Governments urged to take swift action on trade of biofuel

A coalition of civil society organizations on Tuesday urged governments to immediately suspend all subsidies and other forms of inequitable support for the import and export of biofuels.

They called on the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, to introduce adaptive measures that will maintain and enhance the patterns of sustainability while avoiding negative impacts on health and the adverse effects inherent to increases in demand or changes in socioeconomic settings.

"Biofuels are a disaster in the making. Existing legally binding standards, regulations and enforcement mechanisms in the potential production countries are absolutely insufficient to prevent the negative impacts," they said in a joint statement during the 24th session of the UNEP Governing Council underway in Nairobi.

The organizations, which included Global Forest Coalition, People of the Tropical Forest among others, said international demand for biofuels is already surpassing supply in key countries like Malaysia and Brazil, giving an important push to the expansion of destructive crops like oil palm and sugarcane.

"We call upon all governments to develop and effectively enforce environmental and social standards and regulations that ensure that national biofuel production industries do not destroy the livelihoods and ecosystem of Indigenous Peoples and local communities," they said.

They recommended that corporations be held strictly liable for any social and environmental damage that has occurred and effectively prosecuted if they do not uphold environmental and labour laws.

"We call on Northern countries to recognize their responsibility for destroying the plant's climate system, to reduce their energy consumption to sustainable levels, to pay the climate debt they have created by failing to do so until now and to dramatically increase investment in solar energy and sustainable wind energy," the organizations said.

Source: Xinhua