Biofuelwatch is a volunteer-led campaign group supported by grant funding and donations. The aims of the group are set out in the Biofuelwatch policy below. Anybody who agrees with our aims and who would like to volunteer time for the group or help in any way, please email us at info[at]biofuelwatch.org.uk.
Policy aims and principles:
The Biofuelwatch aims and principles are to:
(a) Campaign against industrial bioenergy, i.e. energy linked to industrial agriculture and industrial forestry. This includes agrofuels, both current ones and 'second generation' ones.
Industrial agriculture, industrial logging and industrial tree plantations are major causes of greenhouse gas emissions and of the destruction of natural ecosystems and biodiversity, which are essential for regulating the climate. They also drive the destruction of sustainable agriculture, displacing small farmers, indigenous peoples, forest and other communities. They are inherently unsustainable and can never be part of the solution to climate change.
(b) Campaign in particular against the drivers of the demand for industrial bioenergy, i.e. against the policies which create an artificial market for agrofuels and other types of large-scale bioenergy and against the companies responsible for land-grabbing and land-conversion for industrial bioenergy.
(c) Support organisations and communities who are negatively affected by industrial bioenergy expansion, for example through sharing of information, media and publicity work and supporting relevant protest email actions.
The growing demand for agrofuels and, increasingly, other types of bioenergy, is accelerating the expansion of industrial monocultures worldwide.
(d) Actively support community groups and other local organisations campaigning against industrial bioenergy.
(e) Support campaigns for food sovereignty and biodiverse, small-scale agriculture, by Via Campesina and other groups.
Small-scale agro-ecological farming and agricultural policies that support food sovereignty are key to mitigating and increasing resilience to climate change.
(f) Raise awareness of the essential role which biodiversity and healthy ecosystems, including healthy soils, play in regulating the global climate, of the fact that the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis are closely linked and cannot be addressed in isolation, and of the need for major reductions in overall consumption, including of energy and wood products particularly in the global North.
We further support the following principles:
