Collision between Global Biofuels Push and Biodiversity Protection

Peg Putt, Biomass Action Network of EPN International

It is well understood that the climate and biodiversity crises are interdependent, each contributing to the other. Hence care should be taken that responses to climate change do not exacerbate the biodiversity crisis, a prime example being the large-scale deployment of intensive monoculture bioenergy plantations. Reliance on large scale biomass and BECCS for energy and net zero damages nature and the climate and
increases global emissions.

A first ever collaboration between IPBES and the IPCC in 2021 warned against:

  • Planting bioenergy crops in monocultures over a very large share of land areas. Such crops are detrimental to ecosystems when deployed at large scales, reducing nature’s contributions to people and impeding achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals, and

  • Planting trees in ecosystems that have not historically been forests and reforestation with monocultures – especially with exotic tree species. This is often damaging to biodiversity,

Escalating deployment of tree plantations is already converting natural forests and other important natural ecosystems such as grasslands, savannas and peatlands.

The impacts don’t stop there, and the IPCC has raised serious concerns about water, food security and livelihoods, pointing out that a land area greater than that of India is contemplated in high bioenergy cropping scenarios. We are witnessing land grabbing of indigenous and local communities’ land and forests for bioenergy plantations in Indonesia (as exposed in earlier ECO’s), elsewhere in Asia, and across Africa and Latin America, in the name of combating climate change.

Vitally important draft text on the issue and ensuing intensification of social conflicts now is in danger, under threat from Parties that are champions of the Global Biofuels Alliance. No doubt they hope to claim such bioenergy plantations as nature-based solutions!
Unless more Parties find their voices for science-based information, ecological integrity, and care for communities, reservations about monoculture mania may be abandoned. It’s a worrying outlook for next year’s Climate COP in Belem, with disastrous plans for this false solution already being brokered.