Biofuels Drive Food Crisis

A secret World Bank report obtained by The Guardian concludes that biofuel production is responsible for a 75% increase in global food prices.

“The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

 

Biofuels Pose Poverty Fight Setback

These are scary times for the world’s poorest people. Food, for them, is rapidly becoming unaffordable. This isn’t just one or two countries struck by some natural disaster, it’s a plight now common to the poor around the world.

The World Bank estimates the food crisis has set back the fight against poverty for seven years.

World Bank president and former US trade negotiator, Robert Zoelleck, has called on rich countries to come up with an extra half-trillion dollars for the World Food Programme and to enact a “New Deal for global food policy.” From The Guardian:

“Zoellick said: ‘In the US and Europe over the last year we have been focusing on the prices of gasoline at the pumps. While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it’s getting more and more difficult every day.’
He said the price of wheat had risen by 120% in the past year, more than doubling the cost of a loaf of bread. Rice prices were up by 75% in just two months. On average, the Bank calculates that food prices have risen by 83% in the past three years.

“In Bangladesh a 2kg bag of rice now consumes almost half of the daily income of a poor family. With little margin for survival, rising prices too often means fewer meals,” he said. Poor people in Yemen were now spending more than a quarter of their income on bread. “This is not just about meals forgone today, or about increasing social unrest, it is about lost learning potential for children and adults in the future, stunted intellectual and physical growth. Even more, we estimate that the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is in the order of seven lost years.”

Zoellick criticised the subsidies and import tariffs used to promote wider use of the fuels.

Liz Stuart, spokeswoman for Oxfam, said: “Europe and the US must stop adding fuel to fire by increasing crop production for biofuels. These have dubious environment benefits, and by driving up prices, are crippling the lives of the poor.”

Now, let’s see how long this New Deal takes to make it to the legislative tables of the western nations. Surely there has now been a critical mass of research showing that our hopes for biofuels were unfounded and they’re causing more harm than good.

 

The Biofuel Myth

We’ve been sold the line that biofuels hold the promise of great GHG emission cuts. Maybe not. In fact, dirty old fossil fuel that biofuel is supposed to replace may actually be less harmful. From the New York Times:

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”

 

Saving Indonesia’s Endangered Orangutan

It should have been great news. The orangutan is an endangered species in Indonesian Borneo. The good news was the recent discovery of a colony of 500 of the primates. The bad news is that they were discovered in the course of preparations to clear their tropical forest refuge for a palm oil plantation.

Palm oil is one of the sweetheart crops for the production of biofuels. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Global warming might just save the [orangutans and their] ecosystem. Not only are environmentalists outraged by their possible destruction, but these trees spring from carbon-rich, metres-deep peat – potentially worth millions of dollars under a proposed post-Kyoto Protocol deal to fund the preservation of forests.

Clearing peat forests has made Indonesia the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, sending more than 3000-million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year. It is driven by greed, with palm oil and timber barons lining the pockets of officials from Kalimantan to Jakarta – even the Forestry Minister has blocked prosecution of illegal loggers.