Ecosystems and Poverty

If it isn’t about climate change, it seems it is about biofuels.  One of the questions about biofuels, aside from the obvious environmental concerns, is the extent to which it can provide benefits to the poor.  Up till now the biofuels market seems to be cornered by large-scale agriculture, with a few exceptions.  A paper by John Mathews from Macquarie University calls for a biofuels pact to ensure that biofuels are not produced on newly cleared land, but also to ensure that developing nations can compete in global markets to achieve triple-bottom line outcomes, contributing to environmental sustainability and poverty alleviation.  Sounds like perfect sense to me.  But then the whole issue of capping carbon emissions 10 years ago also made perfect sense and look at the progress one decade later.  Call me a cynic, but…

And while we are on the subject of biofuels in developing nations, the oil palm industry seems to be cleaning up its act.  Or at least that is what the literature shows.  Edgar Turner and colleagues from Cambridge reviewed 30 years of oil palm research, finding that there has been a steady increase in research on environmental issues, and massive increase in biofuel-related research (what a surprise!), but almost nothing on biodiversity.  They call for more emphasis on biodiversity issues in and around oil palm fields.

And finally, we blogged about Virgin’s plan to fly a 747 across the English Channel on pure biofuels.  Well, they’ve done it, and there are mixed reactions out there.  But they certainly achieved something with the stunt - CABI Blog used it as an excuse to contribute quite a long article on the biofuel debate.  Well worth reading.

Citations:

Turner EC, Snaddon JL, Fayle TM, Foster WA (2008) Oil Palm Research in Context: Identifying the Need for Biodiversity Assessment. PLoS One 3(2): e1572. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001572 http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0001572

Mathews, J.A., 2008, Biofuels, climate change and industrial development: can the tropical South build 2000 biorefineries in the next decade? Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining, Early View, doi:10.1002/bbb.63.