Biotreibstoff

Während in Österreich die Debatte über Biotreibstoff forciert wird, weisen die ersten Studien bereits nach, dass dieser Trend für die Preissteigerung von Nahrungsmitteln verantwortlich ist.

Dazu mehr im Guardian vom 4.7.2008:

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.
The news comes at a critical point in the world’s negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels. 
It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a “significant” part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.”

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices. Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.

“Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher. Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which
Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.
Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

“It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices,” said Dr David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, last night. “All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change.” 

Time to put the brakes on biofuels

The latest controversy over biofuels backs up Oxfam’s report published last week. Profit, pressure from industry and farm subsidies show that there is more behind this enthusiasm for the crops than a desire to stop climate change.

If politicians want to reduce emissions and stop global warming, biofuels are not the solution. Recent research suggests that biofuels may increase greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduce them. And by pushing up demand for agricultural land, they’re causing farming to expand into other areas that store carbon – such as wetlands and forests – releasing way more carbon than is saved through biofuels.

Nor will biofuels offer the holy grail of fuel security and stop us from having to curb our insatiable demand for oil or oil alternatives. Oxfam estimates that if the entire corn harvest of the USA were diverted to ethanol, it would only be able to replace about one gallon in every six sold in the USA. And if the entire world supply of oilseed were converted to biodiesel, this would only be able to replace, at most, 10% of global diesel consumption.

When you put aside the inconvenient facts that biofuels will not save the planet or deliver fuel security, there are other compelling reasons to put the brakes on biofuels. The rush to increase supply is clearly linked to land grabs, labour rights exploitation and environmental damage.

This is why today’s Guardian story is important. Seventy five percent is one of the highest estimates of direct impact of biofuels on food prices. But it adds to a cumulatively compelling - and surely ultimately irrefutable - body of evidence that shows that biofuels production is threatening to push millions more people into poverty and hunger and undermine already inadequate progress towards the millennium development goals.

The International Food Policy Research Institute as conservatively estimated that biofuels are responsible for 30% of recent food price rises, and the IMF has made similar claims. Meanwhile Oxfam has calculated that biofuels production may have pushed a further 30m people into poverty and the UN has said that 60m indigenous people are at risk of being evicted from their lands to make way for biofuels – equivalent to the entire population of the UK.

Despite this damning case, our governments continue to throw money at biofuels, under pressure from industry that has invested heavily in production technology, anticipating legislation and other support. Last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries spent up to $15bn (£8bn) on support to biofuels, including tax breaks. This is the same amount that Oxfam estimates is needed immediately to help the most vulnerable people affected by the food crisis.  

Let’s be clear about this. This means that you and I are bankrolling what looks like turning into a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. In fact, we are paying twice: once in taxes, and again at the supermarket cash register for more expensive food. At current subsidy rates EU taxpayers will be forking out $34bn (€22bn) a year to support biofuels by 2020. 

Not all biofuels are all bad (Brazilian ethanol, for example, does have lower emissions). But there is so much evidence about the range of potentially negative impacts that setting mandatory targets for their production and use seems unconscionable. And yet, that’s what governments, including the UK, have done or are on the brink of doing, thereby sending a signal to the markets and the private sector that demand is here to stay, and keeping prices high.

The EU wants 10% of energy needs to be met by renewables by 2020. Unlike in the UK, this target has not yet been made legislation. In fact the European parliament’s environment committee will vote on it on Monday. Which makes recent efforts to suppress information on biofuels even more scandalous. The MEPs voting next week expected to have a UK-commissioned review on the impact of biofuels to guide their decisions. But the release of the Gallagher report has been repeatedly delayed and its findings expected to be critical of targets look set to come too late help MEPs decide which way to vote. We have also heard that critical wordings on food security have been excised from the text on which MEPs are meant to be voting.

Taken together this begins to look a lot like a conspiracy. A neat way of making big bucks for companies and agribusiness, at the expense of consumers, taxpayers and poor people in developing countries. The question is how much more evidence needs to emerge before politicians realise that the path they are taking is immoral and unjustifiable?

Robert Bailey is a policy adviser for Oxfam