Sostenibilità sociale e ambientale
Action Aid report condemns EU biofuel targets
Biofuels cause hunger and poverty, says Action Aid.
As an international conference on biofuels opens in Brazil this week, development NGO Action Aid launches a new report that links increasing hunger and poverty in developing countries to Europe’s recent biofuel rush.
“In 2007 the EU used 2.85m hectares of farmable land to grow crops for agrofuels, rather than food,” said Laura Hurtado, who is food rights coordinator at ActionAid in Guatemala. According to the NGO this has contributed to the increasing food prices that are now threatening millions of people with hunger. It does not look like a solution will be found in the short term, either, as Europe, that is running out of land, is looking to farmland in developing countries so that it will be able to meet its targets on biofuels. These targets, agreed upon by EU leaders earlier on this year, state that a tenth of all road vehicle fuel must be “bio” by 2020 and is the EU’s answer to greenhouse gas emissions. According to Hurtado “this will only intensify the food crisis”.
Governments have, so far, been deaf to the appeals made by civil society. Action Aid is not the only organisation to be campaigning against biofuels – Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF are among those who fiercely oppose biofuels as a measure against climate change. In Senegal, where violent riots broke out early on in 2008 because of rising food prices, the government has launched an ambitious plan to expand agrofuel production. Senegal’s forestry department estimates that clearing forests to create plots of jatropha, a drought resistant, high yielding oil crop, could result in a 68% reduction of income for local population. The move also obviously threatens biodiversity and soil quality.
“The rush to expand agrofuel production could undermine national food security. Senegal currently depends on imports for more than 60 percent of its food needs. Consultations between the government and foreign investors who are interested in agrofuel production should also include representatives of local communities,” said Fatou Mbaye, Action Aid Senegal. Women, who grow 60-80% of the world’s food are being hit especially hard by such changes.
Action Aid’s appeal
Ahead of the EU parliamentary vote on biofuels targets in December, ActionAid is asking MEPs to scrap targets and subsidies all together. ActionAid is also pushing for national regulation of biofuels production, the creation of a UN Commission to judge social and environmental impacts and a moratorium on any further use of land for biofuel production until this commission reports back.
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Campaigns to stop biofuels
