Not in our backyard

A year ago, biofuel was a buzzword, a reasonable technical solution to many of our environmental problems. Politicians across the European Union and in North America were busy setting targets, deciding what percentage of transport fuels should be replaced by biofuels by what time. The corn-ethanol industry in the US went into overdrive, and many governments in the developing world set up fuel crop programmes hoping for juicy revenues from biofuel exports feeding the fuel-thirsty nations. But by the end of last year, the green hope had turned into another black cloud threatening the future of our planet. " The Western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world, " environmental campaigner George Monbiot warned in an attack on the biofuel bandwagon last November. In countries like Swaziland, he argued, the biofuel business drove food crop production off the land, leading directly to starvation. By that time, world market prices for food crops had already risen in response to the competition from the fuel industry and soaring demand. Further bad news came this February with the Science report which demonstrated that any fuel crop grown at the expense of forests (either directly or by forcing food production to move on) would need decades or even centuries to repay the carbon debt produced by the change of land use. These findings removed many green credentials from current, purpose-grown fuel crops, leaving algae (which can be grown in the desert, see Curr. Biol. 18, R46) and agricultural waste as the only remaining, truly green raw materials for biofuel production on the horizon and the need for research and development programmes to improve this outlook. Meanwhile, however, the bandwagon which had acquired so much momentum over the last few years rolled steadily on, as politicians of both the fuel consumer and crop producer nations reasserted their commitment to biofuels. Countries like Congo, Ethiopia, Senegal and Tanzania keep expanding their capacities for biofuel production. Signs of a change of direction have now started to appear, however. In Africa, where the competition between food and fuel production is expected to have the most devastating effects, the tide is beginning to turn. In February, a petition calling for a moratorium on new biofuel developments in Africa gained support from over 30 non-governmental organisations across Africa within weeks. The petition calls " for a moratorium on new agrofuel developments on our continent. We need to …