G20 Agriculture Ministers’ meeting on food prices backs GBEP work


The Global Bioenergy Partnership has worked since its inception back in 2005 on the basis of mandates received from successive G8 summits. The latest expression of support came most recently from the Deauville G8 Summit in France in May. This backing has now been reinforced by an explicit statement of support from the gathering in June of G20 Agriculture Ministers.

The context of the G20 meeting in Paris was to agree on a set of actions to tame global food price volatility, which will be presented to the main G20 Summit in November. It was the first time that G20 Agriculture Ministers were meeting specifically on this topic, following a sharp rise in food prices earlier this year.

The Ministers, in their final declaration, made a clear connection to the question of bioenergy and pledged to continue addressing the challenges and opportunities of biofuels. In order to better develop policy, they stated, further analysis is required into the factors influencing the relationship between biofuel production on the one hand and food availability, the response of agriculture to price increases and volatility, and the sustainability of agricultural production on the other.

The Ministers said they “continue to support” the work of the Global Bioenergy Partnership, in particular its newly agreed set of 24 sustainability indicators and welcomed GBEP’s future work on capacity building for sustainable bioenergy.

The meeting of G8 leaders, by contrast, referred to the GBEP’s work in reference to its deliberation on “green growth”, which covered topics such as resource efficiency, conservation of biodiversity, sustainable development and renewable energy. (Read the full declaration here)

The declaration of support from the G20 Agriculture Ministers comes as GBEP looks also to the G20 for future mandates, in view of the fact that G8 discussions on energy and environmental issues are flowing into the G20 agenda. In fact, GBEP is expected to submit its report on sustainability indicators to the G20 Summit in Cannes on 3-4 November. This is also desirable given that the G20 better reflects the composition of GBEP itself, encompassing a wide number of both developed and developing countries.

 

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