For loads more resources, info and leaflets check out the Biofuelwatch Website 

Agrofuels are Industrial Scale Biofuels. 

They cause:

• Up to 75% of rising food prices worldwide
• Land displacement and human rights abuses
• Climate Change and Rainforest Destruction

Some Facts:.

• Deforestation in Brazil more than tripled since a year ago, largely driven by rising food prices, reversing past improvements (The Guardian, 30/9/08).
• 75% of rising food prices is due to the expansion of agrofuels (World Bank)
• Deforestation and other changes in land use cause at least 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Stern Revue, 2005).

“Biofuels are a crime against humanity”

(Jean Ziegler, UN independent expert on the right to food Oct 07)

 

Industrial agrofuels aka biofuels contribute to:

 

World Hunger

• The grain needed to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol can feed one person for one year (Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute).

·        100 million extra people around the globe are going hungry in 2008.  (UN World Food Programme, April 2008).

·        A World Bank paper indicates that agrofuels contribute to up to 75% of food price inflation (July 08)

·        “World Food Programme officials say 33 countries face political instability as the urban poor struggle to feed their families” (Gurardian, 5/04/2008).

Human Rights Abuses

• Up to 60 million indigenous peoples are at risk of becoming ‘biofuel refugees’ (UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues)

 

 

 

Agrofuels Exacerbate Climate Chaos By Destroying Eco Systems.  

The rainforests, ‘the lungs of the world’, are being destroyed to grow agrofuels for cars, planes and power plants. 

 

• Deforestation causes at least 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Stern Revue, 2005).
• Peat lands destruction for palm oil causes even more emissions than deforestation as methane is released (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• Indonesia, which holds 90% of SE Asia’s peatlands is the world’s 3rd biggest greenhouse gas emitter globally due to peat destruction for palm oil.
• Ecosystems such as rainforests create their own weather patterns.  A warming and drying effect could soon lead to a failure in the rainfall cycle on which the Amazon forest depends and which it drives.  If this were to happen, up to 120 billion tonnes of carbon could be released over a few years or decades, and rainfall systems on which much of Latin America and the southern US depend for farming could collapse too.

• Agrofuels cause a shift from the biodiversity on which our life depends to sterile monocultures
• Industrial agrofuels use nitrate fertiliser, responsible for nitrous oxide emissions – a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times as powerful as CO2. 
• Even oilseed rape that comprises 80% of EU home-grown biodiesel generates up to 70% more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than fossil fuel diesel (Nobel Prize Winner Paul Crutzen).

15 April 2009: Friends of the Earth research shows Agrofuels increase GHG emissions

The FoE press release said:

“Biofuels could have doubled the carbon dioxide emissions of the fossil fuels they replace – equivalent to putting half a million extra cars on the road – since a new law adding them to UK fuel came in a year ago, new research published by Friends of the Earth shows.

 Conservative estimates show the biofuels obligation, which came into force in April 2008, could have caused 1.3 million tonnes of extra carbon dioxide emissions. The new figures come on the day the Government increases the amount of biofuels in our petrol and diesel from 2.5 to 3.3 per cent.

 The independent study for Friends of the Earth estimates how much forest is being cut down to grow food crops displaced by growing biofuels for the UK – a figure currently omitted in Government statistics.

 It reveals that when the full impact of deforestation is taken into account, biofuels added to UK petrol and diesel may be producing more than twice the carbon dioxide of the fossil fuels they replace.”

One of many interesting findings is that biodiesel made from UK oilseed rape produces 59% more greenhouse gas emissions than normal petroleum diesel.

Read the full press release here

And get the numerical data in an Excel spreadsheet  here