Reducing the impacts of biofuels on biodiversity

There is mounting concern that increasing biofuels production, triggered in part by the EU’s 10 per cent target for renewable energy in transport by 2020, is having significant biodiversity impacts. A recent study by the International Food Policy Research Institute estimated that achieving the target would lead to a global increase in cropland of more than 17,000 square km, primarily in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa and former Soviet Union countries. Many of these countries are particularly rich in biodiversity.

The EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) does include sustainability criteria in an attempt to avoid the production of biofuels in highly biodiverse areas. However, a major flaw is that such criteria only apply to biofuels. Therefore although the RED prevents a landowner clearing high biodiversity value land to grow biofuels, it does not stop him clearing the land for another crop that he already grows and then growing biofuels on the vacated land. Such indirect land use change (ILUC) is difficult to measure, but it is thought to be significant in terms of biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions.

IEEP is starting two projects that will attempt to identify policy measures to avoid or mitigate biofuel-related ILUC impacts on biodiversity. One study, for Defra and led by BIO Intelligence Service, will assess the effectiveness of a range of measures that might reduce ILUC. These include promoting the use of feedstocks with little ILUC effect (e.g. true wastes), land use zoning, and reducing the need for cropped land by increasing yields and/or reducing the demand for land-intensive products (e.g. meat).

All of the measures that can reduce ILUC impacts are challenging, but the development of land use zoning may be the most practical. IEEP is investigating this policy option for WWF Germany as support for their SuLu project, which is testing the feasibility of mapping suitable and unsuitable areas for biofuels in Indonesia and Columbia . IEEP will examine the potential for linking such maps to RED biofuel sustainability assessments, but also other agricultural commodities to reduce ILUC. The findings will be discussed at a workshop at the IUCN General Assembly in Korea in September (see IEEP Events).

The reports from both projects should be available around September 2012.

Contacts: Graham Tucker and Bettina Kretschmer