Policy recommendations

  • The European Union must ensure that its Energy Policy will not harm the food security of the urban and rural poor in developing countries, whose daily survival is threatened by substantially higher food prices. It should draw up a strategy to ensure the urban and rural poor are compensated for higher food prices before installing mandatory levels of biofuels;
  • The European Union should abolish its domestic subsidies and import tariffs for biofuels, in order to allow developing countries to profit from the trade opportunities biofuels offer;
  • The European Union should draw up comprehensive sustainability criteria for biofuels, including more ambitious standards for greenhouse-gas reduction a slight decrease of emissions as compared to fossil fuels is simply not enough and the protection of biodiversity and carbon-rich ecosystems;
  • The European Commission should include social criteria in its review of the Biofuels Directive to guarantee that the rural populations who live off marginal lands and forests are not hurt by expanding agricultural production;
  • The European Union should stimulate local processing and the use of sustainable biofuels in developing countries. Small-scale farmer cooperatives should be stimulated to prevent the benefits from biofuel production from only falling into the hands of large-plantation owners.

Case: Biofuels

24-01-2011 MEP Tarabella: effect EUs biofuel policy devastating

The EU has set a target on transport energy supply that by 2020 10% must come from renewable sources, mostly biofuels. This target has recently been attacked by many MEPs. The cause was the report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) which showed that biofuels will increase CO2 emissions instead of reducing them. In a written question MEP Marc Tarabella (S&D) added another report to the debate. The Tricontinental Centre (CETRI) was commissioned by the Belgium government to investigate biofuels. It concludes that the target will cause both social and evirnomental disasters in Soutern countries. Tarabella wonders how these effects could be prevented and asks the Commission to give a respons to CETRIs conclusions.

Fair Politics has questioned the environmental friendliness of biofuels and the problems in relation to food security and land grabbing in developing countries for many years. Therefore we welcome all questions asked by MEPs on this topic. Biofuels were supposed to be the answer to climate change, yet different research shows that it actually increases greenhousegas emmissions. A second concern is the fact that agricultural land and crops are used for the production of biofuels, instead of food. A second food crisis has just emerged, only three years after the last one. This alone should be enough reason to abandon the EUs target! This is a clear example of an inchorence between the EUs transport energy supply target and its development objectives.

For concerns raised on biofuels, MEP Tarabella (S&D) is recognised as a Fair Politician. He earns a point in our monitoring system.

For morer information on CETRIs report, click here to visit their website.

Monitor fair: S&D

Parliamentary Questions
E-000053/2011
6 January 2011
Marc Tarabella (S&D)

Subject: Biofuels: a mirage pursued by Europe?
In November 2010 a report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) concluded that current European biofuels policy threatens to increase CO2 emissions, rather than reducing them. The Tricontinental Centre (CETRI) has now published a report, commissioned by the Belgian climate and energy minister, Paul Magnette, assessing the impact of biofuel crop expansion in countries outside the EU. Its findings are categorical: however strict the new certification criteria are, they will be unable to halt the social and environmental disasters already unfolding in the countries of the South as a result of Europe's insistence that 10% of its transport energy supply must come from renewable sources (95% of which are biofuels) by 2020. It will in fact be impossible for the EU to meet this target without massive recourse to energy imports.
Deforestation, privatisation of access to vital natural resources, inhuman working conditions sometimes verging on slavery, displacement of food crops, increased food dependency and even considerable increases in greenhouse gas emissions: the picture painted is devastating and raises undeniable issues of public accountability.
By imposing binding targets which can be met only by using imported biofuels, the Commission and the EU Member States are directly responsible for this disastrous situation, which has been repeatedly denounced by environmental NGOs, international solidarity and peasant organisations, and multilateral organisations.
since certification disregards the underestimated indirect impact of biofuel production, the essential questions remain unanswered: how can biofuel producers be held to account for the effects of the displacement of food production to another region or country? How can they be made individually accountable for increasing food dependency in a region or country? How can they be held to account for the survival strategies of peasants who have lost or sold their land?
In light of the above, is the Commission prepared to adopt a position on this report and its conclusions?