From today, all petrol and diesel sold at UK petrol stations must contain 2.5% of biofuels under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation. Once hailed as the green alternative, many non-governmental organisations now think such fuel is more harmful to the environment,  is responsible for pushing people into poverty, and even for making them homeless.

Biofuels are also thought to be a big factor in the alarming rise in food prices, which is hitting poorer countries hard and has caused protests in countries such as Egypt, Indonesia, Cote D’Ivoire, and The Philippines. In Haiti, 5 people have died as a result of food riots and some countries are taking drastic measures to ration food by throwing crop “hoarders” in jail for life. And the increases in staple crop prices are massive. Wheat has increased by 130%, soya by 87%, rice by 74%, and corn by 31%. Of course there are other factors involved in the food price crisis such as population growth (more mouths to feed), emerging economies (people can afford to eat more-especially meat and processed food) resulting in the collapse of food buffer stocks in some countries. But according to the Food Agriculture Organisation ( FAO), an increased demand for biofuel production will  keep prices above historic levels for the next 10 years and could affect food aid. What’s more re-thinking policy around Biofuels is perhaps easier than slowing population growth or telling people to eat less.

Gordon Brown, The UK Prime Minister has written to the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda (this year’s chair of the US group) to ask the World Bank, IMF and UN to work together on an international plan to help deal with rising food prices (The World Bank and IMF announced their plan yesterday). Yet the UK government review on the impact of biofuels has not been completed before the implementation of the 2.5% biofuel policy today. Also, the European Commission is proposing that by 2020, 10% of all transport fuel within the entire European Union will have to come from biofuels. Is there any joined up thinking going on about the promotion of biofuels on the one hand and the desire to help tackle food prices on the other? The non-governmental agency, Oxfam, has likened this situation to a pantomime horse with the back end not knowing what the front end is doing.

Without doubt, more biofuels means higher food prices and more people on the brink of starvation.  A paper by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)  concluded that the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by more than 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods, meaning that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025; 600 million more than previously predicted. These figures (and the ones I have copied below) are deeply worrying. Surely the number of people in chronic hunger must come before an ill-thought biofuel target? Rhona MacDonald

Key statistics on the effects of biofuels (taken from Oxfam)

• The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that biofuel demand is responsible for about 30% of recent food price inflation
  Higher food prices are felt most by the world’s poor, who typically spend 50 to 80% of their income on food. Any increase in food prices will reduce food consumption and increase hunger
•  Studies estimate that for every single percentage point rise in the price of food, 16 million more poor people become hungry, meaning that by some estimates global biofuel demand may result in an extra 600 million people being hungry in 2025 than was previously estimated
• For the EU’s part, the Commission has estimated that the 10% target will have an impact on world cereal prices of up to an increase of 6%. This translates to 100 million more people going hungry as a result of the EU’s biofuel policy.
• Large-scale growth in biofuels demand has pushed up food prices whilst quite probably making climate change worse. Natural carbon sinks, such as rainforests and grasslands, are being destroyed to make way for new biofuel plantations or food crops displaced by biofuels
• According to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 60m indigenous people worldwide face clearance from their land to make way for biofuels  

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.