Harvesting harm: agrofuels as a false solution to climate change and poverty - Policy brief on the Inter-American Development Bank Agrofuels Strategy

Apr 2008

Agrofuels have been proposed as a solution to global climate change and a potential development opportunity for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is now actively pursuing agrofuels as a clean energy and development strategy. But recent research shows that agrofuels are not a climate solution, and the additional negative impacts of large-scale agrofuels production on land use, ecosystems, and environmental health are substantial. Further, any potential development benefits to the rural poor are lost when agrofuels are promoted as large scale, monoculture plantations and the fuel is directed for export.
Due in large part to government mandates for agrofuels in both the United States and Europe, the agrofuels industry has grown phenomenally in recent years. After twenty five years of near absentia, the IDB has fervently resumed lending within the field. To date, the IDB has already approved US$45 million in loans and technical cooperation funds, with close to US$3 billion in private sector loan projects currently under preparation. The largest investments are supporting export-oriented infrastructure and ethanol facilities, which do nothing to support local livelihoods or sustain rural environments.
According to the author, agrofuels are not an acceptable clean energy or development alternative and a number of suggestions about the next strategy of the IDB are made.
Instead of addressing existing social and environmental inequities, agrofuels present new problems that exacerbate these inequities, while feeding the unsustainable hunger for more fuel in the North. Policies aimed at addressing climate change should address the problem effectively at the source, including strategies for transforming patterns of over consumption and production.

By: Friends of the Earth (US, Brazil, Haiti)

 
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