Second generation agrofuels will destroy ecosystems and worsen the food crisis

 

The world is undergoing an acute food crisis with soaring prices for basic food and desperate food-related riots that threaten political stability in many Third World countries. By the end of March, prices of rice and wheat were about double their levels a year earlier, and maize prices were over a third higher. According to FAO, the import bill for cereals for the world’s poorest countries will rise by 56% in 2007/08, after a 37% increase in 2006/07.

 

The crisis in food prices is the result of a combination of factors, among which the reduction of supplies due to farmers’ switch from growing crops for food to crops for agrofuels. Rich countries have promoted the production of agrofuels despite strong arguments warning about the ecological and social disaster they would imply on the world's food security and on local peoples’ livelihoods and environments.

 

However, deaf to good sense and wide-open to a new market opportunity, second generation agrofuels are being heralded, to be based largely upon woody biomass. According to Glen Barry (1) “It is a myth that enough unused forest and agricultural waste, and a surplus of land to grow various grasses and wood, exists to base an industrial energy source. The same will be true of ethanol production from trees. Cellulosic ethanol will be the ultimate deforestation biofuel, equivalent to dismantling and burning your home to keep warm.”

 

Dr. Barry explains that “As with agrofuels, a cellulosic ethanol industry will indirectly destroy forests and lead to more costly food by increasing land pressures upon natural forests and agricultural crop lands. We can expect more vast, lifeless, toxic and water dependent monocultures of genetically modified Frankentrees on stolen deforested lands at a net carbon loss. And the agrofuels will be sold to us as a green product, perhaps certified as ‘well-managed’ by WWF, FSC, and other forest sell-outs”.

 

The promotion of cellulosic ethanol would thus result in increased clearing of terrestrial ecosystems: “As if the world's forests, land base, ecosystems and habitats do not have enough demands upon them already, let us try to use them to power seven billion consumers in their drive to each have it all. Think this a needlessly harsh appraisal? Name one time the global economic system has demonstrated self-control in matching growth to underlying resources.” Barry warns that “The Earth system is perilously close to failure and cannot stand more environmental solutions based upon greater and more resource use for current, much less increased, human population and consumption. There is a finite amount of energy that can be taken, and waste put into, the global biosphere before it becomes uninhabitable. And we are reaching or have passed that point.”

 

“It is imperative that we embrace an environmental agenda based upon what is actually needed to maintain and restore ecological systems upon which all life depends. It is too late to put our efforts into anything else than the full package of societal and personal change necessary to maintain the biosphere. There are no solutions worth pursuing at this late date other than those that are ecologically sufficient. Anything less is more of the same disease that is assuredly destroying being”, concludes Glenn Barry.

 

(1) “Burning Forests to Feed Cars. The Ecological Madness of biofuels, Take Two”, Glenn Barry, March 15, 2008, Ecological Internet, Earth Meanders, GlenBarry@EcologicalInternet.org, http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/; Posted by: "Rachel Smolker" rsmolker@uvm.edu