Merkel, whose country is Europe's largest biofuel producer, said the rise in food prices was not mainly due to biofuels but to "inadequate agricultural policies in developing countries" as well as "insufficient forecasts of changes in nutritional habits" in emerging markets.

"If you travel to India these days, then a main part of the debate is about the 'second meal'," Merkel said.

"People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people. That's a large part of the European Union," she said.

"And if they suddenly consume twice as much food as before and if 100 million Chinese start drinking milk too, then of course our milk quotas become skewed, and much else too," she said referring to EU limits on dairy production.

Biofuels, which are seen by supporters as a way to increase energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are made mainly from food crops such as grains, oilseeds and sugar.

Critics argue there are few, if any, environmental benefits for so-called first generation biofuels. They have also been blamed for increasing grain demand and pushing up prices at a time of growing threat of famine in some parts of the world.

The FAO and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have said biofuels were "one of the main drivers" for forecasts of food price increases of 20 percent to 50 percent by 2016.

From Reuters

return to top>>>