Page 46 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

40 Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

Comprehensive food-energy policies can help achieving the targets of
renewable energy for transport (including solar, wind, and biofuels) and,
at the same time, relieve the pressure from food production. Based on HLPE
recommendations, on the one hand, there is the need to support research
and development (R&D) for advanced biofuels, and to identify ways in
which biofuels could contribute to the restoration of degraded land and bet-
ter management of watersheds. Simultaneously, “research partners should
devise solutions adapted to the needs of the least developed countries and
of smallholders who are most in need of access to energy” (HLPE, 2013,
p. 18).
On the other hand, regardless of the success in the development of
advanced biofuels, food security should be prioritized in any biofuel policy.
Since biofuels sector is more and more globalized and market driven, coun-
tries should create international cooperation mechanisms, including regular
notification of biofuels policies by country, to protect food security threat-
ened by biofuels production (HLPE, 2013, p. 13).
Therefore policies should integrate land and water assessment of biofuels
development, before and after the concessions of land. This assessment
should include in the same measure also nonfood crops because there are
not “magic non-food crops that can ensure more harmonious biofuel pro-
duction on marginal lands. Therefore, non-food/feed crops should be
assessed with the same rigour as food/feed crops for their direct and indirect
food security impacts” (HLPE, 2013, p. 18). For example, “it has become
clear, however, that, while jatropha might have some of the agronomic
advantages initially identified, its economic viability demands high produc-
tivity levels, which in turn require better varieties, better quality soils and
greater water inputs. It provides no ready solution, therefore, to the com-
petition for resources that has been the main source of criticism of first-
generation biofuels” (HLPE, 2013, p. 46).
Moreover, World Health Organization and other relevant stakeholders
should develop appropriate methodologies for assessing international and
national biofuels policies, while Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP)
should ensure only the use of certification schemes which are “multi-
stakeholder, fully participative and transparent” (HLPE, 2013, p. 19). The
transactions cost of such schemes should be limited to include also small
stakeholders.
A holistic perspective, not limited to biofuels, could also help avoiding
the threat of maintaining unsustainable status quo that is stopped at the stage
of weak ecological modernization. Such threat could lead, for example, to a