LETTER TO MEPs (3.6.2006)

Below is a letter outlining the chief grievances with the EU's biofuel policy (or as a Word .doc). Please send a copy to your MEP, or - even better - use it as inspiration to write in your own words.

Please ask your MEP(s) to call for independent and science-based research on the full impacts of biofuels, leading to a mandatory certification scheme as part of the review of the EU biofuels directive. You may write to as many of your MEPs as you wish.
Please feel free to personalise your letter for greater impact (see also the perspectives of the German Coalition "No to deforestation diesel!" and Dr Glenn Barry's past perspective on the issue).
If you correspond by letter, or fax, you may wish to enclose and highlight supporting articles for key point(s) made, which can be found under sources.
MEPs' contact details can be found at www.europarl.org.uk/uk_meps/.
Please contact us to let us know of any replies, and what your MEP specifically says he/she intends to do or has done.

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................ MEP

European Parliament

Bat. Altiero Spinelli - 11G209

60, rue Wiertz

B-1047 Brussels

Belgium

Dear ..........,

I am extremely concerned that millions of hectares of rainforest have been earmarked for destruction in order to meet Europe’s demand for biofuels.

As soon as the EU Biofuel Directive was passed, both Malaysia and Indonesia declared their intention to become major providers of biodiesel made from palm oil, and to expand oil palm plantations into virgin rainforests. More recently, Friends of the Earth Indonesia have identified the growing biodiesel market in Europe as one of the two key threats to Borneo’s rainforests (see www.eng.walhi.or.id/kampanye/hutan/konversi/060412_palmoilplantation_/).

The European Biofuel Directive was meant to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to be part of the solution to climate change. The destruction of tropical rainforests, however, is linked to about one quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions from all human activities. This figure may be even higher if all the CO2 emissions from tropical peat fires, particularly on Borneo, are included. 2002 satellite images showed that 75% of the fire hotspots were on plantation land, ie almost certainly lit by plantation owners. Most plantations on Borneo are for oil palm Scientists estimate that, on average, those fires might account for CO2 emissions equivalent to those from 15% of all fossil fuels burnt every year. The Kyoto agreement, by comparison, would only reduce global emissions by 5% between 1990 - 2012, if it were successfully implemented by all industrial nations, including the US.

The conversion of rainforests into oil palm plantations (or soya plantations in the Amazon) is now one of the main threats to many thousands of species of animals and plants, including the orang-utan. It has also been linked to serious human rights abuses and the dispossession of many local communities.

When the EU Biofuel Directive was discussed, studies were done to find out how ‘climate-friendly’ fuels derived from sugar beet, rapeseed oil and other crops grown in Europe are - even though it was estimated that Europe could only meet half the demand of the 5.75% target by 2010. No studies were done into the effects of importing biofuels from the tropics. For sources on this and other points I raise in this letter, please see www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/sources.php.

I am sure you will agree that biofuels should only be used if they actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, compared to petrol or diesel. Some biofuels, such as those produced from agricultural and organic waste, or from sustainable local schemes clearly are of great benefit and should be supported.

It is clear that an unregulated biofuel market will encourage more tropical deforestation and peat fires. After all, tropical biofuel crops have a competitive advantage as they achieve higher energy yields per hectare than those grown in Europe.

At Westminster, 69 MPs have signed EDM 1568 "Tropical Rainforest Destruction and Biofuel Sourcing", which seeks that the EU remove the incentive for imports for biofuel from tropical rainforest belt countries of palm oil, soya oil and bioethanol which results from implementing the Biofuel Directive in current form.

I am pleased that the European Commission are carrying out a review of the EU Biofuel Directive and are discussing whether some safeguards with regard to sustainability should be introduced.

In order to ensure a fully sustainable biofuel market, I believe that the following must be done:

There needs to be an independent science-based assessment as part of the review of the EU Biofuel Directive, with independent and science-based monitoring continuing on an ongoing basis in future. This must look at all the different sources of biofuels. It must look at various criteria to establish how sustainable they are. The criteria must include life-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases (including from land-use changes), the impact on old-growth forests, wetlands and natural grasslands, biodiversity, water and soil, on local food supplies, and on the human rights of local communities (which are often violated in Indonesia or the Amazon as palm oil and soya plantations advance).
The assessment must examine the danger of market displacement. E.g. the consumption of rape oil as a biofuel could still displace demand in the veg-oil market on to palm and soya oils.
The independent assessment must evaluate how great a proportion of Europe’s motor-fuel can be replaced sustainably by biofuels. This could be 5.75% - but it might be more or less.
Mandatory certification must be introduced, based on this independent assessment. Voluntary labelling has failed completely in the international timber trade: Europe is still a major importer of illegal timber despite FSC labelling. There is no reason to believe that a voluntary scheme would work for biofuels.
There need to be full safeguards that those biofuels linked to the destruction of old-growth forest will not be imported into Europe, nor others shown to have a negative effect on the environment or local communities.

There is precedent in European law establishing that it is lawful to apply objective environmental criteria in procurement, in the Helsinki Bus ruling, 2002. Furthermore, the recent WTO judgment on GM crops made it clear that only the implementation of the EU policy (mainly the very long delays in determining applications) was unlawful; the WTO did not rule against the principle of banning crops for environmental and public health reasons.

Please will you raise this with the European Commission as a matter of urgency, and call for a full debate in the European Parliament? I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

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