Urgent Agrofuels Action: Write to your MEPs!

Clearing land for oil palm (Photo: Sawit Watch)

Thank you for visiting this page. The vote has now passed but the campaign is not over! Please contact Clare McVeigh at dteproguk@gn.apc.org to find out how you can help to bring an end to bad agrofules. For a summary of how our MEPs voted and our response, please go to http://www.downtoearth-indonesia.org/story/europes-agrofuels-vote-fails-food-sovereignty-rights-and-climate

The European Parliament is about to vote on agrofuels. If you live in the EU, please write to the MEPs for your area.

An example letter is given below.

What's the problem with agrofuels?

Bad for the climate

When the impacts of indirect land use change (ILUC) are accounted for, most agrofuels mean more, not less, carbon emissions. When peatland is considered, palm oil from Indonesia becomes one of the dirtiest fuels around, far more carbon intensive than fossil diesel. Existing agrofuels policy ignores this.

Land-grabbing, human rights abuses, conflicts

Millions of hectares of land are being grabbed from communities in countries like Indonesia to meet Europe’s growing demand for agrofuels. Indigenous Peoples’ right to Free Prior and Informed Consent is not respected. Security forces are brought in to deal with community opposition to landgrabbing by large companies, leading to violent conflicts and human rights violations.

Bad for biodiversity and environment

Indonesia’s precious forests and biodiversity are under serious threat from massive palm oil expansion – driven partly by Europe’s agrofuels demand. Current plantations cover around 11million ha with plans to expand to around 28m by 2020. Endangered orangutans lose their habitats as forests are converted into palm oil. Illegal burning creates smog choking Indonesia and nearby. Intensive agriculture and chemical use on plantations causes river pollution, water scarcity, soil degradation and health problems for plantation workers.

Don’t make business or development sense

Huge agrofuels industry subsidies paid for by Europe’s tax payers created only 3600 direct jobs across Europe in 2011, while leading to forest destruction and higher GHG emissions. This contradicts EU economic and political efforts aimed at reducing Indonesian deforestation. Growing public concern about negative impacts makes agrofuels a risky business investment and undermines the EU’s duty to conduct “responsible development”.

What can you do about it?

If you live in the EU, please write to your MEP and urge them to use their vote to secure:

1. Accounting of all CO2 emissions resulting from agrofuel crops, with crop-specific ILUC factors applied to the EU's Renewable Energy Directive (RED) as well as the Fuel Quality Direcive (FQD). This is the best policy option to dis-incentivize agrofuels (like palm oil) that are counter-productive in reducing CO2.
2. A halt to the rapid expansion of land-based agrofuels, with a robust cap, the lowest possible (i.e. 5% or less) applied to the RED and the FQD.

Please also ask them to push for these next steps:

• An independent social and environmental impact assessment of EU agrofuels policies on countries such as Indonesia – with a view to developing mandatory sustainability criteria to exclude any agrofuels or agrofuel feedstocks imported into the EU that do not meet environmental and human rights standards, and fair trade principles.
• Policy steps towards a phase out of all land-based agrofuels, and a phase out of subsidies, to bring their consumption down to zero as soon as possible.
• The introduction of policy incentives which put our transport onto a genuinely green path. Overall, policies which focus on greenhouse gas reductions, big energy savings, and modal shift in transport will be a more effective means of climate change mitigation, without the social and environmental costs of agrofuels.

For a full briefing on agrofuels and Indonesia by  Down to Earth, 11.11.11. , Watch Indonesia!,Friends of the Earth Europe, WALHI, Sawit Watch and Misereor click here.

For further information about the campaign contact: dteproguk@gn.apc.org