The proposed 10% target for 2020 has been confirmed by the European Parliament’s Committee for Industry, Transport and Research (ITRE),
despite the overwhelming evidence that this target will inevitably cause accelerated deforestation, faster global warming,
more people going hungry, and more and more communities losing their land and livelihoods.
Apart from the 2020 10% target, there will also be a 5% mandatory interim target for 2015.
Furthermore, both targets will contain sub-targets which say that a proportion will have to be met primarily from
second generation biofuels though possibly also from biofuels on so-called ‘degraded lands’. Second generation biofuels
will create a large new market for monoculture tree plantations, including GE trees, which are, if anything, as damaging as
palm oil and soya plantations. They will also create a new market for ‘agricultural and forest residues’ which are essential
for soil regeneration and biodiversity.
It is not clear at this stage how ‘degraded lands’ will be defined but there is a risk that the definition could include vast
areas of land which many governments call ‘marginal ‘ or ‘waste lands’ and which in reality are largely community lands,
including pasturelands but also community forests, on which large numbers of people depend for their livelihoods and which are
vital for biodiversity.www.gaiafoundation.org/documents/Agrofuels&MarginalMyth.pdf
A wide definition would allow the entire target to be met from first-generation biofuels.
There will be a review of the 2020 target in 2014, however, 2014 will be far too late to address the urgency of the crisis triggered by agrofuel expansion. For example, UNEP expects all lowland forests in Sumatra and Borneo to have been destroyed by 2012, largely for palm oil and the FAO estimate that 75 million more people are going hungry today than last year.
Our analysis shows that the greenhouse gas standards included in the draft directive will not in any way reflect
the true climate impact of biofuels and are based on creative accountancy, not on scientific knowledge.
The proposed 'sustainability standards' cannot address the fact that the demand created by the target and even the EU's current consumption of agricultural commodities (including palm oil and soya) as well as wood are unsustainable. Nor have they been in any way endorsed by the communities most directly affected. Serious weaknesses in the rules will ensure that the target can nonetheless be met:
Negative indirect impacts will not be addressed, except that a very small additional value for indirect land-use change emissions will be added to greenhouse gas assessments after 2012, one which will almost certainly not in any way reflect the true impacts. For example, companies will be allowed to sell biofuels from old plantations as 'sustainable' whilst at the same time cutting down more rainforest and/or evicting people for a new plantation to serve other markets.
The EU can enter into bilateral agreements with other countries and decide that, based on those agreements all the biofuels from a country will be deemed to be 'sustainable' for up to five years;
No credible verification methods have been proposed.
Biofuelwatch continues to support the campaign for an immediate EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures,
including a moratorium on all targets and incentives, a call supported by over 200 groups from North and South.
(www.econexus.info/biofuels.html)
