EU shift on biofuels policy could be good news for South

A major piece of news relating to biofuels was announced today.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas admitted that the EU policy to get 10 per cent of Europe's road fuels from plant-based biofuels could create problems such as rising food prices and rainforest destruction in developing nations.

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging. Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment, according to the BBC.

Sonja Vermeulen, senior researcher in IIED's Forestry and Land Use Programme, says: "The EU announcement is an important step towards reconciling the highly polarised positions of biofuels supporters (mainly governments, investment agencies and large companies) and detractors (mainly environmental NGOs and lobby groups)."

"Government targets, rather than independent market demand, have been the major force behind acceleration of biofuels markets over the past five years," says Vermeulen. "Thus the EU announcement should have a major impact on market development - even more so if other major importers, such as the US and India, follow suit to establish sustainability standards."

"In reality, policy decisions about biofuels involve difficult trade-offs: carbon benefits versus other environmental benefits; food security versus export development; efficient large-scale production versus smaller-scale or mixed production systems that deliver more equitable rural development."

"We hope that any new certification scheme for biofuels considers the distribution of costs and benefits of the scheme, especially to poorer producers and consumers."

Sonja is among the authors of a report on biofuels that IIED recently produced for the Common Fund.

The report is about the difficult trade-offs and hard choices that potential producer countries need to consider when deciding whether, and how, to invest in biofuels. It provides a 'decision tree' to guide national governments and other decision-makers through the key choices (including those on feedstock choice, food security, environment, social issues, economics and markets).

You can download the report as a pdf from:
http://www.common-fund.org/download/actualiteit/07Biofuels.pdf

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact:

Mike Shanahan
Press Officer
International Institute for Environment and Development
Email: mike.shanahan@iied.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 7872 7308
Fax: +44 (0)20 7388 2826
http://www.iied.org

NOTES TO EDITORS

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) is an independent, non-profit research institute. Set up in 1971 and based in London, IIED provides expertise and leadership in researching and achieving sustainable development (see: http://www.iied.org).