UN 'Right to Food' Rapporteur Urges 5 Year Moratorium on Biofuels

2007-11-08 | The message of Biofuels: Biodevastation, Hunger & False
Carbon Credits (SiS 35)[1] getting through to the top. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

Ban on conversion of land to biofuel production

United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler,
has called for a 5-year moratorium on biofuel production. This
recommendation was contained in his interim report [2] submitted to
the UN General Assembly, which met in October 2007. He stressed that
rushing to turn food crops � maize, wheat, sugar, palm oil � into fuel
for cars, without first examining the impact on global hunger, would
be a recipe for disaster. Among the potential impacts identified are
increasing food prices, increasing competition over land and forests,
forced evictions, impacts on employment and conditions of work, and
increasing prices and scarcity of water.

According to Ziegler, a five-year moratorium on biofuel production
would provide time for technologies to be devised and regulatory
structures to be put in place to protect against negative
environmental, social and human rights impacts. It would also allow
measures to be put in place to ensure that biofuel production can have
positive impacts and respect the right to adequate food.

The 232 kg of corn needed to make 50 litres of bioethanol would enable
a child to live for a year, Ziegler pointed out [3]. He said using
land for biofuels would result in �massacres�, predicting a reduction
in the amount of food aid sent to developing countries by richer ones.

Ziegler�s proposal for moratorium aims to ban the conversion of land
for the production of biofuels. He hopes that by the time the
moratorium is lifted science would have made sufficient progress to be
able to create �second generation� biofuels, made from agricultural
waste or from non-agricultural plants such as jatropha, which grows
naturally on arid ground.

I have dealt with the limitations of such �second generation� biofuels
[4] (Ethanol from Cellulose Biomass Not Sustainable nor
Environmentally Benign, SiS 30) and the sustainability of jatropha is
looking increasingly uncertain, as far as large plantations are
concerned [5] (Jatropha Biodiesel Fever in India, SiS 36).

Ziegler rightly deplored the fact that sugar cane plantations for
biofuels are spreading at the expense of food-producing land. Ten
hectares of land could produce food to sustain 7 to 10 farmers, he
said, whereas the same area could only produce enough sugarcane for
one farmer (see also [6] (Biofuels Republic Brazil, SiS 33).

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